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STRATEGIC PLANNING, NAVAL POWER AND A FRAMEWORK

FOR REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

by

James A Russell and Alessio Patalano

October 2023

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Prepared for: OPNAV N7

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Strategic Planning, Naval Power, and a Framework for Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific

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The report entitled “Strategic Planning, Naval Power, and a Framework for Regional
Security in the Indo-Pacific” was prepared for OPNAV N7 and funded by the Naval
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INTRODUCTION

This research report represents the culmination of research commissioned by the

Director of Warfighter Development in the Department of the Navy, or OPNAV N7, that

resulted in a volume titled The New Age of Naval Power in the Indo-Pacific: Strategy,

Order and Regional Security (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2023).

That volume has been provided in hard copy to the N7 as a deliverable on this research

project. The N7 project enabled the Principal Investigator (PI) to assemble an

international team of authors over several years to produce in-depth analysis facing the

Navy as it finds itself immersed in a new era of great power competition on the high seas.

The volume is focused upon the Indo-Pacific theater with a cross disciplinary set of

authors that are designed to help the wider US Navy community unpack the many issues

associated with applying naval power in concert with friends and allies across the Indo-

Pacific’s vast maritime domain – the largest in the world. This particular report represents

the framework for analysis used in the volume and which can be applied by the N7 as it

works on developing long-term strategy to guide fleet architecture as well as war-fighting

and deterrence concepts over the next quarter century. As such, the volume also is

intended for classroom and practitioner communities moving through planning and

educational cycles to prepare the US Navy for an uncertain future of naval competition

with the People’s Liberation Army-Navy.

Setting the Stage

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 After a hiatus of a little more than two decades, competition at sea is back as a

central issue of international security. i Starting in the 1990s, the United States–led

dominance over the world’s oceans defined the growth of trade, freedom of navigation,

and the post–Cold War engagement in expeditionary operations ranging from Africa to

Central Asia. Today this freedom to use the oceans as a vast maneuvering space for

civilian or naval purposes stands contested. Senior US military leadership now

continuously emphasizes how maritime theaters are no longer places where nations can

take the freedom of navigation and movement of goods at sea and the freedom of

operational conduct for granted, most notably in the East and South China seas. ii Indeed,

as a result of the oceans becoming a contested space once more, the very foundations of

today’s global economic interdependence stand vulnerable to hostile state actions. As a

result, the US debate on the strategic value of naval power to national security has shifted

away from the concern about how to influence international politics by projecting power

ashore back to the need to ensure the capacity to meet actors challenging freedom of

navigation or, in case of war, sea control. iii In a similar fashion, other actors with major

stakes in international maritime order, from Japan to the United Kingdom and France,

from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the European Union, have all expressed

concerns about the systemic challenges that states such as Russia and China present to

freedom of the seas.

In part, this is the result of strategic exhaustion in the United States brought on by

two decades of expensive and inconclusive operations on land in the Middle East and

South Asia. These have drained intellectual capacity, affected the availability of

resources, and reduced the political capital to sustain a Pax Americana policing apparatus

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across the globe. More broadly, the return to an emphasis on relative naval power

recognizes that the global strategic environment has changed. The US National Security

Strategy, adopted in 2017, and naval documents published afterward indicate a renewed

focus on how to gain sea control as a primary condition of retaining operational freedom

on the high seas. iv Countries such as the United Kingdom, which also has globally

postured armed forces, share these assumptions about the importance of being prepared

to fight for sea control in more contested maritime theaters. v Indeed, the reactivation in

2018 of the US Navy (USN) Second Fleet to deal with a less stable North Atlantic is one

of the most recent policy actions that reflects this shift in attitude. vi Similarly, post–Cold

War concerns with maritime security and governance to deal with transnational

challenges as enshrined in such concepts as “the thousand ship navy” have now taken a

less prominent role. vii

The Puzzle: Why Does Naval Power Matter in the Indo-Pacific?

Nowhere is the urgency to meet state-on-state competition at sea more strongly

felt than in the Indo-Pacific region. viii In this part of the world, freedom of navigation

stands challenged by regional states’ continuous investments in military power, including

technologies that have reduced the capability gap with the USN, and the renewed

political will to use it. This is a particularly troubling issue in the United States, where

there is a well-established understanding that Washington’s ability to project power

globally rests upon naval dominance. ix In the Indo-Pacific, naval power reflects the use of

naval forces (including navies, coast guards, and all the other military and paramilitary

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organizations capable of operating in the maritime theater) to signal, manage, govern,

deter, coerce, and, if necessary, fight a war, in the pursuit of two sets of missions. On one

hand, for more than a decade now, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been

leading this transformation to wider uses of naval power as a tool of statecraft to contest

