The recent phase of globalization is underlined by a clear “geopolitical shift” in favour of the developing world which has facilitated a recent spate of regionalization. A prominent feature of this “geopolitical shift” in the world system, resulting from the globalization of the world space in the last two decades is the emergence of a few developing states as economic powerhouses (China, India and Brazil). The post-cold-war period has seen a continuation of the relative shift of global economic power to the Asia-Pacific region (the recent currency “crisis” notwithstanding) and it is estimated that by 2020 four of the world’s five largest economies will be located in the region.[①] This complicates the conceptual clarity about the world political system, which was a feature of the Western discourse, as these economies challenge the traditional dominance of the industrialized states and new geographies take shape. The traditional division of the world into various spheres on the basis of levels of development viz. core-periphery, first world, third world, etc., now stands considerably altered.  The emergence of China as the second largest economy of the world in recent years has defied the traditional notions of civilization, culture and development. This has led to a re-imagination of the world system which partly is a post-Cold-War situation wherein the bipolarity is missed and there exists an indication of a general momentum towards a multi-polar situation with regional groupings of states playing an ever increasing role in world politics. Overall, it is clear that the combination of globalisation with the “collapse” of bipolarity has ensured that regionalism and regionalisation will become increasingly important in world politics.[②] New regional formations are imagined which defy the logic of geography and are increasingly legitimized through constant repetition by statesmen, media and academic institutions. From the perspective of geopolitics these developments are significant for a number of reasons. Attempts to actively create and institutionalise regional entities represent an important moment in the politicisation of otherwise arbitrary geographic space.[③] Indo-Pacific is an example which by its expanse negates the traditional conceptions of “region”. This regionalization exercise holds relevance for India because of the reported Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean Region in the form of assistance in the construction of a number of ports in the region. Moreover, India has perceived the Indian Ocean space as the area of primary importance to them since the British times when the British designated it as a British lake. This imagination continued in the Indian strategic establishment even after independence from the British rule in the year 1947. It is significant to note that the British imagination of the Indian Ocean held value and tremendous imprint of the British navy till the year 1971 when the British forces withdrew from the East of Suez Canal. The Indian establishment for long held the British vision in the Indian Ocean. However, such notions of dominance in the Indian Ocean were shattered by increasing Chinese presence in the form of provision of assistance to build commercial ports in the region at Sittwe (Myanmar, Bay of Bengal), Hambantota (Sri Lanka, Indian Ocean) and Gwadar (Pakistan, Arabian Sea). Indian establishment now perceives this presence as a threat in the region and has also altered its strategic vision in the Indian Ocean region as well as in the larger Asian expanse. India therefore subscribes to the current and innovative re-visualization of the Indo-Pacific. This has significant implications in purely physical geographical terms as the terminology allows India to expand its strategic footprint in the South China Sea and thereby countering Chinese efforts in the Indian Ocean Region. The paper examines the issue in detail in the subsequent sections wherein the geopolitical re-imagination of the Indo-Pacific and its relevance for India are put into perspectives in the sections which follow.

The paper, therefore, in general is marked by three distinct but related themes which run as undercurrents in the chapter. First, the recent phase of globalization, which has impacted the human perception of time and space significantly as the global linkages, economic, social, political and cultural improved at a heightened pace, and  has been termed by David Harvey as “Time-Space Compression”[④] which shapes the way in which we understand spaces immediate to us and the spaces beyond. Second, and the related theme is that of the emergence, arrival or rise of some of the developing economies due to the accrual of benefits of globalization, which informs the regionalization process concerning us in the paper. Last, and most importantly for the present academic exercise, the “rise” of China and its impact on the shifting geopolitical alliances, which also impinges upon the theme of regionalization and related processes.

These three larger undercurrents are useful in explaining the new regional formations which are gradually taking shape like the BRICS, IBSA as examples of South-South Cooperation and the emergence of new geopolitical terms like the Indo-Pacific. The paper though, focuses on the Indo-Pacific with the use of the concept of geopolitical imaginations rooted in Critical Geography/Geopolitics.  A precursor to the term “Indo-Pacific” is “Asia-Pacific” which demands attention as a term initially evolved by the United States during the Cold War. The paper therefore is divided into three sections: a) Geographical/Geopolitical Imaginations, b) The Asia-Pacific and c) The Indo-Pacific Imagination.

