East Asia https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-018-9288-3
Institutionalizing the Indo-Pacific: the Challenges of Regional Cooperation Mark Beeson 1
Received: 2 April 2018 / Accepted: 9 April 2018 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract One of the key issues that will determine the success or otherwise of the putative ‘Indo-Pacific region’ is how or whether it is successfully institutionalized. This paper firstly provides an assessment of the Indo-Pacific’s prospects by drawing on some of the more influential strands of theoretical literature in this area and by considering the specific historical experience of its institutional precursors in the more expansively conceived Asia-Pacific region. Although I am skeptical about the IndoPacific’s prospects, the following discussion provides a general framework for assessing institutional efficacy. The second objective of this essay is to introduce the other papers in this collection. Significantly, some of the other contributors are more optimistic about the Indo-Pacific. Together, these papers highlight the sometimes competing and contradictory forces of what could still be a very significant initiative in a region in which effective institutions are arguably in short supply. Keywords Indo-Pacific . Institutions . Regionalism . ASEAN . APEC . ARF
Introduction It is not every day that we get to see a region being born, or in the Indo-Pacific’s case, perhaps, reborn (see Doyle, this collection). And yet, that is precisely what we appear to be witnessing as a consequence of the growing interest in, and even importance of, the ‘Indo-Pacific’ as a focus of scholarly and policy-making attention. At the outset, however, it needs to be recognised that regions are ultimately socially constructed and dependent on processes of recognition, identification and membership that make their exact contours contests and potentially fluid. True, some regions are inherently more likely than others, but they require embedding in social and institutional reality if
* Mark Beeson
[email protected]
1
University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
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they are ever to amount to anything more than ‘visionary’ statements, no matter how well intentioned, timely or even functionally necessary such ideas may seem. In this context, processes of regionalism, or the intentional efforts of state-based policymakers to create new cross-border relationships, rationales and responsibilities, are potentially important and illustrative of different dynamics at work in the international system. This is what makes the Indo-Pacific such an interesting case study, of course. Only a few years ago, if the Indo-Pacific was invoked at all, it was as a fairly obscure geographical signifier, primarily of interest to marine biologists. Recently, though, the Indo-Pacific idea is regularly deployed by Australian and Japanese policymakers in particular. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has long championed the idea as part of his country’s response to the rise of China. More recently, Australian policymakers have followed suit, seeing it as expressing something important about a region in which they feel Australia is—or ought to be—central [13, 20]. Australia is the principal focus of what follows as they have recently invested the most effort in promoting the idea and may be literally and metaphorically best place to benefit from what Andrew Phillips describes as a ‘a bold but ultimately flawed regional template for Australian foreign and defence policymakers’ [61: 5). The fact that many of Australia’s policymakers, strategic thinkers and political leaders are consciously invoking the Indo-Pacific in preference to the formerly ubiquitous ‘Asia-Pacific region’ is not merely a question of semantics, however. On the contrary, the conceptual primacy of the Indo-Pacific marks a potentially important turning point in the way Australia’s political elites are quite literally trying to position themselves and their neighbours in regional affairs [53]. The success of this venture will depend not simply on the frequency with which Australian policymakers’ counterparts begin to use the Indo-Pacific idea to describe their own regional positions. Crucially, the long-term significance of the Indo-Pacific will, I shall argue in what follows, be determined largely by the manner in which the concept is (or is not) institutionalised. The reason that the European Union (EU) is so frequently taken as the benchmark for effective regional integration and cooperation is that it has an imposing institutional footprint and impact: whatever one may think of the EU as an intergovernmental organisation, there is little doubt that is has exerted a profound impact on the way politics, economics and strategic relations are conducted in Western Europe. Indeed, the very identity of Europe and—to a lesser and contested extent—its people has been shaped by the existence of the EU. For better or worse, the EU is synonymous with and defines the region of which it is still a pivotal part [27, 46, 51]. The question implicitly posed by the rise of the Indo-Pacific is whether a similar