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Begin New Search Topic International Affairs Author Thomas S. Wilkins

1. Does Australia have an “Indo Pacific strategy”?

Author:
Thomas S. Wilkins
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Japan Institute Of International Affairs (JIIA)
Abstract:
The US Department of Defense (DOD) released its longawaited Indo Pacific Strategy Report (IPSR) in tandem with the IISS-Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore on 1 June 2019. This IPSR appears to subsume or extend the earlier Free and Open Indo Pacific (FOIP) strategy (sometimes referred to now as a “vision”) into a more comprehensive regional Indo Pacific Strategy (IPS), that is anchored in the earlier 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) documents. Australia has yet to produce an analogous document dedicated to profiling its own “Indo Pacific Strategy”, but with the US iteration in view, it is possible to construct an plausible image of such a strategy in the Australian case by drawing upon various pertinent materials from a range of government sources. Indeed, the notion of an overarching IPs is gradually taking shape in Australian strategic thinking, as testified to by a variety of official documents, including large portions of the 2016 Defence White Paper, and especially 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, alongside other policy statements and initiatives, framed in the context of analysis and debate undertaken by nationally-based strategic commentators. A small case “s” in “Indo Pacific strategy” is specifically employed in this paper to distinguish the author’s conception from any formally mandated government “Strategy”.
Topic:
Defense Policy, International Affairs, and Grand Strategy
Political Geography:
Australia, Australia/Pacific, and Indo-Pacific

2. The Role for Middle Powers in the Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Looking at Opportunities for Canada and Australia

Author:
John Berkshire Miller and Thomas S. Wilkins
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Japan Institute Of International Affairs (JIIA)
Abstract:
The Indo-Pacific, as a geographic concept that connects the vast oceans of Pacific and the Indian along with the states in between, is not a new idea. Indeed, the idea of a broader geographic region – rather than more traditional subsets such as East Asia, South Asia, or the more expansive Asia-Pacific – has been used for more than a decade by scholars and practitioners in the region. An Indian naval captain began using the concept in geopolitical terms more than a decade ago, but the terminology has not been limited to scholars in Delhi. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, back during his first stint as Prime Minister in 2007, spoke to India’s parliament about his country’s vision for Indo-Pacific noting a “confluence of the two seas” and pressed for a need to transcend beyond traditional frameworks that often separated or minimized the geopolitical connections between South Asian and the Indian Ocean region with that of East Asia and the Pacific.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, International Affairs, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Canada, Australia, Asia-Pacific, and Indo-Pacific