I. Geographical/Geopolitical Imaginations

Consequent to the establishment of the field of Critical Geopolitics during the last three decades, research in geopolitics have frequently invoked the concept of spatial imagination in analysing world affairs. The origins of geographical imaginations are traced in critical geography in the works of Harvey and Henri Lefebvre. Political geographers and thinkers in geopolitics utilized the concept initially to argue that the modern geopolitical imaginations are forms of situated knowledge which create partisan understandings of the global space. The current phase of globalization has contributed to the alternative imaginations of the global space. The current section argues the relevance of such geographical and geopolitical imaginations while briefly defining the concept.

David Harvey explains the presence of geographical imagination as pervasive in human life and asserts that “this “spatial consciousness” or “geographical imagination” was manifest in many disciplines. Architects, artists, designers, city planners, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, ecologists and economists as well as geographers and philosophers have all appealed to it.....[⑤]

Further, he calls for a combination of the geographical imagination with a sociological imagination to understand the reality better. “The relations between social processes and spatial forms needed to be better understood as a prerequisite to well-grounded critical research on urbanization, modernization, diffusion, migration, international capital flows, regional development, uneven geographical development, geopolitics, and a host of other subjects of considerable importance”.[⑥]

Though Harvey’s imaginations refer to the individual, such geographical imaginations can be constructed at the level of the nations, as evident after the work of Benedict Anderson titled Imagined Communities (1983). Furthermore, it is possible to imagine such communities at the international as a globalized world marked by intense flow of information, commodities, ideas and people facilitates such imagination. Indo-Pacific is also one such geographical imagination wherein the states construing, formulating and promulgating the idea have been able to identify/recognize the relationship among them and they have been able to forge a geopolitical concept based on a certain common threat. This recognition of commonalities, in turn, creates the common ground for the members to forge a group and helps to distinguish with similar entities, in this case, China, as one. Such arguments can at least be substantiated theoretically, “each form of social activity defines its own space”.[⑦] Globalization is the most pervasive international social reality of the contemporary period. The effects are visible not only in the social sphere but also in the manner global space is geopolitically visualized.

Harvey further presses the issue about globalization’s impact upon various imaginations of space, “Globalization (however it is construed) has forced all sorts of adjustments into how the sociological imagination (if such a coherent concept is still viable) can now work. It cannot, for example, afford to ignore the basics of political-economy nor can it proceed as if issues of national and local differences, space relations, geography and environment are of no consequence”.[⑧] Thus globalization has shaped the spatiality owing to its pervasive nature and such spatiality is also reflected in the way Indo-Pacific has been re-formulated as a geopolitical entity. Such arguments have resonance with “geopolitical imagination” explained by John Agnew while explicating theories of traditional geopolitics. The term Asia-Pacific, a precursor to Indo-Pacific also had geopolitical motives behind it.

The term can be explained applying the now extensive literature on critical geopolitics, the recent variant of geopolitics based in post-modern and post- structural approaches. Critiquing the geopolitical theorizing by the likes of Halford Mackinder, Mahan, Haushofer and Spykman, Agnew labels such attempts as geopolitical imagination and visualization and suggests they are a defining feature of modernity which is exemplified by two elements: 1) that the world is seen as a picture, as an ordered structured whole, separated from the self who is viewing from the world itself and 2) the world pictured beyond the horizon is a source of chaos and danger.[⑨]  Similarly, the suggestion that regions are strategic constructions[⑩] and manifestations of social production of space[11] supports such geopolitical imageries as Indo-Pacific. While geography is an indispensable component in the definition of the region, if only to locate it on the globe and distinguish it from other regions, any definition is at best an abstract representation that seeks to contain within physical categories the spatial and temporal motions of the human activity -- including the activity of conceptualization -- that constitutes its reality.[12] Attempts to actively create and institutionalise regional entities represent an important moment in the politicisation of otherwise arbitrary geographic space.[13] Such attempts seem to be underway in the East Asian region with the creation of the terms like the Indo-Pacific.