sort of process could happen at the other end of the world, where the potential basis for similar sorts of regional processes seems much less certain, and where possible obstacles loom large. In short, could the Indo-Pacific idea ever have the same sort of importance in the conduct of regional affairs and shaping regional identity that the EU has in Europe? In the short run, at least, I shall argue that the answer to this question is unambiguously ‘no’. In the longer term, it is important to acknowledge that it is early days in a still unfolding process that has recently been endorsed by the USA and India, too [16, 42]. While this conclusion may come as little surprise to observers of the region—however it is defined—it is worth spelling out why. Some of the constraining empirics are well known, and these are briefly itemised in the second part of the paper. Before this, however, I consider what the theoretical literature can tell us about regions and their rationales. Drawing on institutional theory, I suggest that there are potentially
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powerful incentives for states to develop effective institutions with which to address a range of key collective action problems. Whether this will happen is quite another question, and one with potentially irreconcilable geopolitical elements. Institutions in Theory Institutions matter. So far, so uncontroversial, perhaps, but it is still important to explain the attractions of, and the obstacles facing, the Indo-Pacific initiative, if it is ever to become something more than an idea or simply a way to describe a geographical region. One of the key distinctions to make at the outset, therefore, is between institutions as broadly conceived ‘social facts’, and institutions as organizations with a distinct identity, personnel and purpose. Hodgson [38, p. 18] suggests that institutions are ‘systems of established and embedded social rules that structure social interactions’, while organisations are ‘special institutions that involve (a) criteria to establish their boundaries and to distinguish their members from nonmembers, (b) principles of sovereignty concerning who is in charge, and (c) chains of command delineating responsibilities within the organization’. Diplomacy generally and the so-called ‘ASEAN Way’ in particular are good examples of the former, while Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a useful, if not very effective example of the latter [6, 7]. Indeed, as I shall explain later, APEC provides an illuminating illustration of the limits facing specific organisations as they try to turn ideas into practice, while ASEAN-style diplomacy demonstrates that institutions may have contradictory and surprising impacts. At a more general level, however, institutions have long been recognised as the key to successful economic development [34, 64]. In the East Asian part of the Asia-Pacific region, a very distinctive array of institutions was a critical component of its remarkable developmental process, in which powerful states played a prominent role [35]. Institutions have the capacity to guide and shape behaviour through the logics of appropriateness and consequences [50]: actors learn to behave in particular ways because they feel compelled to by normative or regulatory constraints and incentives. Institutions generally and organisations in particular have the potential to play a key role in transmitting norms and rules that may influence state behaviour and—theoretically, at least—encourage a process of convergence on international best practice through policy learning and transfer [23, 29]. In reality, things are rather more complex and there is an array of obstacles and interests that impart a degree of path dependency to the course of institutional development, which helps to account for dramatic differences in institutional efficiency and content [59]. It is also evident that an apparently ubiquitous institution such as ‘the state’ can assume different forms and be put to a variety of purposes at different points in time and space [63]. The record of formal organisational impact in East Asia is very different to the EU’s and it is important to recognise at the outset just how varied regions can be in this regard [41]. Despite such very different outcomes, however, there are some general theoretical and practical points that help to explain the widely noted interest in regional cooperation, recent crises in Europe notwithstanding. Indeed, for all the attention that is given to ‘globalisation’ in the contemporary era, it is important to recognise the key role that has been played by institutions in facilitating such processes, especially at the regional level [9]. It is no coincidence that many of the transnational processes that we