American dominance in the region. It is systematically modernizing and expanding its

military power, from capabilities to deny access in the East and South China seas, if not

to assert control in these theaters—including across the Strait of Taiwan—to those

required for expeditionary missions well beyond their confines on a scale that has no

precedent in recent times. x China’s ability to project power at sea and to contest the

control of key maritime areas has become a crucial test for America’s continued global

leadership. xi

American concerns over the return of naval competition and the challenge posed

to its prominent position in world’s affairs are not mistaken. The PRC’s sustained

funding for conventional and nuclear-powered submarines, different types of surface

combatants (also encompassing enhanced coast guard cutters and militia fleets), and the

expansion of land-based power-projection systems—even the development of artificial

military outposts on contested island features—are redefining the military balance across

the Indo-Pacific. xii In fact, as Chinese oceanographic research and naval activities expand

farther afield to the Indian Ocean, Africa, the Middle East, and the polar regions, there is

ground to consider whether authorities in Beijing nurture global rather than regional

ambitions—well beyond East Asia. xiii Although China states that it is pursuing “a

national defense policy that is defensive in nature,” xiv in a maritime operational context

the distinction between offensive and defensive capabilities is difficult to draw.

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Depending on the specific scenarios, there is considerable overlap between offensive and

defensive capabilities. xv China shows a desire to become a “maritime power” that is

inherently related to its aim of reviewing and upgrading the country’s status on the world

stage. xvi When such declarations are paired with trends in the country’s naval capabilities,

it is possible to argue that for Chinese authorities having a defensive posture does not set

limits on the geographic boundaries of China’s reach.

On the other hand, in the Indo-Pacific, competition stands for more than what

Adm. Stansfield Turner defined as a potential struggle for “sea control.” xvii The wider

expansion in the array of capabilities available to states operating in this region is both

the result of, and a propellent for, further expansion of missions. This relates to the

widening constabulary and law-enforcement activities aimed at the management of

maritime boundary delimitations and territorial disputes resulting from the rights and

duties of coastal states brought about by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law

of the Sea (UNCLOS). Whether to protect national rights or to challenge those set forth

by others, the maritime spaces of the Indo-Pacific have today become a national security

priority that includes more than major-power competition. In particular, UNCLOS has

contributed to the development of new attitudes toward the problem of ocean governance

as a state responsibility to be pursued nationally or collaboratively. In turn, this process—

accelerated by the US post-9/11 concern with transnational security threats—has

enhanced governments’ awareness of the need for constabulary and law-enforcement

activities to address broader “maritime security” issues. xviii In this respect, maritime order

and stability are today understood to encompass issues of governance at sea.

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 As a result of these trends, regional states have adapted their strategies, pursued

new capabilities, and seek to address the challenge of striking a balance between

capabilities and missions for sea control (warfare functions) and those required to

maintain “good order” at sea (maritime security functions). xix Indeed, this dilemma is

further compounded by the fact that in the conduct of daily activities, issues of maritime

governance and security are often difficult to fully disentangle from issues of strategic

competition. Naval powers deploy forces across the Indo-Pacific to reinforce or challenge

excessive claims—US freedom-of-navigation operations being a case in point. xx Other

regional actors, such as Japan and China, engage their capabilities—coast guards or

navies, depending on the specific institutional arrangements—in capacity-building

programs to support coastal states in implementing national jurisdictions at sea. As they

do so, there is no doubt that maritime governance and security are important

considerations as the possibility to influence and reassure other states operating in the

global commons. xxi In turn, capacity building empowers less capable states with the

means to protect maritime rights and, if needed, to challenge others with competing

claims—opening options to strategies described by social scientists as consistent with a

“hedging behavior.” xxii Similar considerations about the potential political significance of

naval power in the Indo-Pacific apply to other forms of maritime security assistance,

notably humanitarian assistance and disaster-relief missions.xxiii

Whether as a quest for international power and military superiority or as a pursuit

for better maritime governance and the safeguarding of national sovereignty, naval power

stands at the center of regional order and stability. Indeed, naval competition and

maritime governance are inherent manifestations of the centrality of maritime

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connectivity to regional prosperity and security—as assessments of naval developments

in Southeast Asia attest. xxiv Within this context, Japan provides one of the most notable

examples of a regional actor that has expanded naval activities as a way to reinforce

regional order and power balance. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Japan

Coast Guard stand at the forefront of diplomatic efforts and activities as diverse as

capacity building and military exercises stretching from the Maldives to throughout the

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). xxv Naval forces were the spearhead of

the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s signature foreign policy, Free and Open Indo-

Pacific (FOIP) initiative, which embodies the country’s call for stable and secure seas

linking Africa and the Middle East to Asia. xxvi Similarly, regional governments in the

South Pacific emphasize the role of naval forces to manage the potentially devastating

impact of climate change and environmental degradation on ocean governance and

national prosperity. xxvii

Based on the aforementioned considerations, this research report and its

supporting analysis suggests number of critical questions:

1. H ow do naval capabilities influence power balance and regional order in the Indo-

Pacific? How do different types of capabilities affect regional security?