The next section examines the term Asia-Pacific and its geopolitical applicability and validity in the contemporary times. The term is a precursor to the recent nomenclature of Indo-Pacific and that is the reason to elaborate upon the term before embarking upon the term.

II. The Asia-Pacific

In an interesting article in the journal Foreign Policy in October 2011, reflective of the geographical shift of the strategic orientations of the United States of America from Trans-Atlantic to the Asia Pacific, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins with an immediate futuristic objective, “One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment -- diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise -- in the Asia-Pacific region”.[14] The “geopolitical shift” is underlined by the economic emergence of China during the last three decades and the effort to actively surround China geo-strategically by engaging traditional allies in the region, as Agnew summarises, “that Asia-Pacific is really a code for China and that this focus on China involves reinforcing existing alliances to contain China”.[15] Though it is notable that Agnew disagrees with this perception of reformulation of US Policy, as he argues that in the first instance the notion that the US policy has totally been Atlantic centric to contain the USSR and now it has shifted to the Asia Pacific is a fallacy as the strong US alliance with Japan and South Korea during the Cold War suggests.[16]

Nonetheless, there is a significant reimagining of the world space through such labels and geopolitical codes since the end of the Cold War and the advent of the recent phase of globalization; Sidaway is explicit in saying that “a series of high profile intergovernmental and corporate reports have reinforced impressions of a shifting global economic geography that reconfigures maps of development/underdevelopment”.[17] Of greater theoretical significance are the recent developments in East Asia which tell us something important about the nature of regions in a wider global context, especially their relationship with the hegemonic power of the day.[18] These geopolitical visions which emanate from particular biases and advantaged conceptions of the world are then embedded in the popular psyche and the geographical terms like the “Asia-Pacific” take root. Beeson further substantiates his argument by citing Tuathail and Agnew’s work on American Foreign Policy “Tuathail and Agnew drew attention to the hegemon’s capacity to write the rules for a particular world order and to produce a particular understanding of geographical space in the process”.[19] The US capacity to write the geography and infusing certain areas with nomenclature which suits its foreign policy is critical to the ways the region is governed strategically and economically. The nomenclature of Asia-Pacific is contested by the Chinese academia. Zhu Feng attests the argument with the assertion that “the conceptualization of “region” is still debated and the term “Asia-Pacific” is a Westernized usage to define a broad area, geographically situated within the bounds of the Pacific Ocean. In historic and cultural explanations, such a region never actually existed. In economic and political terms, the notion of Asia Pacific is a foreign one for most of the inhabitants on the western edges of Asia-Pacific”.[20] The scepticism and apprehensions about the US policy toward the Pacific Ocean space aside, it is true that in terms of the economic growth in the recent decades, which coincide with the recent phase of globalization, some “developing” economies (China, India and Brazil) have registered very high growth rates.

“Asia-Pacific” as a term could be considered as a geopolitically motivated term as an analysis of geographical characteristics of the term at a macro level would reveal. Efforts to define the region, under the circumstances, reveal their underlying motivations in their search for a regional construct that is most consistent with the particular interest and perceptions of their purveyors.[21] While the exact list of those who have played a part in the region’s formation (and continue to do so) may be debatable because of the historically dynamic nature of the region, what is not so problematic is that those who are located either on its physical boundaries or within them do not play equally important parts in its constitution or structuring [22] Physical terminology offers little clue to the dialectic of the region’s formation(s), above all to the contradictions that have played a significant part in its formation as inevitable consequences of the very process of its constitution as a region.[23] The two words in the term “Asia-Pacific” indicate two expansive and large entities. Asia spanning from the east of the Caucasus and from the east of the Urals to the Bering Strait in the east is not the entity what the term indicates. Similarly, the Pacific does not cover the entire expanse from the western coast of North America to the eastern coast of Asia. A selected geographical area is denoted by the term which includes only the Pacific coastline of Asia. A basic contradiction in the region’s construction that appears when it is viewed in historical perspective: a contradiction between its Asian and Pacific content, the people who inhabit it, in other words and a regional formation that was very much a Euro-American invention.[24] Geographically, the exact boundaries and content of the “Asia-Pacific” region were always rather imprecise, in the early 1990s economic, political and strategic ties seemed certain to give concrete expression to a vision that was enthusiastically championed by influential figures in Washington and – especially – Canberra and Tokyo.[25] It is noteworthy here that the newer “Indo-Pacific” coinage as an idea again finds definition and expression through the statesmen in the Japanese case and think tanks in the case of Australia. However, the term “Asia-Pacific” could also be put to scrutiny on the basis of the most fundamental distinction in geography of continentality vs. maritimity as one of its entities is continental based one and the other is a maritime one. Although heavily critiqued now, the geopolitical imagination of early geopolitical thinkers like Mackinder and Spykman was based on such distinction wherein they visualized a struggle between land power and sea power for global supremacy. On the other hand, the more expansive Asia-Pacific concept has always been characterised by potentially irreconcilable contradictions and tensions.[26]

The shift toward an Asia-Pacific which itself is fast evolving with new developments and old rivalries being played out afresh demands new understandings of the region. In the Asia-Pacific, there is a need for post-realist spatial structures and policies to cope with all of these outcomes, and regionalism can potentially play an important “intermediary” role in which the re-establishment of security and stability can be facilitated.[27] Similar arguments about the gradual diminishing value of the Asia-Pacific increasingly form the focus of writings of scholars.[28] At one level, the US’s preferred regional discourse and institutional framework – the Asia-Pacific – is falling into disuse, and political and economic practices are increasingly gravitating toward East Asian organisations like ASEAN 3.[29] Alternative formulations of the region and speculations about the new shape it will take in the future indicate a new geostrategic regionalization process. A major recalibration of the goals and style of American foreign policy has not only rendered organisations like APEC with its explicit Asia-Pacific identity less important, but it has simultaneously encouraged the development of a more narrowly conceived form of East Asian regionalism that self consciously excludes the United States.[30] However, it requires further deliberation whether the diminishing US influence in the East Asian region points towards the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical entity or post-realist geopolitical structure.

Relevance for India

Although the term stands geographically questioned and challenged; in diplomatic and economic discourse, Asia-Pacific gained tremendous currency and the effects were visible for the Indian establishment as well. The beginning was India’s Look East Policy in the early 1990s. India’s Look East Policy (LEP), announced by Delhi in the early 1990s, has been a subject of interest for those studying India’s external relations and their changing orientation since the end of the Cold War.[31] The initial emphasis of the LEP was indeed on India’s integration with the booming East Asian economies and the Association of South East Asian Nations(ASEAN)-led regional institutions.[32] Gradually, India in the second decade of the Look East Policy chalked out a defence and security strategy for East Asia.

Indian analysts of the Asia-Pacific still apply the terminology of “Asia-Pacific” to the region and hold that “the Asia-Pacific is marked by the following key trends: rise of China; the rebalancing strategy of the US; a regional architecture underpinned by the centrality of ASEAN; the growing importance of the Indian Ocean region and maritime issues; the growing salience of non-traditional security threats”.[33] Delhi’s own engagement with the region on security affairs rose steadily through the 2000s, collectively with ASEAN as well as individually with key countries.[34] “India has strategic partnerships with the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia. These countries want to have closer security cooperation particularly in the maritime sector. India-Japan-US trilateral dialogue should focus on Asia-Pacific issues including security cooperation. These partnerships would promote stability in the region”.[35] The pull factors in East Asia and the push factors in India that have made questions on Delhi’s security role in the Asia Pacific relevant.[36] With India’s rise and the recent evolution of its strategic thinking about the Asia-Pacific region, there is an argument for India’s role in the region. There is a need to assess India’s traditional security competition with China, its expanding strategic engagement with the United States, and its growing partnership with Japan.[37] What should be India’s long term strategy in Asia-Pacific? With the shift of centre of gravity to the Asia-Pacific region, India must seek a role in the shaping of political, economic, social and security process in the region. Not doing so could adversely affect India’s interests. India’s strategy should be to seek deeper engagement & economic integration with the Asia-Pacific region. India should be particularly engaged in the security dialogues and processes in the region.[38]

