The Indo-Pacific narrative for a new war

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, on coming to power this September, has not wasted any time in asserting his approval of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Initiative (FOIP) in line with both his predecessor Abe and Japan’s strategic ally, the United States. In his first foreign visit to Vietnam and Indonesia, he pressed upon President Joko Widodo that the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific (AOIP) and FOIP should be synced; two ideas that actually clash because most ASEAN members are not so keen in rushing into an anti-China platform when China has so much to offer.

Suga also opened a foreign ministerial meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) earlier this month, reiterating the importance of this anti-China alliance for Japan. The Quad had initiated the FOIP concept in 2019, after the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which despite Obama’s relentless efforts, was rejected by ASEAN members in 2017.

So, what is FOIP, and why was there a need to shift from the Asia-Pacific conceptual map to the Indo-Pacific concept? And why was the US Pacific Command renamed as the Indo-Pacific Command in 2018? Perhaps the underlining reason was the dearth of US allies in mainland Asia, save Japan, India and a few other peripheral states, and now the only US hope for an Asia-pivot rests on India. It is not that Japan or Australia are not potentially strong partners, but both are not ready to assert open enmity against China, eying a possible shared future in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Whereas India, the self-assumed regional power of near-future, is ready to go all the way against China, both strategically and economically.

This is why the Quad has never given a joint statement on its intentions, and when PM Abe announced his Partnership for Quality Infrastructure in 2015, he made it clear that the programme was not at odds with China’s plans but in its alignment. In this bearing, Suga seems to be going the other extreme; he seems to be making an open advancement for the Quad!

This raises the question whether Japan is really moving towards the US, its ex-coloniser and the trade-partner who ditched it in its two lost decades, wherein it experienced a stagnant economy, struggling to rise in the competitive world? Or, under the FOIP cover, is Japan manoeuvering to create its own space to achieve the Abenomics’ goal of making Japan less reliant on the US for defense?

But more than anyone, the US itself is pursuing its Indo-Pacific strategy most aggressively. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has put forth a long-term procurement plan, asking for a complete revamp of the US Navy in preparation against China, with a 500 strong fleet. The Department of Defense has consistently identified the security challenge from China as the most significant long-term threat, and the plan identifies the need for hundreds of new missiles and torpedo launch-systems; satellite and aircraft systems; fighter aircraft, air defense ships, carriers and patrol aircraft; submarines and surveillance assets.

Esper has been speaking the same tongue Pompeo speaks, who openly spited venom against China at the Quad meeting, saying “the ministers who gathered in Tokyo all came to understand the shared threat and the opportunity for us to work together not just diplomatically, but on the economic front to partner to fight back against Beijing.” Esper hosted Indian external affairs minister Jaishankar at the Pentagon earlier this month. Esper, sympathising with Jaishankar on China’s aggression on the Line of Actual Control, said, “India will be the most consequential partner for the US in the Indo-Pacific this century.”

Why does Esper say that? What is going to happen in the Indo-Pacific this century? Why is the Indo-Pacific Command being fortified and why is India being aggrandised as ‘the’ worthy ally? India and US are defense allies since 2005. Then there were logistics and secure-communication pacts in 2016 and 2018. And now the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) will allow US to share satellite and sensor data, allowing India to improve its targeting and navigation capabilities. Add in that an elementary ingredient — India’s tendency for unilateral, egoistic hegemony that has already driven it at daggers drawn in Ladakh against China — under the zealot BJP rule, India is all out to confirm itself as a regional power, even if it means forcing its 1.3 billion people into the agonising destructions of war.

In 2019, the DoD published its Indo-Pacific Strategy Report declaring that “the US and India maintain a broad-based strategic partnership, underpinned by shared interests… based on a convergence of strategic interests, and the US and India continue to use their deepening relationship to build new partnerships within and beyond the Indo-Pacific.” Experts from China are of the view that the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ used by Trump and his mates indicates the joined strategy being pursued by India, the US, Japan and Australia to curb China in the new geopolitical framework.

Indeed, with US at its hind, India has collected a lot of probabilities in the Indian Ocean. Apart from India’s several other overtures, India’s third naval base, INS Kohasa, on North Andaman Island, is especially divisive as it aims to guard the Malacca Strait on one side and to control the Bay of Bengal on the other. India is also signing pacts with Japan and Vietnam for sharing ports in wartimes.

The bottom line is: the US has coined this new ‘Indo-Pacific’ terminology under its vicious foreign policy agenda of inciting new wars far from its hemisphere, every decade. The 9/11 narrative, the WMDs narrative, the Al Qaeda narrative, all preceded US wars in the Middle East. The Indo-Pacific, that starts from ‘the west coast of US and ends at the west coast of India’, seems to be the new narrative that will make way for launching a new war against China, who remains the long-term threat to the US-led world-order. The favourite US sport is to fight proxy wars in other people’s lands, and this time India is being fed the greed of regional power to lure it into direct confrontations with China. And with the BJP, India seems to be gladly volunteering to become the new warzone.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2020.

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