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associate with globalisation—especially the integration of economic activity across national borders—have gone further and been more effective in the EU where a powerful array of intergovernmental and non-state organisations have played a central role in driving and enabling the greater cooperation between contingent states [7, 57]. In this context, international organisations (IOs) are vital because they ‘allow for the centralization of collective activities through a concrete and stable organizational structure and a supportive administrative apparatus’. [1, p. 4]. Many features of the contemporary international order subsumed under the rubric of globalisation would simply not be possible without the sort or regulative, even rule-making role, played by IOs acting in concert or even instead of individual states. In this context, it is striking just how many IOs there actually are and how dependent international commerce in particular has become on them [21]. While many of these actors are global in their reach and impact, many are regional and it is often their actions that give regions their continuing salience and importance—the current problems afflicting the EU notwithstanding. On the contrary, Britain’s misguided-looking decision to leave the EU may provide a salutary reminder of the continuing benefits that the EU provides and the very real difficulties of existing without its resented bureaucratic structures and agreements. It may be argued that Brexit is emblematic of the failure of regional institutions to ‘socialise’ members into common ways of thinking, acting and even developing common identities [76]. As far as much of the general population of the EU states is concerned, there is plainly something in that idea [71]. Even at the elite level, where policymakers come into frequent contact and share a professional identity, there are clear limits to the development of collective responses to general problems, especially where they are urgent and with potentially major domestic political consequences. The ongoing migration crisis in Europe is the quintessential example of this possibility and a sobering reminder of the potential ‘national interests’ have in undermining the resolution of collective action problems. Nevertheless, the EU has been especially effective in developing a common set of institutional practices and norms that have been instrumental in socialising member states and their representatives into cooperative behaviors [25]. It is testimony to the effectiveness and practical importance of such processes that even the development of a series of—arguably avoidable—economic crises has not undermined the European project. On the contrary, some argue that what is needed is ‘more Europe’ rather than less, and the consolidation of a federal European political structure with even greater powers over its members and their economic policies in particular [18]. While there are many reasons for wondering whether such ambitions can ever be realised, they highlight the potential impact of regional processes in some parts of the world. Although it is regarded as rather ‘Eurocentric’ to compare other regions to the EU, the point of the preceding discussion is to emphasise what successful institutionalisation looks like, and to stress how even the most robust-looking institutions can be undermined by unforeseen problems and an inability to act collectively and/or effectively in the face of crises. The less developed sense of collective identity, the absence of an established track record of effective cooperation and a significantly less developed capacity for collective action make the challenge of region-building potentially all the greater in Asia. The prospects for ‘strategic partnerships’ to address specific security challenges [32], such as the rise of China, are rather brighter, however, and this may tell us something important about the prospects, nature of and rationale for the Indo-Pacific.
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Structural Transformations One of the key factors that will determine the continuing effectiveness of the EU and comparative institutions and organisations elsewhere is the distribution of power within and between regional and global actors. Power is one of those essentially contested concepts that tend to generate more heat than light in academic debates, but it is necessary to say something about it if we are to explain why some regions have higher degrees of institutionalisation, effectiveness and even identity than others. Barnett and Duvall’s [5] influential discussion of power in the contemporary international system makes an instructive distinction between different forms of compulsory, institutional, structural and productive power. They pay particular attention to the formal and informal institutional milieu within which power operates and suggest that productive power ‘is the constitution of all social powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad general social scope…to attend to the analysis of productive power is to focus on how diffuse and contingent social processes produce particular kinds of subjects, fix meanings and categories, and create what is taken for granted and the ordinary of world politics’ [5, pp. 55 and 57]. A preoccupation with the social construction of identity in particular and governance more generally has become a central part of contemporary international relations theory and one that arguably mirrors, and has been driven by, changes in the international system itself [65, 66, 73]. In the wake of the Cold War’s