Australia: La Trobe University Press, 2020. 320 pp. US$32.99, paper. ISBN 9781760641573.
Rory Medcalf is viewed as one of the rising Australian scholars in the field of Australian foreign policy and the Indo-Pacific region. This much-anticipated book addresses the geopolitical history and the strategic challenges confronting both present-day Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University since 2015, has written extensively about the evolving regional dynamics and how Australia fits into this new international environment. His scholarly publications and public lectures on the current Indo-Pacific situation are strengthened by his past service as a diplomat in New Delhi, as a secondment to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as a truce monitor after the civil conflict in Bougainville (an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea). Contest for The Indo-Pacific represents over 25 years of work and commitment concerning the Indo-Pacific, and offers a comprehensive and thorough examination of a region that, in Medcalf’s opinion, needs to be viewed and analyzed differently by the West, including the Australian foreign policy establishment. “In statecraft,” Medcalf writes, “mental maps matter … . Maps are about power” (5).
Medcalf reminds readers that Australia shares a common geography or “regionalism” with its neighbours. This commonality influences and shapes international cooperation and institutions, privileging some nations and diminishing others (5). Medcalf firmly believes that for the Indo-Pacific to move forward in the twenty-first century, its past needs to be thoroughly reexamined: “[c]onnections between the Indian and Pacific Oceans run deep” (34). Medcalf also informs his readers that ”the Indo-Pacific is an established term in disciplines ranging from marine biology to climatology, archaeology to zooarchaeology to biological anthropology” (34). In chapter 2, “A Submerged History of Asia,” he strongly asserts that the history of the two-ocean region needs to be revisited—”pivoting the map,” as he puts it. A new perspective, if not a fundamental retelling of the region’s history, is in order (31–34).
Medcalf’s excellent work has two primary objectives. First, he wants a complete overhaul of the Indo-Pacific’s historical understanding of its “past, present and future” (3). Without this reckoning, the region will find it almost impossible to work together with any sense of purpose or trust, a potential scenario that is totally unacceptable to all the nations within the Indo-Pacific matrix. Second, Medcalf addresses the overriding issue throughout the two-ocean dominion: the rise of China (3). The Chinese have not been a significant power in the region for almost two centuries. Hence, China’s startling ascendence has stunned the region’s onlookers, as well as a complacent West. Within a mere four decades, it has solidified its position as the second most powerful country in the world. Of course, Australia, a nation of only 25 million people, has been unnerved by this historic development, with China being Australia’s number-one trading partner. Geopolitically, Australians find themselves walking a very fine line in the Indo-Pacific region.
In 2020, China is one of five nuclear powers in the Indo-Pacific region (the US, India, North Korea, and Pakistan being the others). Medcalf is well versed on this critically important issue; over the past 25 years, he has contributed to three major reports on nuclear arms control: the 1996 Canberra Commission, the 1999 Tokyo Forum, and the 2009 International Commission on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. His book makes irrefutably clear that regional cooperation, not confrontation, is the key to future peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. In December 2005, he strongly endorsed the creation of the East Asia Summit (EAS). Today, its membership has grown to 18 nations, and the organization has steadily surpassed all other regional organizations in its scope and influence. It has become a critical forum for emerging issues such as climate change, trade, and energy, and represents one of the region’s key players in maintaining peace and stability.
With the rise of China and India in the twenty-first century, Medcalf argues, the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific has been significantly altered. He still views America as the most powerful nation in the region, but the territory’s power equation has unequivocally been reconfigured. And, as expected, second-tier players such as Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan have made appropriate and self-interested adjustments over the past two decades.
In the book’s last chapter, “Navigating Mistrust,” Medcalf brings all the key themes of this informative and well-researched book together: geography, terminology, and history. In this chapter, he focuses on Australia’s complex, difficult, and often contradictory strategic thinking with concern to the new realities enveloping the Indo-Pacific.
Medcalf clearly wants Australia to maintain its vital relations with America, but he does not live in a fantasy world. China will remain Australia’s most important trading partner into the foreseeable future. He also acknowledges that China will indeed remain a major power in the region, and globally, for decades to come. He concludes his worthy book with a hopeful note that common interests will prevail: “The history of geopolitics provides its own lessons. Pride, blowback and rebalancing seem to accompany every empire that tries to rule the Indo-Pacific. This super-region is too vast and complex for any country to succeed in protecting its interests alone. There will be a premium on partnerships” (268). Let’s hope he is right.
Randall Doyle
Mid-Michigan Community College, Mount Pleasant