2. How does a Sino-American naval competition for maritime dominance affect

regional stability?

3. Do current examinations of naval activities in the region adequately capture the

relationship seemingly linking naval power to statecraft on matters of both military

superiority and maritime governance?

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 4. Does the nature of digital-age systems integration into regional force structures

change the way that states think about applying force on the high seas?

5. Equally significant, if naval capabilities affect the conduct of competition and the

maintenance of stability, how is the expansion of regional arsenals affecting the risk

of instability and war across the various subregional theaters?

These questions are essential to understanding why naval power matters in the Indo-

Pacific and are the ones that are addressed in this report and the accompanying volume.

Naval Power as Statecraft in the Indo-Pacific

This report places the role of naval forces (including military and constabulary

organizations) at the center of analysis, examining these forces as a significant tool of

statecraft. xxviii The argument set forth in this report is that the Indo-Pacific is a

meaningful geopolitical construct that captures the geographic centrality of the sea—the

Indian and Pacific Oceans—to regional security and the role of naval power in it. The

report further argues that the impact of naval power on regional security should be

understood as the result of the interplay of competitive and cooperative behaviors,

enabled by the “hard” and “soft” uses of naval forces and underscored by five drivers

informing how states identify priorities, organize agendas, and articulate ambitions in this

maritime regional space. Thus, naval power is a tool of statecraft in which capabilities are

deployed to conduct a variety of missions to defend territorial spaces, manage the

maritime environment, create and enhance partnerships, and project national power. The

report argues that a systematic examination of the ensemble of naval interactions

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occurring across the different missions informs how maritime order is understood and

how changes in regional security and stability take place. The enablers behind states’

pursuits of naval capabilities directly relate to the uses of the sea as a space of maneuver

and a resource and to the means to use it—all of which creates a multilayered complex

explaining why naval power is such a central tool of statecraft. It is in this complexity, we

argue, that rests the key to understanding problems of power, stability, and security in the

Indo-Pacific.

Maritime geography holds a central role in the security of the Indo-Pacific. In this

part of the world, the centrality of the sea to regional connectivity and interactions is

essential to understanding how state actors seek to exert influence—through both

coercive and engagement measures. In this respect, we argue that the diffusion of modern

naval capabilities across the region does not make it inherently unstable and prone to the

risk of war; rather, we posit that in the Indo-Pacific, naval power offers the opportunity

for more frequent interactions, not all of which is destabilizing to regional security. We

do so by recognizing that for strategic planners and political authorities across the region,

the force structures that support coercive action in no way exclude opportunities for

constructive interaction. On the contrary, robust capabilities are consistently and

regularly deployed to invite partners, strengthen relations, and reassure allies as much as

signal, deter, and coerce adversaries. Chinese coercion at sea, for example, is

operationalized by a naval order of battle drawing upon the multidomain character of

sensors and weapons fielded to perform a variety of missions, not all competitive in

nature. A Chinese destroyer essential to a denial posture in the China Seas or a carrier

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task group within and outside their confines could very well stand at the forefront of

cooperation in good governance missions, such as counterpiracy.

By placing maritime geography and naval power at the heart of regional security,

this report and the accompanying volume take the ambitions of the naval literature

(focused on explaining why and how naval power matters in general) a step further and

link them to why and how it matters to the study of international affairs. The collective

aim is not just to provide yet another assessment of how navies produce effects; rather,

the analysis argues that because of the effects navies generate, a naval approach is

particularly suitable to understanding key security mechanics informing today’s Indo-

Pacific. In this intellectual journey, the project takes its cue from earlier work on naval

diplomacy and deterrence initially developed during the Cold War and aimed at

explaining the link between naval power and political influence. xxix Consistent with this

body of literature, the chapters in this volume focus on what aspects of the interactions at

sea inform the development of national maritime strategies and the procurement of

relevant capabilities.

This report draws attention to interactions in the specific regional space of the

Indo-Pacific as a way to place the study of the naval dimension of security within the

broader methodological approach proposed in the regional security complex literature.