ending and the apparent diminution of a ‘structurally’ based—even determined—bipolar geopolitical competition between the superpowers, there has been a growing interest in the social basis of international relations [67]. While a focus on norms and social practices in the seemingly more fluid ideational environment of the 1990s may have been understandable and appropriate, it is important not to lose sight of the continuing importance of the structural preconditions within which international relations unfold, especially at the regional level [12]. The nature of ‘structures’ is notoriously contentious, but for the purposes of this discussion it refers to those institutionally embedded, persistent and influential patterns of behaviour that shape contingent social reality. As Roy Bhaskar [17: 4), put it, ‘society is the ensemble of positioned practices and networked interrelationships which individuals never create but in their practical activity always presuppose, and in so doing everywhere reproduce or transform.’ Some of the most important manifestations of structures can be found at the level of ‘international society’, or the socially constructed interstate system. Significantly, however, as even leading constructivists have come to acknowledge, the distribution of power in the international system has long-term structural dynamics and consequences, most vividly expressed in the rise and fall of great powers [72]. This is especially true in the putative Indo-Pacific region where structural forces and the USA in particular have played a pivotal role, and which have arguably been the principal drivers of, or obstacles to, the limited cooperation and institution building that there has actually been. That geopolitical or structural forces should continue to be important influences on the course of regional development should come as no surprise. After all, such dynamics were a central component of the European experience after the Second World War [55]. American support for European reconstruction and integration was driven primarily by the perceived need to curb Soviet expansionism, rather than any
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sense of fraternal benevolence [45]. Likewise, America’s very different hegemonic role in East Asia had the effect of consolidating geopolitical fissures and made any sort of region-wide cooperation that included the likes of China impossible [36]. Equally significantly, the very distinctive and different forms of state-led capitalism that developed throughout much of East Asia also flourished within the surprisingly supportive and accommodating framework of the Cold War [69]. In other words, structural forces and constraints can play a critical role in determining the sort of regionalism that develops and the degree to which its institutionalised expressions actually matter. In Europe, the pressures of the Cold War resulted in an historically unparalleled form of sovereignty pooling: European states came to believe that ever closer forms of cooperation and coordination—even to the extent of giving up significant amounts of domestic autonomy—were the best ways of facilitating economic development and responding to strategic threats [56]. In East Asia, by contrast, delegation, or handing responsibility for action and/or policy implementation to independent bodies, has been far more common; East Asian states have been far less willing to cede sovereignty, despite the fact that this makes resolving collective action problems potentially far more difficult [48]. There has been a similar nervousness about developing powerful and/or effective secretariats for intergovernmental organisations, and an equally ambivalent attitude to the sort of legally binding agreements that are frequently preferred by Western or Anglo-American states. The consequence has been that extant organisations in the Asia-Pacific or the putative Indo-Pacific region have been far more reliant on normative suasion when trying to encourage cooperation. The results have frequently been highly disappointing. Institutionalising Regions Some regions are intuitively more likely and easier to bring into being than others. The fact that the members of the EU were part of a geographical area with long-standing interconnections—albeit bloody and traumatic at times—provided some sort of ‘natural’ basis for subsequent region building. Similar cultural traditions and at least some experience with democratic rule and or broadly similar historical traditions also helped. Simple contiguity and a degree of cultural isomorphism are not enough, however. The experience of Latin America serves as a reminder that successful and meaningful institutional and organisational takes more than just occupying the same part of the world, even one as distinctive as the Southern cone [49]. The key variable, therefore, is the degree of institutionalisation that occurs at the regional level. In this regard, the development of specific organisations that reflect and drive this process in a dialectical manner is crucial. The historical record in the part of the world in which the putative Indo-Pacific is envisaged suggests that regional consolidation is likely to be difficult.