A gradual deepening of India’s role in the region is evident in the last few years as the visits of the heads of state from both India and ASEAN would suggest. However, further strengthening of these bonds with ASEAN, which has a strategic partnership with India and the creation of an FTA in services through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will mark a significant step forward. Gupta argues for an involvement and an expansive role of India’s Northeast for the successful implementation of the Look East policy. The benefits of the Look East Policy, particularly, the increased trade, better connectivity, greater socio-cultural links, cooperation in the area of capacity building, education, youth, etc., must be felt by the people of North East, who are otherwise sceptical of the LEP (Gupta 2013).[39] Geographical proximity of the islands of Andaman and Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal to South East Asia could also be utilized to India’s advantage for reaching out to the wider Asia Pacific region. The promise which ASEAN and East Asia hold for India combined with the recent Japanese and Australian quest to infuse the region with a new identity and to re-imagine the region afresh to expand the ambit of Asia Pacific indicate toward the new formulation of Indo-Pacific.

III. The Indo-Pacific geopolitical imagination

History of the term Indo-Pacific extends back into the 19th century during the 1850s, when it was used to identify the people inhabiting the people in the islands of Indonesia as Indo-Pacific islanders.[40] However, the first instance of its use since the ascendance of geopolitics as a discipline in the late 19th and 20th century is by the discredited Nazi geopolitical thinker Karl Haushofer, who has the notorious distinction of advising the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, during the inter-war period in Germany. Therefore, the term has a long geopolitical history, even prior to the application by Haushofer, as a part of his book German Culture Politics in the Indo-Pacific Space in 1939. For him the context was clear as the Germans sought to emulate the British Empire, charted out a course for global military domination. For Haushofer, the inspiration came from the fact that on the basis of a strong naval base the British had built a global empire and the Dutch during the same period were present in the South East Asia. To address the German dream to be present globally, Haushofer intended to examine the viability of such a presence in the region. Since the end of the World War II, the term “geopolitics”, The German term Geopolitik, the ideas of Karl Haushofer were discredited because of their Nazi association. The discipline of geopolitics suffered as the term invoked references to World War II and the Nazi ideology. The term was also used by noted American geopolitical thinker Spykman in his work America’s Strategy in World Politics (1942) while explaining his formulation of “rimland”. Spykman argued that the Indo-Pacific was “a great maritime circumferential highway”. Geopolitics began its revival in the 1970s and the term Indo-Pacific is now being reinvigorated in the academic circles as new strategic and geopolitical constellations emerge in the wake of emergence of China. Most recent instance of its use is by the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007. The paper intends to examine the geographical validity of this term in this section.


The term “Indo-Pacific” itself can be put to scrutiny for its geographical validity. Authors like Robert D. Kaplan, in his work Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2010)[41] argues that the Indo-Pacific entity will cater to the rising trade in the region due to the rise of China and India as a basis to establish its unity. His basic argument is that Indo-Pacific is a bio-geographical region alluding to the similar flora and fauna from the East African (Madgascar) coast to the Asian lands littoral to the Pacific (Japan). Secondly, for Kaplan, these regions have similar climate, the unifying climatic type is that of the Monsoons. Both claims can be put to scrutiny, the first one is specially intangible, since the bio-geographical basis is still not vigorously scrutinized to become a geographical category, the only evidence could be found in a paper published as recently as 2007.[42] Kaplan’s explanation in climatology also lacks intense research as the two most accepted climatic classifications in the field do not support his thesis. The most accepted climatic classification that is of Wladimir Koeppen which he developed from 1900 to 1936 and which by the scholars of climate is considered to be the most relevant to explain and classify the world into climatic zones. His basic categories are
A: Tropical Forest climates; hot all seasons
B: Dry climates
C: Warm temperate climates
D: Cold forest climates
E: Polar Climates
H: Undifferentiated Highland climates[43]