We share with this approach the ambition to more fully understand the interplay of

national and international security, the link between internal conditions in states and

relations among states in the region, and the correlations between regional stability and

great-power politics. xxx Unlike this literature, however, this report argues that because the

Indo-Pacific is a maritime region, naval interactions are central to unpacking the complex

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economic, diplomatic, and military relationships linking warfare to security, competition

to cooperation, and stability to war.

Defining the Indo-Pacific

One critical consideration concerns the definition of the region in itself. Among the

options to define the wider Asia Pacific as a security space, this report adopts the “Indo-

Pacific” denomination. From a security perspective, the Indo-Pacific is now an

established concept among practitioners and political elites. It reflects a recognition of the

centrality of maritime geography to security and links maritime strategy and naval power

to the way in which state actors engage with each other. In 2016, specifically pointing to

how the sea sits at the intersection of economic prosperity and military stability, the

Japanese government launched the aforementioned FOIP. xxxi In 2017 the United States

adopted an Indo-Pacific framework in its National Security Strategy and reengineered its

political and military apparatus accordingly with the renaming of Pacific Command

“Indo-Pacific Command.” Long before the United States began focusing on it, Indo-

Pacific notions had been articulated in countries such as Australia. xxxii In 2019 India and

ASEAN similarly recognized the importance to politically engage within this spatial

framework. xxxiii Major European powers with overseas territorial, economic, and security

interests in the region—notably France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United

Kingdom—have recently developed their own Indo-Pacific strategy or endeavored to

adopt the term in their national security outlooks. xxxiv Indeed, even when authoritative

Chinese commentators refer to the reluctance in the PRC to adopt this conceptualization

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of the region, they understand and recognize its significance as much as they are

concerned about its implications. xxxv

While this framework is now of common use, its meaning and geographical

boundaries vary depending on the whether one is in Canberra, Tokyo, Beijing, Colombo,

or Washington. This is why we still think it is important to review how we consider its

utility. After all, “regional spaces” are always geographic constructs. xxxvi For the purpose

of our study, Rory Medcalf offers a compelling case for the Indo-Pacific as a construct fit

for “a 21st century of maritime connectivity and a geopolitics that is many-sided, or as

the diplomats say, multipolar.” xxxvii As a unit of analysis for interactions among state

actors, the Indo-Pacific meets the four characteristics of classical security complex

theory: it involves multiple states, it is a geographically coherent grouping (with two

oceans as its connecting fabric), it is marked by security interdependence, and it displays

clear and durable patterns of interactions. xxxviii The US Department of Defense sets the

narrowest Indo-Pacific boundaries due to its other combatant commands. In the

expansive Japanese conception of the Indo-Pacific, it is a regional space in which the

Indian and Pacific Oceans are the core fabric connecting states from the eastern coast of

Africa and the Arabian Sea to the Pacific coastlines of the United States and South

America in a coherent fashion. For any conception of the Indo-Pacific, it is a space that is

inclusive and porous due to its maritime nature with boundaries that fluctuate.

Five Factors of Influence

How does naval power help to explain the complexity of Indo-Pacific security, then? In

this volume, our argument is that in a maritime-centric security complex like the Indo-

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Pacific, a state’s ability to affect dynamics of stability and power competition will depend

on its capacity to leverage five “factors of influence.” These are the capacity to exert

control over sea-lanes, the capacity to deploy a nuclear deterrent at sea, the capacity to

implement law of the sea in an advantageous way, the ability to control marine

resources, and the capacity for technological innovation. These factors unfold directly

from the ways in which the sea has impacted human activities. In particular, we build

upon Geoffrey Till’s work stressing the link between naval power and how and why

human beings have chosen throughout history to take to the sea. According to Till, the

sea has historically had four uses: it has been a means of transportation, a resource, a

means for dominion (the projection of power), and a space for the exchange of

information and the spread of ideas. xxxix In reviewing Till’s approach to the uses of the

sea, we believe that these four uses can be reorganized in three categories. The first is

related to the sea as a means of transportation for both economic and military reasons.

The second use pertains to notion of the sea as a resource. The third category we identify

relates directly to the sea more as a source of innovation to find better ways and means to

sail across its expanses (and more recently to fly over them or travel underneath its

surface) or indeed project power.

The sea’s uses as the world’s “superhighway” to transport goods that power

economies and for military maneuvers are responsible for two factors that are key to the

role of naval power in great-power politics and geopolitical competition. xl The first

factor of influence pertains to states’ perceptions of their ability (real or imagined) to

control sea-lanes to meet national security requirements, whether to protect trade or to

project national power and influence. How states consider their ability to access, use, and

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control sea-lanes informs how they conceptualize the nature of the challenge from peer

competitors and their need to priorities naval capabilities.

The second factor is nuclear deterrence at sea—as a specific type of capability

that benefits from the stealth and access that the ocean provides. This gained prominence

during the Cold War and today is directly related to the reach and potential of regional

strategic arsenals.

The third and fourth factors of influence of naval power’s “shaping” capacity in

the Indo-Pacific are related to the use of the sea as a resource. The world’s oceans remain

central to human life, for they contain fish stocks and natural resources invaluable to food

and energy requirements. xli More specifically, the third factor relates to the states’

capacity to implement the legal frameworks that govern interactions at sea to maximize

their positions. These frameworks—most notably UNCLOS—define the rights and duties

of state actors, they set boundaries to the application of sovereignty, they protect the

freedom of navigation, and, as a result, their application and their enforcement is a

defining feature of state actors’ interactions.

The fourth factor of influence unfolds directly from the previously referenced

factors and concerns the ability to exploit natural resources. Their existence, accessibility,

and indeed their sustainable use are a crucial factor underpinning efforts toward

cooperation and competition. These two enablers are particularly important for

understanding the widening of law-enforcement and constabulary activities and the

growing value attributed to the legitimacy of operations conducted in respect of the

principles and practices of good governance at sea. xlii

The fifth factor of influence is focused on a state’s capacity for technological

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prowess and sophistication—and it relates to the role the sea has in prompting innovation

and technological advancement within societies. Navies are technology-intensive

organizations, and the ability to nurture innovation and advanced technological know-

how directly affects the development of modern capabilities. This, in turn, has

implications on national strategy, political ambitions, and, ultimately, how state actors

can interact with each other. xliii Access to advanced technology defines the extent to

which naval authorities can procure assets to perform a large variety of missions under

different circumstances and warships that are tailored to conduct specific types of

operations. In turn, access to modern, cutting-edge technology depends on the ever-

present need in modern military procurement to control cost escalation, imposing

constraints on number of hulls and types of combat systems. Hence, the technology factor

matters in a maritime-centric regional security environment. Within this context, we try

in this report to explore how access to (or the lack of) technology affects problems of

behavior and, as a result, stability.

Maritime Geography as a Strategic Factor

A main ambition of the argument articulated in this report is to offer a strategic studies

alternative to normative explanations about stability in East Asia. Notably, by focusing

on maritime geography as a strategic factor in understanding how state actors interact, the

report proposes to overcome the limits of the notion of a traditional “Sino-centric East

Asian order and hierarchy” to explain a “pattern of interaction” systematically lacking

state actors balancing against China. xliv In particular, such an approach has failed to

convincingly explain how the logic of a normative international system would

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historically apply to political realities such as Japan or, indeed, Southeast Asia. Relatedly,

it has also confused strategies aimed at tailoring military capabilities to emphasize

asymmetry—an option open to governments in maritime-centric regional contexts—with

a broader reluctance to invest in military power to confront China (based on a

quantitative analysis of military procurement in relation to gross domestic product). xlv In

the Indo-Pacific, the sea has always mattered strategically in the way in which states

interacted with each other. As a result, to borrow David C. Kang’s own metaphor, the

“size” of the dog in the fight is not as important as the “type” of dog for which one

opts. xlvi The approach in this report and supporting papers is set to better explain how

state actors specifically choose a dog based on the type of fight—or, indeed, fights—in

which they seek to engage.

Literature Review

By design, this report represents an attempt to fill a glaring gap in the field of East Asian

security. It has no real equal in the wider literature on this part of the world, which is

predominantly divided into maritime strategic works focused on East Asia as a case study

or international security scholarship of the region. In this volume, the chapters

collectively seek to reconcile this divide by employing a methodology that derives from

the latter field of research to engage with themes and issues relevant to the former. Our

collective goal is to create an opportunity for a multidisciplinary dialogue in which an

understanding of naval matters enriches the study of East Asian security.

Within the realm of maritime strategic thinking, in the volume International

Order at Sea: How It Is Challenged, How It Is Maintained, Jo Inge Bekkevold and

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Geoffrey Till led a group of international scholars to offer a review of the comparative

nature of maritime issues from the Arctic to Europe and Asia. xlvii Their book represents

one of the most recent and comprehensive primers in maritime security, introducing one

fundamental premise informing our own volume. International Order at Sea showcases

the importance of “unity” of the ocean in how issues of resource management and

exploitation, maritime order and access to sea-lanes, and strategic deterrence are explored

in different basins. Bekkevold and Till’s crucial contribution is that they provide a strong

case for the need to look at maritime security and naval competition as interconnected

layers. However, International Order at Sea does not specifically link the study of

maritime issues to the security dynamics of the Indo-Pacific. In this sense, it shares a

methodological approach with our volume, but it does not apply it to examine the region

we explore.