Institutional and Regional Precursors Much has been written about the institutions and organisations of the broadly conceived Asia-Pacific region, and there is no intention of trying to add anything new to that literature here (see [26, 28, 47]). It is, however, worth making a few comparative
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points about the evolution of various regional and institutional initiatives. The first point that the history of the Asia-Pacific, East Asia or even Southeast Asia demonstrates is just how contingent and occasionally contested various regional definitions actually are. Simply put, there is no universal agreement on any of the various regional definitions and groupings, although some are intuitively more likely than others. Indeed, it is no coincidence that ‘Southeast Asia’ is the most enduring of the various regional identities in the Indo-Pacific area. It is important to remember, however— despite Southeast Asia’s current prominence and its leadership ambitions—ASEAN’s conceptual origins were external, accidental and a function of the actions of Britain’s strategic policy during World War 2 [31]. Perhaps Southeast Asia would have emerged in due course with or without impact of great power dynamics, but it has been a striking feature of regional development everywhere—including Europe, of course. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific region continues this well-worn path to region-hood, as we shall see. The key comparative point to make about some of the Indo-Pacific’s institutional and organisational precursors is that they have not been very effective [8]. It is worth briefly spelling out why, as precisely the same sorts of obstacles and shortcomings are all too likely to undermine the Indo-Pacific idea as well. ASEAN is arguably the most significant institution in the broadly conceived region, at least when judged from the perspective of durability. There is no doubt that ASEAN has exerted an influence over its members and the region of which it is a part, [70] but this has not necessarily been an unambiguously good thing as far as effective coordination, cooperation or leadership has been concerned. On the contrary, despite the ASEAN grouping’s claims to being in the regional ‘driving seat’ as far as regional leadership is concerned, the organisation’s capacity to influence its own member’s behaviour—let alone that of extra regional great powers—is rather limited [44]. The principal cause of this limited impact has been ASEAN’s distinctive diplomatic style— the celebrated ASEAN Way of consensus, voluntarism and face-saving [2]. There is a large and inconclusive literature that seeks to analyse and explain the impact of ASEAN’s diplomacy, which is starkly divided between those who emphasise the organisation’s potential to act as a force for socialisation and norm entrepreneurship [3, 65], and those who are much more sceptical about its impact and capacity to bring about consequential change [10, 43]. This debate is—or should be—of interest to scholars of comparative politics and regionalism everywhere as it highlights the different ways regional organisations operate and the factors that may enhance or limit their impact. In ASEAN’s case, it is clear that the absence of an effective, powerful EUstyle secretariat has been a distinctive feature of its modus operandi, but not necessarily a fatal flaw as far as the exertion of influence is concerned. The key questions are how much influence, over whom and in what circumstances? While the debate in ASEAN’s case is unresolved, there is no doubt that the sheer presence of the organisation for so many years in the thinking and the actual diplomatic practices of its members must have had some influence, even if it remains difficult to say quite how much. What is clearer, however, is that ASEAN has—for better or worse—exercised a distinct and direct influence over other regional initiatives that have followed in its wake. Organisations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asia Summit, to name only some of the more prominent recent regional developments, have all had to subscribe to some version of the ASEAN Way of diplomacy if they wanted to gain the
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support and participation of the ASEAN states. The simple reality is that the ASEAN states in particular, and the other countries of East Asia more generally, jealously guard their sovereignty and are highly sensitive to any perceived infringements of domestic political space [44]. The consequence has been that other organisations have been similarly hamstrung when it comes to actually encouraging, much less compelling, à la the EU, their members to behave in ways that they might not choose to do, all other things being equal. The ARF and APEC are particularly telling examples of the very real limits of regional organisations. Despite the fact that the ARF ought to be perfectly placed to address some of East Asia’s/the Asia-Pacific’s pressing security problems, the reality has been that it has had barely any impact on critical problems such as the future of Taiwan, the unresolved tensions on the Korean peninsula or China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The simple reality is that all of these issues are simply too difficult and fraught with sensitivities about national sovereignty and independence for the ARF to even contemplate discussing them, much less doing anything definitive about them. The result is that little of consequence occurs under ARF auspices, other than endless meeting and ‘confidence building’ exercises [30]. Much of the same could be said of APEC in the economic sphere, where we might intuitively expect that progress ought to be easier. After all, APEC’s original raison d’être was to promote what seemed to be the self-evident benefits of trade liberalisation in a region that was anything but economically liberal. It is, however, testimony to the rather limited impact of ‘epistemic communities’ in contentious issue areas that APEC has had very limited success in pushing its trade liberation agenda. In the face of powerful vested interests with little to gain and much to lose from potentially painful domestic reforms, it has proven very difficult for APEC to promote its vision and reform agenda. Adding to the problem has been APEC’s vast membership and arbitrary boundaries, which include countries with vastly different political traditions, state capacities, economic structures and even strategic circumstances; geopolitics has been an important spur and obstacle for regional cooperation so it is no surprise that this continues to matter [19, 62]. The general comparative points to make about institutional and organisational development in the broadly conceived Asia-Pacific region, therefore, are that firstly, the contours of the region in question have been contested and this has made any sort of subsequent cooperation inherently more difficult. It is not clear what unites the highly disparate membership of APEC or any of the other Asia-Pacific-based organisations, or what their common goals might be. Not only has it often been unclear which countries should be included in any prospective organisation, but their underlying rationales have not always been clear, either This is especially clear in the case of more encompassing organisations such as APEC and the EAS, but it has also proved problematic in more geographically ‘East Asian’ initiatives such as the doomed caucus within the APEC grouping, which was proposed by Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. Yet, even where the significance and potential of such groupings were unclear, they have the potential to become the focus of great power rivalry and contestation: the USA persuaded its principal Asian ally, Japan, not to participate in Mahathir’s initiative as it was judged to be inimical to America’s interests [40]. It is instructive and illuminating that such tensions and rivalries have not disappeared with the passage of time. Regionally based organisational initiatives continue to be a
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focus of great power rivalry, as the recent furore over China’s Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) proposal demonstrates [75]. What might have been seen as an entirely benign way of providing much-needed investment capital across the infrastructure-poor Asian region became the focus of diplomatic manoeuvring between China and the USA. In a revealing demonstration of the shifting balance of influence, if not power, in the Asia-Pacific, China persuaded a number of key American allies, such as Australia and Britain, to join the AIIB despite American pleas for them not to do so [14]. The AIIB saga also demonstrates the growing importance of China’s geoeconomic influence and the scale of its regional ambitions [54, 58]. In sum, the very idea of regional identity and development and the organisations that seek to represent or give expression to regional initiatives and visions remain fluid and subject to political contestation. The rise of China and the possible diminution of American power—for many strategic analysts the indispensable foundation of Asian stability [22]—adds a further layer of complexity to regional development, however the region is defined, and whatever purposes such initiatives are expected to fulfill. It is against this rather demanding array of forces and expectations that the Indo-Pacific has emerged. When seen in this context, the prospects for the Indo-Pacific as much more than a strategic signifier of limited applicability do not look good. Lessons for the Indo-Pacific Why has the idea of the Indo-Pacific assumed such prominence in Australia, and to a lesser extent Japan, India and the USA? For Australia and the USA in particular, there is little doubt that the principal driving force behind this shift in regional perspective has been the rise of China. As one of Australia’s foremost Indo-Pacific boosters puts it, ‘it is the expansion of China’s interests, diplomacy and strategic reach into the Indian Ocean that most of all defines the Indo-Pacific’ [53, p. 473]. For some American analysts, such as Michael Auslin, China’s rise is a potentially destabilising threat to American preeminence and one that must be countered within a more broadly conceived sense of region: ‘regional strategy must be based on U.S. forces enhancing their forward presence and power projection capabilities in the Indo-Pacific’ [4: p. 19]. In some ways, there is nothing new about such ideas. The idea that American hegemony is threatened by the profound material transformation that has occurred in East Asia generally and in China in particular is a firmly established part of realist thinking and strategic policy in the USA [33, 52]. What is new is the growing interest in the IndoPacific as a potential focus for the strategic and diplomatic response to the China challenge. From an Australian perspective, the Indo-Pacific idea makes a good deal of sense. After all, Australia is literally and metaphorically at the centre of the putative region. It is no coincidence either that a succession of Australian foreign and defense ministers have come from Perth,1 which is even more central to the Indo-Pacific, given its relative proximity to both China and India, to say nothing of Western Australia’s reliance on China as a pivotal economic partner [11]. And yet, it is also important to recognise that the overwhelmingly strategic impulse behind the Indo-Pacific idea does 1
