Is the ‘Indo-Pacific’ Theatre a Cold War Reimagined?
The Indo-Pacific region is unequivocally important. It is home to the key strategic challenges of the 21st century: namely, the meteoric rise of China’s economy and its political challenge to the ‘rules-based order’. This order, a synonym for the US-envisioned western democratic system, has been contested by China’s economic rise. Historical allusion and outright invocation have prompted scholars to liken current events to the Cold War’s ‘great power struggle’. However, whilst ideology is important, it is also the trajectory of China’s economic growth that threatens Washington.
Similarities
Most of the conflict in the Cold War took place in the Asia-Pacific. In recent years, however, the region has evolved from the proxy theatre into the grand theatre. Xi Jinping’s recent action to eternalize himself as leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) shares a similar despotic character to the USSR leadership during the Cold War. As part of a series of contentious decisions domestically and internationally, this action has antagonized the Western democratic blocs’ values and beliefs. Some other notable activities include the oppression of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang province, imposition of political freedoms in Hong Kong under the Security act and increasing naval blocs in the South and East China Seas, to name a few.
For Washington, this is a stark departure from Deng Xiaoping’s embracing of ‘neoliberalism’ with the ‘open-door policy’ in 1978 and a shift towards Maoist nationalism. In speaking to the political legacy of China’s leadership, there are, therefore, elements that rhyme with the USSR. This time around, however, America lacks a ‘directory’, so to speak, on how to manage the ‘China problem’ (Trump, 2020). The US is indisputably seeking to contain China. Through what instrument, however, remains obscured and impeded by the spectres of the past.
The Indo-Pacific
The most active and contentious efforts towards security have been the rise of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ term and its formal arrangement, ‘the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’. The dialogue is composed of its four member states, Australia, India, Japan and the US and has even been dubbed the ‘Asian NATO’ (Wilkins, 2020). Like the strategic alliance formed in 1951 after WWII, the four nations have committed to a naval union covering the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Their strategic synergies on trade politics and the normative ‘rules-based order’ capture this vision. However general this commitment sounds; it implies a much more specific aim: balancing against China.
Like NATO’s formation on the precipice of the Cold War, the Quad is a timely response to China’s extraordinary power rise. Albeit the geography reconfigured. When Washington mentions ‘security’ in the Indo-Pacific, the subject is clear, containing China. After all, the Quad is upheld by the idea of a Free and Open Indo Pacific’ (FOIP) – a strategy formally introduced by Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in 2016 and since appropriated by Washington as a direct challenge to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (Metcalf, 2020). Further deteriorating Sino-American relations is the PRC’s authoritative claim over 90% of the South China Sea. To this point, China puts forward the ‘nine-dash line’, a vague demarcation of its perceived naval border in the Sea. This claim overwrites the seven claimant nations’ stakes to their Exclusive Economic Zones in the Sea and indeed the principle of a free and open Indo Pacific (ibid).
It is little surprise then that the usage of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ term has truly reached ‘vogue status’. As highlighted above, its increased interest over the past five years has been accelerated by capitals from Hanoi to Paris and Canberra to London; adopting it wholeheartedly as part of their foreign policy white papers. The term itself, however, is complicated. Some, mainly China, see it as a rhetorical jab at the PRC. The PRC’s nefarious actions towards Taiwan and the East China Sea make the ‘Indo-pacific’ a loaded term foregrounded by assertions of Chinese naval supremacy. There is little surprise then that Xi Jinping has expressed his repugnance of the term. The lack of a uniting definition of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ presents the risk that the world’s leaders shape it to suit their specific strategic interest.
Whilst there is a large amount of nuance to each nation’s foreign policy, the Indo-Pacific prompts a consensus: China’s rise is dangerous. In effect, this builds a kind of rhetoric bloc, and perhaps an implied support of the ‘Quad’ and FOIP concept by accepting and talking about the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, being the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the region accounts for 80% of world trade (WB, 2016.). But, of course, it is a contested region. The answer then to how the wealth and power of the region will be distributed is not yet clear.
In the shifting seas of power, history has a habit of making itself known in political and diplomatic circles. Caution must be exercised, however. In invoking history, leaders risk gross miscalculation by implying a resemblance to events populated by distinct players and changing priorities. Even more important still is the signalling that this historic rhetoric suggests. Indeed, by speaking in Cold War parlance in the Indo-Pacific, leaders risk reinvigorating amongst other things, the nuclear paranoia that paralysed that episode of history. To use language imbued with the connotations of that period also reduces and misses the nuances specific to the region. Maybe, the Indo-Pacific’s violent Cold War history makes the task of extricating historical connotation improbable. The creation of new rhetoric contours such as the ‘Indo-Pacific’ itself is then deeply imbued with political intent. If these contours will steer actions towards a similar end, however, still remains to be seen.
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