On the other hand, other collective works published during the past decade have

done much to tackle specific questions pertaining to maritime security and power struggle

in the Indo-Pacific. Peter Alan Dutton, Robert Ross, and Øystein Tunsjø focus on the role

of legal frameworks in managing maritime security and competition at sea in their study

titled Twenty-First Century Seapower: Cooperation and Conflict at Sea. xlviii In a similar

vein, Daniel Moran and James A. Russell have examined in their volume Maritime

Strategy and Global Order: Markets, Resources, Security how navies have contributed

and continue to contribute to maintaining an international maritime order aimed at the

circulation of goods and economic growth. xlix By contrast, Geoffrey Till and Jan Chan

and also Nicholas Tarling and Xin Chen have focused on the rise of modern maritime

forces in Southeast Asia to explore the growing centrality of maritime issues to regional

19
security debates in Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia, Nature, Causes, and

Consequences and Maritime Security in East and Southeast Asia: Political Challenges in

Asian Waters, respectively. l Along not too dissimilar lines, Bernard Cole’s Asian

Maritime Strategies offers a useful review of national approaches to the development of

naval power without addressing how such developments relate to the region’s changing

security dynamics. li Till’s work on naval arms races in Asia similarly seeks to examine

the specific issue of how increased naval capabilities could affect the development of

“action-reaction” dynamics, which in turn would exacerbate “security dilemmas” among

the region’s major naval powers. lii

In all, the maritime literature has highlighted three key aspects that concern our

volume: the increased importance of naval capabilities to national security across the

Indo-Pacific, the impact that naval power has on competition and power balance in the

region, and the existence of state-on-state gauging considerations as well as concerns

over matters of stability, safety, and governance of the region’s maritime spaces in the

ways in which state actors invest in naval capabilities and assess the role of naval power

within the priorities of national security.

These important considerations remain only partly integrated within the security

studies literature that is relevant to the Indo-Pacific. In the early 2010s at the Naval War

College, Thomas Mahnken and Dan Blumenthal were among the first scholars to bring

together a group of distinguished historians and social scientists to debate East Asian

security from a strategic studies perspective. liii Their conversation later became the edited

volume Strategy in Asia. In it, one of the most insightful conclusions concerns the call for

more to be done in mainstream security studies literature to recognize and integrate the

20
impact of geography on the region’s historical experience. Specific perceptions of the

national security landscape informed the prioritization of the means to address challenges

in it. liv In their volume, geography and strategy were intertwined in shaping how regional

actors conceptualized and acted upon their security challenges. More recently, Peter

Dombrowski and Jonathan Caverley, leading scholars at the Naval War College, have

brought together a team of international scholars to specifically address the impact of

naval affairs within the wider US-China competition in a special 2020 issue for the

journal Security Studies. Their groundbreaking work has sought to close the gap between

naval studies and the security literature, and our aim with this volume is to continue on

the path they started to chart. In particular, we are complementing their work by

showcasing how the US-China naval competition is set within a more complicated

security complex, which cannot be entirely dissociated from other regional maritime-

related issues, notably territorial disputes and sub-regional power balance. lv

William Tow’s Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?

added to this debate over structural influences on regional security by offering a

comprehensive review of the links between the global and local dimensions. Global

trends in international security have repercussions in specific regions of the world,

whether on matters of great-power competition or transnational security. However, in

Tow’s volume this important point is not fully explored in a maritime context. Instead,

the maritime dimension is investigated as a specific subset of issues, somewhat

downplaying the importance of the oceans in linking the regional and global dimensions

of security. lvi In a similar fashion, Evelyn Goh’s The Struggle for Order: Hegemony,

Hierarchy and Transition in Post–Cold War East Asia raises other crucial issues around

21
the question order and hierarchy as processes negotiated among different stakeholders. In

her book, she highlights how in East Asia the security balance is not a question of mere

material power. Rather, she points to the role that recognition and legitimacy play in how

state actors interact with each other and how specific status is recognized and accepted. lvii

Nonetheless, in her case, too, there is no attempt to assess whether and to what extent the

fact that the sea is central to how state actors interact remained outside the scope of the

analysis.

In this report and supporting volume, the analysis takes stock of this wealth of

scholarly work but also pushes it a step further. By placing the Indo-Pacific as a

geographical construct for our analysis, we bring together key themes identified in the

East Asian security literature pertaining to the links between geography and strategy,

global and regional security, and material and cognitive understanding of security. In so

doing, we make a critical original contribution about the mechanics of interactions in the

Indo-Pacific. By exploring how naval interplays occur, we showcase how concerns over

both naval competition and maritime governance inform state actors’ actions.

