Publication Year: 2021
China–US Strategic Competition and the Descent of a Porous Curtain
DOI: 10.1093/cjip/poab008
Abstract: Since the onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic, Sino–US strategic rivalry has dramatically heightened to a pitch where there is a mounting discussion over whether or not China and the United States have embarked on a “new Cold War.” There are three main views in this regard. The first is that China and the United States have indeed entered a new Cold War; the second is that China and the United States are heading for a new Cold War; and the third is that China and the United States will not descend into a new Cold War. Different views reflect different scholarly understandings of the essential properties of the Cold War concept. Fundamentally, the two core features of the Cold War were ideological confrontation and proxy war. Considering that current US–China strategic competition is in the technological rather than ideological domain, and that neither side has instigated any proxy war; however, the phrase “new Cold War” is inappropriate; that of “Porous Curtain” is more apt. The ever-narrowing power gap between China and the United States has undoubtedly prompted the US government’s adoption of a policy of blockade and containment to curb China’s rising power. However, the deep integration of the international system and historical inertia of US–China interaction preclude the US’s complete isolation from China. This has resulted in bilateral relations of a more porous nature. Although the future may not be promising, competition does not necessarily lead to conflict. For this reason, managing the bilateral competitive relationship and striving towards coexistence under competition should be the key task of both countries.
Publication Year: 2021
The US–China Rivalry in the Emerging Bipolar World: Hostility, Alignment, and Power Balance
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2021.1945733
Abstract: This article argues that although the US–China rivalry has not presented with some essential elements of the US–Soviet Cold War, the emerging bipolarity has led to misplaced ideological hostility and repeated failling attempts of building alliance systems. Delicate power balance between the two countries has further complicated the rivalry by giving each side the false conviction to prevail.
Publication Year: 2021
Balancing China: Indo-US relations and convergence of their interests in the Indo-Pacific
DOI: 10.1080/09733159.2021.1952618
Abstract: The Indo-Pacific has emerged as an important region in international politics where the major powers are deeply engaged in reshaping the security architecture. Over the last few years, India and China have drawn their policies by employing competitive strategies that strengthen as well as neutralise their respective power positions in the Indian Ocean Region, particularly in South Asia and the South China Sea. China’s “String of Pearls” strategy and the “Belt and Road Initiative” undermine India’s influence in the Indian Ocean Region, where the changing geo-economic and geostrategic imperatives pose threat to its interests. This mounts pressure on New Delhi to respond by pursuing counter-strategies to secure its interests in the Indo-Pacific region. The article further explains how India and the United States’ interests are converging against an assertive China in the Indo-Pacific and how the two states’ security and maritime collaborations are balancing their common rival by maintaining a favourable status quo in the region.
Publication Year: 2021
Unravelling the Thucydides’ Trap: Inadvertent Escalation or War of Choice?
DOI: 10.1093/cjip/poaa023
Abstract: No other text in the intellectual history of International Relations has become as frequent a victim of confirmation bias and selective presentism as has Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Most recently, misinterpretations of the classical treatise have engendered the popular catchphrase, “the Thucydides’ Trap”, and thinkers and politicians’ resultant drawing of erroneous parallels between the Peloponnesian War and current Sino-US relations. This article seeks to deconstruct the Thucydides’ Trap core thematic of inadvertent escalation, and to outline the logic of hegemonic transition as it is actually expounded by Thucydides. Although Thucydides is the first thinker in the West clearly to identify the significance of structure in interstate affairs, his hegemonic transition theory is complex rather than purely systemic. Thucydides thus dedicates most of his work to assessing the strategic decisions made in fervid political debates, evidencing his perception of polity and politics as key elements that dynamically interact with structural conditions to effectuate strategic choice. Consequently, the Peloponnesian War was not an outcome of inadvertent escalation, but of premeditated strategic choices made by adversaries with clashing policy objectives. Therefore, within the structural constraints, it is on leadership and strategy that Thucydides puts a premium, and hence prioritizes prudence (Sophrosyne/Σωφροσύνη) as the most consequential virtue of statesmanship. Building on the Thucydidean logic of hegemonic transition, we conclude by presenting six strategic corollaries of contemporary Sino-US relations, remaining attentively cognizant at all times of the limitations of historical analogies, and abiding by ex antiquis et novissimis optima.
Publication Year: 2021
The Quad: An emerging multilateral security framework of democracies in the Indo-Pacific region
Abstract: The Indo-Pacific region houses the largest share of global GDP, the world’s busiest trade routes, largest population and most powerful militaries. After having successfully worked side by side in coordinating the 2004 tsunami relief, in 2007 Australia, India, Japan and the US (the Quad, short for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) held meetings with each other to discuss security-related issues, and their navies held a military exercise. Although the grouping ended its activities prematurely in 2008, China’s growing assertiveness in the region prompted it to remain active in bilateral and trilateral cooperation on security issues. Meetings among senior officials resumed in November 2017 in Manila. In November 2020, the Quad navies held a major military exercise. The first Quad summit took place in March 2021. The grouping has emphasised that its goal is to maintain the liberal rules-based international order, which China seeks to undermine through a revisionist challenge of the status quo. Its efforts are not focused on creating institutions or military alliances, but rather, on generating gradual convergence of cooperation on multiple issues, including Covid-19, climate change, critical and emerging technologies, counterterrorism, cybersecurity and disaster recovery. Establishing further cooperation with other like-minded countries in the region and co-existing with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) are among the Quad’s future challenges. The EU is not a traditional security player in the Indo-Pacific; however, as the region is particularly relevant to its trade, it has a strong interest in avoiding disruption of the sea lanes. The Indo-Pacific could be an area of cooperation with the new US administration. France, Germany and the Netherlands have published strategies or guidelines for the Indo-Pacific region, which has stepped up expectations about the forthcoming strategy for the region by the EU as a whole.
Publication Year: 2021
Russia, China, and the Concept of Indo-Pacific
DOI: 10.1177/1879366521999899
Abstract: The newly minted concept of the “Indo-Pacific Region” (IPR) is generally seen as a response by the United States and its allies to China’s growing influence in strategically important areas of the Pacific and Indian oceans. However, the view of IPR as a single (U.S.-led) anti-Beijing front is simplistic and misleading, obscuring a variety of approaches by the region’s states. New Delhi has a strong tradition of non-alignment, whereas Tokyo is more interested in rules that restrict unilateral actions not only by China but also by other regional players, including the United States. Australian business is very cautious about frictions in trade relations with China. Beijing views the growing military activity of the United States off its shores, including in the South China Sea, as a threat to regional stability. According to the authoritative Chinese sources, the Indo-Pacific strategy of Donald Trump is part of broader efforts to prevent China from becoming a dominant regional and global power. At the same time, the development of Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) understanding of the Indo-Pacific region is less of a concern to Beijing, as the South-East Asian countries interested in balancing China and the United States are unlikely to fully join the fight against the “authoritarian threat.” As for Russia, it unequivocally rejects the military/power-based U.S. version of the IPR concept and is more amenable to flexible versions promoted by other players, such as Tokyo’s multilateral vision for the Indo-Pacific Region. In the end, the final response of Russia and China to IPR will thus be determined not only by U.S. actions but also by the behavior of other regional powers.