The classification is completed with various sub-categories in each of the abovementioned categories. But the Indo-Pacific extending from the East coast of Africa to the islands of Japan shows tremendous diversity with categories A to D all present in the Indo-Pacific. Thus, the climatic classification does support the unity of Indo-Pacific as a single climatic zone.  A close look at the regions littoral to the Indo-Pacific reveals that the climatic zones present on the Eastern coast of Africa are the A and B category, i.e., Tropical Forest Climate and Dry Climate. The region from the Horn of Africa to the Persian Gulf to Pakistan surrounding the Arabian Sea has the dry climate (Category B). The Indian subcontinent supports the first four (A, B, C and D) categories due its extremely diverse physiography. The Southeast Asian region falls under the A category (Tropical Forest climate).  Then northwards on the Asian landmass the majority of the countries have either of the two categories i.e C and D (Warm temperate climates and the Cold forest climates).  The western coast of Australia again displays the two categories of A and B types of climate. The sub-categorization of these regions elucidates much more diverse climatic zones which exist in the Indo-Pacific. Another very prominent climatic classification used by geographers is that of C. Warren Thornthwaite. The Indo-Pacific zonation can be discussed through this classification and it also falls short of scrutiny there.

The idea can be contested on other grounds as well. “Some will argue that this super-region is too big to be a coherent strategic system. To be sure, some of Asia’s most serious security flashpoints – from the Korean Peninsula to the India-Pakistan relationship – seem principally sub-regional”.[44] There is a commonality to these conflicts though, as the principal powers (India, China and the United States) of the region has a stake in these security flashpoints and these powers could safely be considered to have an influence in the wider Indo-Pacific region. Moreover, the South China Sea dispute engages most of the important regional players in the wider Indo-Pacific.

The second criticism is more pointed. “Some countries, particularly China, could well have misgivings about seeing the region through an Indo-Pacific prism.  Is the Indo-Pacific really just code for balancing against or excluding China? “[45] It is difficult to rule out such a viewpoint which indicates a strategic encircling of the People’s Republic of China. The constitution of the major proponents (Japan, Australia and India) of the term mixed with their geographical location at three opportune junctures in the Indo-Pacific does indicate towards a tri-locking strategy against China. This also indicates, however, that the term in its current form is a geopolitical imagination. The next section focuses on the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical imagination and the possibilities it offers to the Indian establishment.

The current Japanese Prime Minister in his earlier term addressed the Indian Parliament, he began with saying that “The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are “now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity. A “Broader Asia” that broke away geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form. Our two countries have the ability — and the responsibility — to ensure that it broadens yet further and to nurture and enrich these seas to become seas of clearest transparence”.[46] “Confluence of the Two Seas”, the Pacific and the Indian Oceans — anticipating Hillary Clinton’s idea of the “Indo-Pacific” — Mr. Abe asked the Indian Parliament if it was not time for a value-based and an interests-based relationship between India and Japan.[47]

The Indo-Pacific theatre holds tremendous stakes for the United States as the sole superpower as it comes to terms with the rising Chinese power in the region. An established analyst of the US Navy, Toshi Yoshihara argues for an increased US presence in the Indo-Pacific region. Accepting that the US strategy has reconciled to the Indo-Pacific “pivot”, he argues for the deployment of 60% of its naval strength to be allocated to the region by the year 2020 (Yoshihara 2013).[48] The strategic, political, and economic dynamism of the countries inhabiting the Indo-Pacific Rim will exert an almost gravitational pull on US interests. This is an intellectual, policy, and material reorientation of considerable significance for the US (Yoshihara 2013).[49]

Relevance for India

However, the term Indo-Pacific can be discussed as a geopolitical imagination. Globalization and its multifarious manifestations have expanded the ambit of the space India can influence in its neighbourhood from the IOR to the “Indo-Pacific”, a term also used by C. Rajamohan in his latest work Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific. Rajamohan uses the term drawing analogy from oceanography and indicates that increasingly a “confluence of the two seas”, i.e., the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean is at the forefront of discussion in academia as well as in the statecraft, particularly that of India, Australia and Japan.[50] The term in itself can be put to scrutiny as discussed above through the usage of various climatic classifications which form the backbone of climatology, on the basis of which major regionalizations of the planet are arrived at. The only explanation for the term comes from the fact that regions can be geopolitical imaginations which serve the interests of a state or a particular group of states. Indo-Pacific in this sense is geopolitical imagination directed at China.

