The Indo-Pacific A Narrative Of Overture And Reluctance
Geopolitics|July 2018

As an idea, the “Indo-Pacific” promises a lot, but the problem with it is that there is no real consensus among the promoters of the idea over its economic, political and military dimensions, argues AMIT GUPTA.

Amit Gupta
The Indo-Pacific A Narrative Of Overture And Reluctance

The United States recently took the symbolic step of renaming its Pacific Command the Indo-Pacific Command, a decision taken both as a nod to India’s growing importance and to reorient American maritime capabilities in the region. The idea of the Indo-Pacific was first floated by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007 in a speech to the Indian parliament. Abe was signaling that his country, for long self-restrained in the security sector, was willing to become a major player in the Asian region mainly as a counter to a rising China. The Obama Administration took up the idea and Hillary Clinton first broached it as a new US policy. Subsequently, President Barak Obama was to go to the Australian parliament and express a renewed American commitment to Asia. Since then, there has been on again off-again discussion of the Quad—the United States, Japan, India, and Australia as a politico-military grouping in the region—and the Obama Administration began describing India as the lynchpin of American strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

India, as always, promised a lot and delivered little to the other members of the grouping. To understand Indian options, the Indo-Pacific can be discussed in three contexts: military, economic, and political and for India these lead to divergent views from those of other members of the quad.

The Economic Context

This story is from the July 2018 edition of Geopolitics.

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This story is from the July 2018 edition of Geopolitics.

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