Furthermore, we explain how, depending on the ability to pursue different sets of

capabilities, national strategies will naturally seek to strike a balance between the two. In

part, this is because, as the maritime literature has long held, the projection of power

across the oceans is more complicated to achieve and sustain than on land. As a result,

power balance, order, and stability are a negotiated process in which stronger state actors

seek to advance their interests through a combination of positive influence and coercion

and unilateral and multilateral action. By the same token, weaker state actors will

22
recognize and validate the results of such processes as a way to advance their own

agendas.

The Geopolitics of Naval Power

In reconciling the maritime and East Asian security literatures, this report makes an

original contribution in the current rediscovery of geography and geopolitics in

international politics. More than a decade ago, Harvey Starr pointed out how the concept

of “space” is one that hardly features in the field of international relations. Indeed, as he

pointed out, scholars had predominantly tended to dismiss the relevance of space as

deterministic and irrelevant to their analysis. lviii Historians of the discipline would agree

with this assessment. Indeed, as they have recently uncovered, leading American scholars

tasked with redefining the field’s research agenda in the late 1940s and early 1950s made

a conscious choice to marginalize geopolitics and geography-informed examinations of

international politics. lix

In the Indo-Pacific, this report and the accompanying volume show that

geopolitics is related to the conceptualization of this space. In the realm of security, the

recognition of a link between geography and the political dynamics of the Indo-Pacific is

not new. Long before Robert Kaplan’s “revenge of geography” linked security to

maritime affairs, French geopolitician François Joyaux had noted how Asian geography

and security were entwined. lx In particular, Joyaux was among the first scholars to

highlight how the maritime expanses of the region connected (and divided) the majority

of regional actors. lxi Although not specifically addressed toward the Indo-Pacific, recent

scholarship has developed Joyaux’s earlier observations. Additionally, authors have

23
articulated how projecting military power across maritime spaces is harder than on

land—depending as it is on the capacity to develop and sustain naval capabilities.

Scholarship has similarly highlighted how alliances’ formation against hegemonic naval

powers is less frequent and likely to happen than alliances against continental powers,

and, moreover, directly related to these points, scholarship has highlighted that at sea

escalation toward war is less likely to take place when compared to escalation on land. lxii

These observations all relate to a key point: hegemony in a maritime space is not—with

very few exceptions—related to the conquest of territory. lxiii Rather, it is about the ability

to retain access to the location of resources and to the ability to freely maneuver along the

lines of communication linking them. lxiv This report and the associated volume makes an

original contribution to this wider debate over the specificities of maritime-centric

security contexts by exploring how naval power matters well beyond questions of

hegemony and military superiority. In the Indo-Pacific, the geopolitics of naval power are

also about interactions pertaining to national assertions on, and participation over, matters

of maritime governance, access and exploitation of resources, and maritime trade. In so

doing, this analysis investigates how these two dimensions are interconnected.

In exploring the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, this report and its supporting

papers seek to explain how naval capabilities—ranging from coast guards to modern and

advanced combat forces—can play an important strategic role. In particular, the

geopolitics of a maritime region provide avenues to make better sense of an apparent

contradiction in why state actors acquire naval capabilities and how they use them most of

the time. As a general rule, naval capabilities are designed and built to withstand the

hardest test: combat. Yet, absent wartime missions, navies (and coast guards) rest at the

24
forefront of foreign and security interactions by means of diplomacy, deterrence, and

coercion. A quarter of a century ago, it would have been hard to conceive of a regional

environment in which navies (and maritime forces more generally) featured so

prominently as instruments of policy. Indeed, for the purpose of this volume, the key

intellectual link we seek to articulate is between security dynamics and what is regarded

as the cognitive value of naval power in influencing other actors’ choice. lxv

The Structure of the Report and its Supporting Papers: An International

Collaboration for Different Audiences

Following this introduction, the report and papers provided under separate cover to the

N7 brings together a group of international scholars from relevant disciplines to

investigate its main themes. The first part of the volume explores the makeup of the

maritime security complex of the Indo-Pacific. Its five chapters examine in detail the

enabling factors informing why and how state actors take to the sea as well as set the

boundaries of their aspirations in this complex domain. The first three chapters focus on

three critical issues. The first focuses on how the sea informs national strategy at the

structural level of international security, with Christopher Twomey investigating what the

Indo-Pacific means strategically to both the United States and China. As a complement to

this perspective, Peter Alan Dutton and Clive Schofield look at how the sea may

influence governments’ pursuit of maritime capabilities to maximize or protect legal

claims and access and exploit marine resources. Both aspects matter considerably across

the Indo-Pacific. Nicola Leveringhaus takes the exploration into the realm of nuclear

order and stability, providing a much-needed update on how sea-based nuclear deterrents

25
in the Indo-Pacific add a layer of complexity to broader structural dynamics. Against this

background, James A. Russell’s chapter highlights how technology—and in particular the

pursuit of innovation and cutting-edge solutions to strategic problems—is an important

consideration for major powers in the Indo-Pacific but one far from being easy to

address.

