Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. x, 310 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$29.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5261-5078-3.
In recent years, policy makers in Washington, Tokyo, New Delhi, Paris, Jakarta, Canberra, and other capitals have adopted the term Indo-Pacific to frame the expansive two-ocean region in which they reside or act. Beijing, feeling that the Indo-Pacific formulation is a way for other states to gang up on it, has dismissed the concept as “meaningless” wordplay and an “attention-grabbing idea” that will “dissipate like ocean foam” (4). But is the much-discussed Indo-Pacific mere wordplay? And if not, what implications does this idea have for the future of cooperation and conflict in the region?
In Indo-Pacific Empire, Rory Medcalf takes a deep dive into these conceptual waters and emerges with a thoughtful, persuasive, and highly readable analysis. He argues that the Indo-Pacific, although no more natural or neutral a term than Asia, the Asia-Pacific, or Southeast Asia, is a meaningful and potentially powerful mental map of the region. “In statecraft, mental maps matter,” he writes (5). The Indo-Pacific breaks through the outdated mental boundary that separates the Indian and Pacific Oceans and, as a maritime place, highlights the centrality of critical sea lanes connecting major markets and population areas. Countries that adopt the Indo-Pacific concept, Medcalf contends, are signalling a significant change in their approach to security, economic relations, and diplomacy. The concept is potentially powerful because it can help states deal with the main challenge confronting the region: China’s assertive power. Despite its name, the Indo-Pacific’s focus is not India but rather China. The Indo-Pacific makes it possible to “dilute and absorb” Beijing’s influence over other countries by incorporating China into a larger and more multipolar region (23). One of the book’s main contentions is that the Indo-Pacific’s middle powers, especially Japan, India, Indonesia, and Australia, can sway the balance of power in the region, even if the US presence diminishes (7).
The book contains three main sections that trace the past, present, and future of the Indo-Pacific, with the future section making recommendations for how to cope with China. Medcalf explains that the idea of an Indo-Pacific region has a long history but that it fell out of favour after World War II. The prevailing term during the Cold War was the Asia-Pacific, which emphasized cooperation among ASEAN states and the role of the US in providing security in the region. India’s emergence as a military power and new economic ties between East Asia and the Indian Ocean economies sowed the seeds of the Indo-Pacific’s return in the 1990s, but it was China’s growing assertiveness, starting in the late 2000s, that more than any other factor drove states to adopt the Indo-Pacific concept, with Australia leading the way. Medcalf sees China under Xi Jinping as openly revisionist, quasi-colonialist, and in possession of a grand strategy to dominate the region, if not the world. Beijing may dismiss the Indo-Pacific, but its Maritime Silk Road, part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is a competing project that seeks to define the same region on China’s own coercive terms. This characterization of China will have its critics, but it would have been far more controversial ten or even just five years ago. Not only is the US-China relationship at its lowest ebb in decades, tensions are also running high between China and many other Indo-Pacific powers over numerous potential flashpoints.
To cope with China, Medcalf advises that the other Indo-Pacific powers should pursue neither conflict nor capitulation but rather coexistence—perhaps a “competitive coexistence”—with their large neighbour (247). He rejects as outdated the notion that China can or should be “contained,” and finds the idea of constructing separate “spheres of influence” untenable given China’s seaborne oil dependence and the BRI’s broad footprint (254, 23). Achieving coexistence will require engagement with China, at least conditionally. Engagement can succeed if states, especially middle powers, use the Indo-Pacific concept to build new defensive partnerships and stand up for each other when one of them is threatened or coerced. Solidarity is one of five principles Medcalf proposes for achieving coexistence with China, alongside development, deterrence, diplomacy, and resilience. Some observers cite economic and military trends to argue that long-term coexistence will be untenable because “time is on Beijing’s side,” but Medcalf argues that this ignores the massive combined growth potential of the Indo-Pacific’s middle powers. One practical challenge to achieving coexistence is the region’s weak diplomatic infrastructure—an “acrimony of acronyms”—which Medcalf recommends improving through “minilateralism,” in which small groups of countries form flexible coalitions (18).
Indo-Pacific Empire is, overall, a well-structured and well-argued study rich in interesting ideas. Its main contributions are to explain the Indo-Pacific concept and its significance and to lay out a path forward in the face of Chinese assertiveness. The author’s extensive knowledge of the region’s economic, military, and diplomatic landscapes is put to good use, including in case studies of China, the US, India, Japan, Indonesia, and Australia. Medcalf engages fairly with common critiques of the Indo-Pacific concept, such as that it is vacuous, overemphasizes India, wrongly elevates the maritime over the territorial, and exacerbates international tensions by targeting China. One weakness of this book is that it may be overly optimistic about the ability or willingness of the Indo-Pacific’s diverse powers to form defensive partnerships against China. While the difficulty of the task is acknowledged, the book does not fully explain how this vast region can become more than the sum of its parts. The role of the US in fostering cooperation among Indo-Pacific states may be more critical, and therefore this cooperation more fragile, than it appears. Moreover, China’s neighbours may over time face a growing trade-off between economic relations with China and security relations with the US, although Medcalf argues otherwise. Nevertheless, there are no easy solutions to the region’s challenges and this book’s many smart proposals deserve careful consideration. It is a must-read for policy makers and scholars seeking to understand how the Indo-Pacific countries can work together to preserve the peace and prevent Chinese dominance in the twenty-first century.
Christopher Carothers
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia