Understanding the Indo-Pacific. Geopolitical context

As growing tension between the United States and China agitates Asia, a new analytical framework has gained attention in the study of regional geopolitics: the Indo-Pacific (IP). As formulated thus far, the IP appears a challenging concept for understanding politics and security in Asia for at least three reasons. Firstly, from a geographical standpoint, it is rather ambiguous as it encloses an exceedingly wide region and a still vague number of countries. Combining two geographical regions – the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific Ocean region – the concept has been targeted by harsh criticism of being shallow and pointless for the study of regional politics. Secondly, it includes countries that might not have a historical pattern of amity or enmity such as India and Japan. Since the risk of being dragged into a war with your neighbours is both in geopolitics and in international relations theory the most urgent danger for states’ national security and thus the primary shaping factor for their foreign policies, two distant and mutually non-threatening countries are not likely to influence each other’s international behaviour. Lastly, it is today a politically-loaded concept reflecting multiple actors’ endeavours to frame two security environments together for specific strategic purposes. The IP is the product of an increasingly multipolar regional system where the rise of China appears as the major engine of competition and the main push factor behind regional states’ alignment or distancing. Facing such a monumental ascent, different US administrations have advanced the IP as a new security framework serving American interests in Asia. The previous administration led by Donald Trump (2017–2021) has infused new lifeblood to the concept and pioneered a “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy which pivots on strategic partners such as Japan, Australia and India. The Biden Administration has echoed the same considerations stating that the “ensuring” of “peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term” (Biden 2021) is crucial to the United States’ national security.