The Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative is a part of India’s comprehensive Indo-Pacific strategy. If implemented, it can place India in the position of a responsible player in the Indo- Pacific while contributing to the stability of the region along with ASEAN.
The first India-Japan 2+2 Foreign and Defense ministerial meeting aimed to review the evolving security scenario in the Indo-Pacific and further strengthen strategic ties in bilateral cooperation to build a free and open Indo-Pacific, keeping in view China’s growing assertiveness in the region.
As the situation deteriorates rapidly with the number of protesters being detained for orchestrating and fueling the protest, the Hong Kong protest has no longer remained about the law but has become more of an “existential threat”. The stakes for Beijing are high and ensuring peace is not only valuable and desirable to Beijing, but also imperative.
The US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (USIP), takes the readers through a history lane that demonstrates the historical ties of the US with the region through significant events of the past.
The A2/AD factor will keep affecting the developments in one major part of the Indo-Pacific region and also the tug-of-war over freedom of navigation and the regional supremacy between the US and China.
The number of incidents reported, especially concerning the critical infrastructure, is moving up at a fast pace. The defense of the nuclear plants has already been highlighted as indispensable among important security measures required in the contemporary digital world for any country.
The international political order is witnessing a formidable churn in current times. The indomitable China’s rigorous pursuit of its maiden cross-continental connectivity project, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is simultaneously developing with a consolidation of power by a few middle and major powers to offer a counterweight and an alternative model to the Chinese ambitious geostrategic juggernaut.
The IOR’s importance is not just about traffic and sea lanes but much more. More than half of the world’s armed conflicts are currently in the Indian Ocean region, while the regional waters are also home to continuously changing strategic events, including the rise of China and India, potential maritime rivalry between India and Pakistan, US role in West Asia, Islamist terrorism, increasing piracy in and around the Horn of Africa and management of depleting marine resources.
India’s multipolar engagement in the region is not any different from that of the major actors of the region. India seeks to involve and engage all major actors in the region as stakeholders.
As a Philippian scholar once wrote, geography does not change, but perception does. India’s emphasis on inclusiveness definitely raises challenges for it to maintain the balance between the varieties of stakeholders in the region. Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical construct involves strategies of cooperation and competition, not only among China, India and the United States but a host of other regional stakeholders, which will likely shape the politics of the region.