Conflict and Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific


Book Description

This book explores the most important strategic questions about the emerging Indo-Pacific region by offering an incisive analysis on the current and future patterns of competition and cooperation of key nations in the region. Examining emerging policies of cooperation and conflict adopted by Indo-Pacific states in response to a rising China, the book offers insights into the evolving Indo-Pacific visions and strategies being developed in Japan, India, Australia and the US in reaction to shifting geopolitical realities. The book provides evidence of geopolitical advances in what some see as a spatially coherent maritime zone stretching from the eastern Pacific to the western Indian Ocean, including small island states and countries that line its littoral. It also analyzes the development and operationalization of Indo-Pacific policies and strategies of various key nations. Contributors provide both macro and micro perspectives to this critically significant topic, offering insights into the grand strategies of great powers as well as case studies ranging from the Philippines to the Maldives to Kenya. The book suggests that new rivalries, shifting alliances and economic ebbs and flows in the Indo-Pacific will generate new geopolitical realities and shape much else beyond in the twenty-first century. A timely contribution to the rapidly expanding policy and scholarly discussions about what is likely to be the defining region for international politics for coming generations, the book will be of interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, Diplomacy and International Law, East and South Asian Studies, East African Studies, Middle East Studies, and Australian Studies.




United States-China-India Strategic Triangle in the Indian Ocean Region


Book Description

While the strategic dynamics in the IOR are complex and involve many powers there is little doubt that the “strategic triangle” involving the US, China and India is one of the key traditional security issues facing the IOR. Given Sri Lanka’s geopolitically significant location in the IOR this strategic triangle is bound to have an impact on its national interests and security. The central questions raised by this volume are the following: What are the prospects of competition and cooperation within the strategic triangle? What structure or pattern will the triangular relations assume? How can stability be maintained in the triangular relationship in the interest of peace in the IOR? and What would be the impact of this strategic triangle on a small country such as Sri Lanka situated in a geopolitically significant location in the IOR? The dynamics of the US-China-India strategic triangle in the IOR will be complicated, containing elements of both competition and cooperation. The research contained in the substantive chapters of this volume present a multiplicity of views on the possible patterns that the strategic triangle can assume. Based on Harry Harding’s typology of the strategic triangle in international affairs, these include: one mediating the conflict between the other two; two-against-one; and all-working-together. The multiplicity of patterns that the strategic triangle could assume indicate that there is likely to be considerable fluctuation in its structure. What is important in maintaining stability is that the competition is not allowed to become unmanageable, and the fostering of cooperation based on common interests. The US-China-India strategic triangle poses Sri Lanka as a country situated in a geopolitically significant location in the IOR with both challenges and opportunities. The most fundamental challenge is posed by the tendency of each of these three major powers to subordinate Sri Lanka to their grand strategic objectives and interaction with each other. The fundamental opportunity presented to Sri Lanka by the strategic triangle is that of using its geopolitical importance to each of these three major powers by virtue of its location in the IOR to its own advantage in a way that best serves its national interests.




India and China at Sea


Book Description

China and India are emerging as major maritime powers as part of long-term shifts in the regional balance of power. As their wealth, interests, and power grow, the two countries are increasingly bumping up against each other across the Indo-Pacific. China’s growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean is seen by many as challenging India’s aspirations towards regional leadership and major power status. How India and China get along in this shared maritime space—cooperation, coexistence, competition, or confrontation—will be one of the key strategic challenges for the entire region. India and China at Sea is an essential resource in understanding how the two countries will interact as major maritime powers in the coming decades. The essays in the volume, by noted strategic analysts from across the world, seek to better understand Indian and Chinese perspectives about their roles in the Indian Ocean and their evolving naval strategies towards each other.




Annual Report on the Development of the Indian Ocean Region (2017)


Book Description

The report was written by senior scholars of international studies and Indian Ocean studies and focuses on international relations in the Indian Ocean region and covers many aspects of OBOR policy and South Asia. The report includes both a strategic review and major events, as well as related data in this region. This book also includes the origin, the aims, frameworks, the regional and global impact of India’s new development under the Modi administration. The book includes the authors from 5 different institutes in China which provide readers with a full and authentic picture of India’s most recent development. This year’s Annual Report is the fourth of this kind and the only one which covers exclusively the Indian Ocean region in China.




Indo-Pacific Empire


Book Description

This book explains why the idea of the Indo-Pacific is so strategically important and concludes with a strategy designed to help the West engage with Chinese power in the region in such a way as to avoid conflict.




Security And Nationalism In The Indian Ocean


Book Description

I thank Peter Duignan for suggesting that the book be done and The Hoover Institution on War, Peace, and Revolution for a grant that facilitated the early stages of research. Other grant funds were generously provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by Johnson State College, which also allowed me to run off with the stipend on academic leave. I obtained invaluable advice and access to special resources at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches des Pays de l'Ocean lndien (CERSOI) at the Universite d'Aix-Marseille in Aix•en•Provence and at the Centre de Documentation et de Recherches sur I' Asie du Sud-Est et le Monde lnsulindien (CeDRASEMI) in Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, France; particular thanks go to President Louis Favoreu, Professor Jean Benoist, Marc Besson and Mme. Besson at Aix. Similar courtesies were extended by Mme. Lauret at the Centre de Documentation de l'Ocean Indien at St. Denis in La Reunion and by archivists and librarians in all of the islands, France, the United States, and Montreal. Thanks go to Paul Gallagher and to Linda Kramer of the Johnson State College Library for finding and smoothing paths.




The Western Indian Ocean


Book Description

In this volume, The Hassam Toorawa Trust brings together six thought-provoking essays by scholars of Mauritius and other Indian Ocean islands. Together, they explore the experiences of islanders past and present, of placement and displacement, of locals and globals. The volume opens with a Foreword by Megan Vaughan (King's College Cambridge), situating the essays in the broader context of the historical processes in the Indian Ocean. Ned Alpers (University of California, Los Angeles) places the islands of the Western Indian Ocean in the wider African context. Himanshu Prabha Ray (Jawaharlal Nehru University) discusses ancient and medieval seafaring in the Indian Ocean. Shawkat Toorawa (Cornell University) muses on the Indian Ocean location of the medieval Waqwaq islands. Paul van der Velde (International Institute for Asian Studies) reflects on Dutch traveler Jacob Haafner's late eighteenth century description of his visit to Mauritius. Larry Bowman (University of Connecticut) describes the nineteenth century visit of mariner Joshua Slocum to Rodrigues and Mauritius. Jocelyn Chan Low (University of Mauritius) puts the plight of the Chagos Islanders (Ilois) into the context of Cold War realpolitik and Mauritius independence.




China in the Indian Ocean


Book Description

China's increasing footprints in the indian ocean have been a cynosure of the statements and scholar's eyes. This work tries to connect the dots of that presence from multiple perspectives including economic, strategic, geographic and that of maritime commerce. From board overviews to granular analysis, this book attempts to discern the patterns of china's presence in the indian ocean.




Monsoon


Book Description

On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as “Monsoon Asia”—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if the United States is to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Kaplan exposes the effects of population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region, demonstrating why Americans can no longer afford to ignore this important area of the world.