By building up the notion of the Indo-Pacific as a critical region, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe created a strategic framework that presaged the geopolitical and economic integration taking place across Asia and parts of Africa.
As South Asian and Middle Eastern countries merge into West Asia, a new continental order could reshape the global balance of power.
During his first visit to India as prime minister, in August 2007, Abe delivered his seminal “Confluence of the Two Seas” speech to the Indian parliament.
Abe drew his speech title from a book written by the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh in 1655, which explored the commonalities between Islam and Hinduism as neighboring religious and civilizational constructs.
The Pacific and Indian oceans also share many commonalities, Abe said, adding that the “dynamic coupling” of these “seas of freedom and of prosperity” would transform not only the Indo-Pacific region, but also “broader Asia.”
However, Abe, who was assassinated in July last year, had more than just maritime metaphors in mind. His overarching goal was to build the most consequential bilateral relationship in the Indo-Pacific region — India and Japan.
As one of the first Asian leaders to recognize the global and regional impact of China’s rise, Abe went on a one-man crusade to create a viable new balance of power.
By expanding the geopolitical dimensions of the Asia-Pacific region and pushing it west toward the Indian Ocean, he helped shift the region’s strategic profile.
Abe’s 2007 speech highlighted the intellectual vacuum in Washington at the time. While the US was at the height of its ill-fated “war on terror” and mired in two protracted, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Abe sought to redefine the Indo-Pacific region on Japan’s terms, as a rival to the China-centric “community of common destiny.”
For Abe and his successors, fostering cooperation across the Eurasian and African rimlands through extensive networks of defense and trade ties was the key to realizing the vision of a broader Asia.
In placing the Indo-Pacific region at the heart of this vision, they drew on the insights of 19th century US admiral Alfred Mahan and British naval historian Julian Corbett.
Mahan and Corbett, the pioneers of modern naval strategy, viewed sea power as an essential source of national strength.
Twentieth-century political scientist Nicholas Spykman emphasized the strategic centrality of the Eurasian rimland, in contrast with British geographer Halford Mackinder’s insistence on the centrality of the Eurasian heartland.
Together, Mahan and Corbett’s writings on sea power and Spykman’s maritime-based approach to geopolitics provided the intellectual foundations for Abe’s broader Asia.
Today, the clearest manifestation of Abe’s Indo-Pacific strategy is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which began as a humanitarian initiative when the US, Australia, India and Japan formed a joint relief operation following the deadly tsunami that devastated Indonesia in 2004.
After his re-election in 2017, Abe repurposed it as a vehicle for his geopolitical vision.
However, the Quad was only the beginning. It has been followed by a series of “mini-lateral” institutions, including the AUKUS defense pact between Australia, the US and the UK; the US-Australia-Japan Trilateral Strategic Dialogue; trilateral cooperation between Australia, Indonesia and India; and a joint Italy-Japan-UK fighter jet project.
These initiatives, all of which aim to boost security and stability across the Indo-Pacific region, reflect the region’s ongoing transformation into a “geography of strategies.”
After the Iraq War and Arab Spring pushed Arab states to diversify their alliances and partnerships, and decrease their reliance on the US, Asian countries such as China, Japan, India, Indonesia and South Korea rushed to fill the vacuum.
For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are India’s third and fourth-largest trade partners respectively.
Japan has become a trusted regional leader in technology, clean energy and space exploration.
South Korea is a major supplier of technology and arms to the Gulf states and Egypt. Deepening defense and trade ties, together with the Gulf states’ growing clout, have accelerated the Middle East’s integration into the Asian economic sphere.
While Abe sought to offset China’s rising power by redefining the Asia-Pacific region, strategists and academics have been trying to establish regional balance of power by expanding the geopolitical definition of the Middle East to include India and other South Asian countries.
The Abraham Accords — between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain — the Negev Forum, the I2U2 and the France-UAE-India trilateral framework all point to a fledgling Indo-Abrahamic alliance between India, Israel and the Arab states.
The introduction of India into the Middle East’s political and economic domain is an extension of the geostrategic model Abe championed in his “Confluence of the Two Seas” speech.
With India as the link between the Indo-Pacific region and the Indo-Abrahamic countries of West Asia, a continental Asian order is beginning to take shape.
Mohammed Soliman, a global strategy adviser at McLarty Associates, is director of the Strategic Technologies and Cyber Security Program at the Middle East Institute.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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