Publication Year: 2021
A rapid assessment framework for food system shocks: Lessons learned from COVID-19 in the Indo-Pacific region
DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2020.12.011
Abstract: The frequency and severity of shocks to food systems is accelerating globally, exemplified by the current COVID-19 outbreak. In low- and middle-income countries, the impacts have exacerbated existing food system vulnerabilities and poverty. Governments and donors must respond quickly, but few tools are available that identify interventions to build food system resilience, or emerging opportunities for transformation. In this paper we reflect on the application of a systems-based rapid assessment which we applied across 11 Indo-Pacific countries in May-July 2020. Our approach was shaped by three design parameters: the integration of key informants’ perspectives engaged remotely within the countries, applicability to diverse food systems and COVID-19 experiences across the region, and the consideration of food systems as complex systems. For the rapid assessment we adopted an analytical framework proposed by Allen and Prosperi (2016). To include a development lens, we added the analysis of vulnerable groups and their exposure, impacts, recovery potential and resilience, and pro-poor interventions. We concluded that the framework and approach facilitated integration and triangulation of disparate knowledge types and data to identify priority interventions and was sufficiently flexible to be applied across food systems, at both national, sub-national and commodity scales. The step-wise method was simple and enabled structured inquiry and reporting. Although the systems concepts appeared more easily transferrable to key informants in some countries than others, potentially transformational interventions were identified, and also some risks of maladaptation. We present a refined framework that emphasises analysis of political, economic and institutional drivers of exposure and vulnerability, the constraints that they pose for building recovery potential and resilience, and trade-offs amongst winners and losers inherent in proposed interventions.
Publication Year: 2021
Hedging and grand strategy in Southeast Asian foreign policy
DOI: 10.1093/irap/lcab003
Abstract: This article examines recent interest in hedging as a feature of international politics in the Asia Pacific. Focusing on the small states of Southeast Asia, we argue that dominant understandings of hedging are misguided for two reasons. Despite significant advances in the literature, hedging has remained a vague concept rendering it a residual category of foreign policy behavior. Moreover, current accounts of hedging tend to overstate the strategic intentions of ostensible hedgers. This article proposes that a better understanding of Southeast Asia’s foreign policy behavior needs to dissociate hedging from neorealist concepts of international politics. Instead, we locate the concept in the context of classical realism and the diplomatic practice of second-tier states. Exploring Southeast Asia’s engagement with more powerful actors from this perspective reveals the strategic limitations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the dilemma that Southeast Asian states face from a rising China challenging the status quo in the western Pacific.
Publication Year: 2021
India, Russia and the Indo-Pacific: A Search for Congruence
Abstract: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s recent uncharacteristic statement of “India being an object of the Western countries persistent, aggressive and devious policy” to “engage in anti-China games by promoting Indo-Pacific strategies” has reignited the debate on India and Russia’s increasingly divergent outlook on the Indo-Pacific. Lavrov at the 2020 Raisinia Dialogue had expressed confidence of India “being smart enough to understand” the Western “trap” of the Indo-Pacific and “not get into it”.
The tone, tenor and timing of Lavrov’s December 2020 statement insinuates Russia’s apprehensions of a fundamental shift in India’s foreign policy playbook which traditionally has placed a premium on strategic autonomy, with Russia as one of its key pillars.
These developments have the potential to cast a shadow on India-Russia bilateral ties. The pertinent question is whether New Delhi and Moscow can find common ground in the evolving geo-strategic construct.
Publication Year: 2021
Building Resilient Global Supply Chains: The Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific Region
Abstract: Global supply chains have evolved in recent decades with the aim of maximizing efficiency. However, rising labor costs in China and protectionist trends globally, especially in the United States, have forced a shift in approaches to international commerce, and the Covid-19 pandemic and acceleration of strategic rivalry between the United States and China have made the restructuring of supply chains an urgent task. Global companies are now searching for responses to supply chain challenges such as “reshoring,” “near-shoring,” and “China+1,” while the United States and China devise strategies to protect their own industries and improve their international competitiveness. The risk for companies being drawn into U.S.-China strategic competition, including the potential violation of U.S. sanctions, will also increase. For the global business community, a careful strategy to rebuild a resilient supply chain is indispensable, and nowhere is that more important than in the Indo-Pacific, the center of dynamism in the global economy.
Publication Year: 2021
The Future of the Indo-Pacific: Toward Intensified Geopolitical Confrontation or Enhanced Economic Integration?