Kim Beazley (defense minister), Stephen Smith (defense and foreign minister), Julie Bishop (current foreign minister)
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little to solve the most implacable public policy question facing Australian policymakers in the twenty-first century: is it possible to reconcile Australia’s economic reliance on China and its strategic dependence on the USA, especially given the growing rivalry between the two great powers themselves? In this regard, the Australian case highlights some more general dilemmas facing other regional powers, even if Australia’s position is especially acute given the political capital it is currently investing in the Indo-Pacific idea. One of the main lessons for Australian policymakers in particular is that simply having what seems to be the right idea at the right time is no guarantee of success. Many of the prominent economists who supported APEC, for example, also thought that the merits of their trade liberalisation arguments were self-evident; they were apparently unprepared for the possibility that this view might not have been shared throughout the region—however it was defined. It might be supposed that the geopolitical logic underpinning the IndoPacific—every country other than China has an interest in supporting the extant, American-centric order—would prove sufficiently compelling to encourage strategic cooperation. India is the pivotal swing state in this regard, yet it is far from clear that it will obligingly fall into line with the plans and preferences of the USA, much less Australia. As Hugh White [74] points out, ‘Delhi has immense stakes of its own in good relations with China. It will not sacrifice them simply to serve Washington’s objective of preserving the old US-led status quo in East Asia.’ Even more problematically for supporters of the existing order, the USA itself may be unwilling or unable to actually establish the sort of strategic presence in the Indian Ocean that the Indo-Pacific idea would seem to necessitate. On the one hand, Donald Trump has adopted a famously ‘transactional’ approach to friend and foe alike at times, and it is far from clear whether the current American administration will actually want to expand its existing commitments [68]. On the other hand, a number of strategic commentators have suggested that the USA no longer has the ability or the wherewithal to actually play the same sort of ‘off-shore balancing’ role in the Indian Ocean that it has in the Pacific [39]. As Bisley and Phillips [20] point out, the concept of the IndoPacific region potentially invites the dangerous delusion that an Indo-Pacific reframing of America’s grand strategy in Asia would merely amount to a geographical extension of its current posture, rather than a fundamental change in its strategic orientation. Washington’s embrace of an Indo-Pacific grand strategy would constitute a profound reorientation of America’s regional posture, equivalent in scale to the country’s emergence as East Asia’s hegemonic security guarantor after 1945 [20, pp. 101–102]. Whatever one may think about the historical role and importance of the US-led alliance system that has dominated the Asia-Pacific region, it has no equivalent in the Indian Ocean. Likewise, it is far from certain that India itself has any desire to play the role as a trusty US ally of the sort that Japan and Australia have obligingly performed for more than half a century [60]. The point to emphasise in this context is that the alliance system gave an element of strategic balance and predictability to an otherwise somewhat unlikely regional context: to some extent, the USA’s hub and spoke strategic architecture generally and the ANZUS alliance in particular help to institutionalise and bring into being an idea of the region that could be the basis for actual strategic practice. Indeed, Cha [24, p. 6] argues that as a consequence of the hub and spoke alliance system, the USA ‘exercised near-total control over the foreign and domestic affairs of its allies, and it created an asymmetry of power that rendered inconceivable