In this case, the rise of China and the concerns which occur due to it in the immediate region are addressed through such regionalizations. As expressed above the term is a geopolitical code for China. Though there are two variants to the Indo-Pacific which are currently being concretized through debate by strategic thinkers. “The first system embraces Indian Ocean-centric issues—that is, issues that are specific to the Indian Ocean and its littoral. These include issues of economic development and human security, the environment, the seabed and fisheries management, among others. These issues are best addressed by the states with direct stakes in them, and which therefore potentially form the essential reform agenda of the current pre-eminent regional body, the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC)”.[51] They further explain the Indo-Pacific with its larger dimensions: The second system sees the Indian Ocean as part of an arguably wider Indo-Pacific “strategic system” that embraces the trade routes and sea lanes that cross the Indian Ocean itself but also extend past the Straits of Malacca and the Sunda and Lombok Straits into the South China Sea and north to China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, and indeed on the west coast of North America. As trade highways, these routes are arguably the most important in the world today, and the “choke points” and contested waterways along the highway attract critical attention of the “hard security” kind. Given the range of stakeholders, this is an inclusive framework, and the issues embraced within it are played out at a high political level.[52]

The Indo-Pacific imagination is frequently justified as a “confluence of two seas/oceans”.[53] However, these formulations do not explain the strategic significance of the Indonesian archipelago at this confluence. The paper makes an attempt to explain the significance of the term Indo-Pacific by invoking the following facts about the Indian Ocean and the trade which flows on its sea lanes of communications (SLOCs).  Globalization relies ultimately on shipping containers, and the Indian Ocean accounts for one half of the world’s container traffic. Moreover, the Indian Ocean rimland from the Middle East to the Pacific accounts for 70 percent of the traffic of petroleum products for the entire world.[54]

China, whose demand for crude oil doubled between 1995 and 2005, and will double again in the coming decade or two, as it imports 7.3 million barrels of crude daily by 2020—half of Saudi Arabia’s planned output. More than 85 percent of that China-bound oil will pass across the span of the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Malacca: the reason China is desperate for alternative energy routes to the Pacific, as well as overland ones into China from Central Asia, Pakistan, and Burma. The combined appetites of China, Japan, and South Korea for Persian Gulf oil already make the Strait of Malacca home to half of world oil flows and close to a quarter of global trade (Kaplan 2010).[55]

Indonesia—in particular, the island of Sumatra—and peninsular Malaysia on the opposite side of the Strait of Malacca form the heart of maritime Asia.[56] The Strait of Malacca is the Fulda Gap of the twenty-first-century multi-polar world, the place where almost all of the shipping lanes between the Red Sea and the Sea of Japan converge at the most vital choke point of world commerce; where the spheres of naval influence of India and China meet; where the Indian Ocean joins the western Pacific.[57] Indonesia, besides being a major oil producer, will remain East Asia’s primary supplier of natural gas for decades. The country’s vast archipelagic nature, its energy resources, its ethnic diversity, predominant Muslim religion, institutional weaknesses, and ultra-strategic location will make it a critical hub of world politics.[58]

An Indian government document India’s Maritime Military Strategy (IMSS) published in 2007 elaborates that India’s maritime geography enhances its importance in the IOR through an unimpeded access to the Indian Ocean on both the Eastern and Western coasts and the advantageous location of island groups in the region. It is in this context that India should adopt an oceanic strategy than a coastal one.[59] The document in the chapter on “Indian Ocean Region and its Geopolitics” lists the strategic chokepoints in the region namely Strait of Hormuz, Suez Canal, Strait of Bab-el-Mandab, Malacca Strait, Sunda Strait, Lombok Strait, Nine Degree Channel, Six Degree Channel and the Cape of Good Hope.