DOI: 10.1142/S2377740021500093
Abstract: With rising geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific, ASEAN is running the risk of becoming a victim of a hegemonic war against China waged by the United States and its Quad partners, a pessimistic scenario for the future of the Indo-Pacific. However, ASEAN has made it clear that ASEAN centrality should play a leading role in shaping the emerging regional architecture. ASEAN’s unique geopolitical position, the ASEAN Way as a special socialization process, and its extensive engaging networks with major powers can help the regional grouping obtain bargaining power to maintain its centrality. Also, the robust China-ASEAN relations can also facilitate ASEAN to maintain its centrality and thus avoid the trap of great power rivalry in the Indo-Pacific.
Publication Year: 2020
Allied Decoupling in an Era of US–China Strategic Competition
DOI: 10.1093/cjip/poaa014
Abstract: The turn towards an openly competitive relationship between the United States and China today carries acute consequences for U.S. policy toward North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea or ROK). The military and economic requirements of enacting such a policy of competition with China complicates U.S. policy with its ally South Korea, as it exacerbates three core dilemmas that the ROK contends with regarding China. These dilemmas compel choices for a U.S. ally that must increasingly become zero-sum in nature where Seoul must make choices that alienate its patron ally or its neighbor. This article draws out propositions for how changes in U.S.-China relations impacts strategy on both sides of the Korean peninsula. The primary finding is that changes in the independent variable (U.S.-China relations) have opposing impacts on South Korean and North Korean strategic thinking (dependent variable). What might be considered opportunities afforded by U.S.-China relations to South Korea are seen as threats by North Korea. Conversely opportunities created by U.S.-China relations for North Korea register as threats for South Korea.
Publication Year: 2020
China-Vietnamese Relations in the Era of Rising China: Power, Resistance, and Maritime Conflict
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2020.1852737
Abstract: In the twenty-first century, China and Vietnam have experienced heightened conflict over their disputes in the South China Sea. But Chinese policy and the writings of Chinese observers make clear that, for China, this conflict is a struggle between a great power and its smaller neighbor over China’s demand for a sphere of influence on its borders. Since 1949, the People’s Republic of China has consistently maintained that Vietnam reject strategic cooperation with an extra-regional power. For Vietnam, however, China’s looming presence poses an existential threat that drives Vietnamese leaders to seek support from extra-regional powers. Since 2010, China has relied on coercive diplomacy and threats of crisis escalation to constrain Vietnamese reliance on outside powers, especially the United States, to challenge Chinese interests.
Publication Year: 2020
Securing China’s ‘Latent Power’: The Dragon’s Anchorage in Djibouti
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2020.1852734
Abstract: China’s military presence and seaport constructions in the West Pacific and the Indian Ocean have prompted hostile reactions from the US, Japan, Australia, and India. Conversely, its dual-use base in Djibouti has not generated as much controversy hitherto. To decipher this enigma, the article analyzes the base within the context of China’s ‘latent power.’ China cultivates latent power for economic interests in the Middle East and Africa, while downplaying the military dimension of its growing global power. The study of Djibouti supports the hypothesis, which reflects China’s risk-aversion, pragmatism, low-key behavior, and emphasis on the security-economy nexus. With latent power at its core, China’s foreign policy in regions beyond its immediate borders advances its strategy of co-existence while avoiding conflict with its rivals.
Publication Year: 2020
Why Quasi-Alliances Will Persist in the Indo-Pacific? The Fall and Rise of the Quad
DOI: 10.1177/2347797020962620
Abstract: The rise of and increasing assertiveness by China presents a significant structural challenge in the Indo-Pacific region (IPR). In an effort to retain the status quo, a number of states have signed-up to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP). In support of FOIP, operational mechanisms have emerged—most importantly the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). The United States, Japan, Australia and India have come together in this informal format to exchange views on current security challenges and coordinate their strategic approaches. This article analyses both form and function of Quad and argues that both the diplomatic and military arrangements between Quad members are a direct response to ever-increasing Chinese assertiveness. Alongside a detailed empirical analysis of Quad, this paper addresses the question why Quad 2.0 will thrive although previous attempts at security networks failed. Balance of threat theory will illuminate why informal quasi-alliances vis-à-vis China are going to be the structural new normal for the IPR.