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counterbalancing by these smaller countries, on their own or in concert with others’. This system may not have been especially fair or normatively attractive, but it was stable and—from an American point of view, at least—highly effective. Although there have been some efforts to institutionalise strategic ties in the IndoPacific, at this stage, they are noteworthy primarily for their tentative nature and nothing as robust as their Asia-Pacific counterparts. Perhaps the most significant initiatives in this context are the series of bilateral and trilateral strategic relationships among the so-called Quadrilateral states (the USA, Australia, Japan and India) (see Lee-Brown, this issue). For some observers, these ‘strategic partnerships’ are distinctive and important parts of the broadly conceived Asian region’s evolving security architecture. Envall and Hall [32, p. 88], for example, argue that ‘strategic partnerships are best understood as a new “security practice” … that they signal the emergence of new forms of “security governance” in Asia’. As with a number of other influential ways of conceptualising regional security relations, the idea that strategic partnerships might play a significant part in determining security outcomes in regional security relationships is intuitively appealing, but as with a number of other conceptual innovations such as ‘security communities’ and the idea of security governance itself [2], the reality can often be somewhat less impressive. For all the discussion of a Southeast Asian security community—much less and East Asian version—for example, the impact of norms, culture and identity formation is hard to discern. Given the inability of the ASEAN states to achieve a common position on the implications of China’s rise and its concomitant territorial claims, the impact of common views would seem to be negligible when faced with real material challenges—even within the limited confines of the ASEAN grouping [10]. The ability of ‘Asian’ norms to influence or constrain the behaviour of China in particular looks even more limited at this stage—an especially noteworthy possibility given China’s significance in the putative Indo-Pacific region. If it has proved difficult for the Asia-Pacific’s/Southeast Asia’s most enduring and supposedly influential organisation to exert any sort of normative influence or develop a collective position in relation to China’s territorial claims—which is arguably the most important challenge since ASEAN’s inception—how much more difficult will it be to develop an Indo-Pacific perspective where none has ever existed before? The auguries are not encouraging. The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) is one of the few real efforts to institutionalise the Indo-Pacific. In addition to key states such as India, Indonesia and Australia, IORA contains a number of African and Middle Eastern states such as South Africa and even Iran. China is conspicuous by its absence. IORA Summits pass largely unremarked, however, and it has achieved little of note despite its 20-year history [37]. As with so many regional initiatives, it is not clear what its purpose is or what the various states have in common or hope to achieve. In this regard, at least, it is a fitting symbol for the overall idea of the Indo-Pacific as an effective entity.
Concluding Remarks Is the Indo-Pacific an idea whose time has come? To judge by the enthusiasm of Australia’s policy-making elites and commentariat, one might be forgiven for thinking so. To judge by actual material differences in the practices of states, on the other hand,
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the evidence is rather less compelling. True, given the time frames in which regional initiatives unfold and the difficulty of building effective collective capacities, it may be unfair to rush to judgment about such a novel idea. However, while there has been no shortage of reports, conferences and declarations of intent, but ASEAN is a sobering reminder that no matter how soaring the rhetoric or frequent the meetings, without an effective organisation with a real ability to influence the behaviour of its members, little of significance is likely to be achieved. Indeed, that is, perhaps, the principal difference between the EU and similar sorts of initiatives elsewhere: in the absence of an effective—even overbearing—institutional/organisational presence little of consequence is likely to happen. There was little apparent appetite for such an organisation in East Asia or the Asia-Pacific even before the EU’s current problems; there is next to none now [15]. Does this mean that the Indo-Pacific idea will disappear? Almost certainly not. Again, the lesson of earlier initiatives is that they are hard to discourage, much less kill off, as the much invoked but seldom realised Asia-Pacific idea reminds us. Perhaps the most promising—if that is quite the way to describe it—avenue of development for the Indo-Pacific idea is as a strategic vehicle that can be used to rally countries concerned about the implications of China’s rise. It hardly needs to be said that the People’s Republic of China is unlikely to share this enthusiasm. It is also unlikely to definitively deal with the ‘problem’ of China or make it any easier to resolve the potentially incompatible geopolitical and geoeconomic that confront many of the Indo-Pacific’s/ Asia-Pacific’s states. This ought to have given pause even in the best of circumstances. But, when the region’s smaller states can be certain of how their supposed strategic backstop is likely to behave under the increasingly erratic and unpredictable leadership of Donald Trump, overenthusiasm about an uncertain and untested idea may prove to be misguided wishful thinking, in my view, at least. It is important to re-emphasise that this is only one view, and the rest of the papers in this collection offer a variety of interpretations and explanations of what the Indo-Pacific idea might mean in theory and practice.
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