The list of India’s maritime interests is expanded in the latest version of India’s maritime strategy document of 2009 called the Indian Maritime Doctrine (INBR 8) and elaborate attention is provided with the classification of primary and secondary areas of interest of the Indian Navy with the inclusion of (INBR):
● The Southern Indian Ocean Region, due to our interests in Antarctica, and the friendly littoral states in the continents of Australia and Africa.
● The Red Sea and its littoral states.
● The South China Sea, other areas of west Pacific Ocean and friendly littoral countries located therein.
● Other areas of national interest based on considerations of diaspora and overseas investments.[60]

Significant here is the inclusion of the South China Sea and the west Pacific Ocean as areas of interest of the Indian Navy. It is pertinent to mention at this point, that the US has been more than willing to engage with India in the IOR through joint naval exercises since 2002 named MALABAR at locations both in the Indian Ocean and in the West Pacific furthers India’s geopolitical stature in the Indian Ocean Space. The multilateral nature of these exercises involving Japan, Singapore, and Australia does provide significant geopolitical leverage to India in the IOR space. India has been involved with other naval exercises including Brazil and South Africa (IBSAMAR 2008, 2010) off the South African coast; involving India and the United States (SALVEX 2007, HABUNAG 2008, 2010); with Japan and the United States (TRIALTEX 2007), Operational Deployment of Eastern Fleet in Southeast Asia 2011 in which the Indian Navy conducted exercises with the Singapore Navy (SIMBEX 2011) in the contentious South China Sea (Indian Navy Website 2013).[61] 

VI. Conclusion

The rise of China as a major player in the international system has provoked debates about a geopolitical shift in the system and there has been a recalibration of various state policies around the phenomenon. This has manifested itself in the formulation of various geopolitical codes by the United States as well as the states located within Asia and its immediate neighbourhood. The US also declared the present century is destined to be an Asian Century and therefore US efforts will be directed towards the Asia-Pacific space.  The validity of the term Asia Pacific has been questioned during the late stages of the Cold War and it was pointed out that Asia-Pacific due to its expanse cannot be a coherent region. Moreover, the term was used by the Euro-American strategists and scholars and the justification was purely geopolitical. The conceptual clarity of the world divided into various zones for the convenience of the Euro-American policy makers recently is disturbed by the rise of East Asia as a separate geostrategic realm wherein ASEAN and the People’s Republic of China play a crucial role. To take into account the present realities the term Indo-Pacific has been revived again.

However, the coinage of the term Indo-Pacific can be traced back to the nineteenth century and the more recently during the years of Nazi Germany in the writings of Karl Haushofer during the inter-war years. The most recent usage has been that by the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe during his address to the Indian Parliament to draw common frameworks of strategy between the two states of India and Japan. The Indo-Pacific does not have a solid geographic basis but the conception could be explained through literature in Critical Geopolitics. The paper has therefore argued on the basis of geographical regionalization that the Indo-Pacific is not a geographical reality. The established climatic classification of the world by climatology scholars like Koeppen and Thornthwaite also indicate towards the infeasibility of the Indo-Pacific as a coherent region.

From a critical geopolitics perspective Indo-Pacific can be explained as a geopolitical imagination rooted in the particular state strategies toward other states either to counter rival strategies or to support the strategies of allies. Such imaginations are also termed as geopolitical codes. The case for such a geopolitical code is further strengthened with reference to the economic rise of China and its increasingly assertive strategic behaviour. The term has been re-invigorated by particular think tanks located in Japan and Australia which also seem to be vary of the rising Chinese economic power and naval expansion in the region. For China too, the region as a whole is the arena where it exercises and asserts its rising status and also has created a network of bases in partnership with sub-regional actors to secure the important sea lanes of communication which cater to its energy needs. China’s manufactured exports also are transported through the Indo-Pacific space.

The Indo-Pacific holds promise for India as an important player as the Indian state constantly reflects on its northern neighbour, China. India has been proactive in the Indian Ocean as well as the newly imagined Indo-Pacific space. The imagination of the Indian military establishment indicates an expanding sphere of influence for the Indian navy. The areas of interest for the Indian navy have been outlined in the recent strategy documents and doctrinal monographs (IMSS 2009 and INBR 2009). The area of interest includes the entire Indian Ocean Region and the western Pacific as well the South China Sea which form integral parts of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical formulation. The frequent military exercises since 2002, in the region with actors regional and extra-regional has improved India’s strategic profile in the Indo-Pacific space. In the near future, though, it is difficult to speculate whether Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical concept will hold value but the longevity of this geopolitical imagination rests on three key players India, Australia and Japan which straddle three geographical vantage points in the region.

Source of documents： Global Review