While the first part of the volume seeks to explore the factors informing the

region’s complexity, the second part attempts to test how their understanding and

significance changed over time. We asked its contributors to focus on periods of

enhanced competition that affected the Indo-Pacific region, to better highlight what

considerations informed the link between naval affairs and security. In particular, Ryan

Gingeras seeks to provide greater nuance to the Indian Ocean as a space for competition

over trade before the nineteenth century. His chapter explores how the Indian Ocean was

a space in which European and Asian actors converged and in which competition was

intertwined with local political dynamics. Gingeras’s account stands in contrast with the

period covered by Richard Dunley. In Dunley’s chapter, it becomes apparent that

technological changes taking place at the end of the nineteenth century empowered

European powers with a much-enhanced capacity to sustain the projection of power.

Moreover, Dunley’s chapter engages with how Britain strove to maintain its dominant

role in the region in the context of imperial competition with other European powers and

the rise of a potential rival in the case of Japan. In another chapter, Daniel Moran reviews

the question of naval competition in the interwar period from the perspective of the

failure of arms limitations to control the spiraling competition between the United States

and Japan. The contribution of Kevin Rowlands on the Cold War is similarly

26
enlightening in exposing how, underneath the bigger umbrella of the systemic

competition between East and West, new phenomena such as decolonization and

UNCLOS contributed to significantly widen how naval power mattered in the Indo-

Pacific. Indeed, the historical journey presented in this part of the book makes it clear

how problems of governance and good order at sea as they are understood today started

to emerge only toward the end of the Cold War. By contrast, the Dunley and Moran

chapters on earlier periods of sustained competition show how interactions in the Indo-

Pacific region had been previously managed predominantly through other means, such as

diplomacy and coercion. They were more about how material capabilities related to

strategic outcomes than about how the uses of the sea related to matters of governance

and order.

The final part of this report and its supporting separate papers takes its

framework-setting chapters and historical journey through the Indo-Pacific to the present

day. In particular, it focuses on testing the book’s framework against the main sub-theater

of the Indo-Pacific. The key idea in this part of the volume is to examine how main

interactions occur across the region and in what ways competition and cooperation can

coexist. Indeed, while each chapter could not offer a full assessment of all the different

maritime issues in which naval power plays a role, different authors focus on a specific

set of issues related to the enablers set out in the first part. The objective in this section is

to illustrate how the proposed framework can be applied to provide a more nuanced

explanation of regional dynamics. This is why, for example, the chapters by Ian Bowers

and Alessio Patalano and Julie Marionneau have a degree of overlap. In his chapter,

Bowers examines territorial disputes between North and South Korea, Russia and Japan,

27
and South Korea and China, showing their impact on the subregional dynamics. On the

other hand, Patalano and Marionneau look at the dynamics in the East and South China

Seas from the perspective of how fairly localized disputes may have an impact on the

broader structural level of international security—well beyond the region’s boundaries.

By contrast, James Goldrick’s chapter on the South Pacific is indicative of the opposite:

global issues such as climate change may have a particular importance at the theater level

in a way that the Sino-American competition has not. James J. Wirtz and Abhijit Singh

take yet another perspective on the Indian Ocean and focus on how the wider complexity

of issues to tackle can represent an opportunity for enhanced cooperation, in their case

between the United States and India. In this section, we also felt that the increasing

tensions across the Strait of Taiwan demanded specific attention. Sheryn Lee’s chapter

seeks to do just that by exploring the different roles naval power plays on the two

opposing sides of the strait and links this specific hot spot to both regional and structural

security issues.

28
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29
Notes

i
US Department of Defense, Indo-Pacific Strategy Report: Preparedness, Partnerships, and Promoting a
Networked Region (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2019), 8. For an authoritative Chinese
perspective on the report and its assumptions, see Shichun Wu, “US-China Competition Will Heat Up in
the South China Sea,” The Diplomat, November 8, 2019.
ii
Congressional Research Service, US-China Strategic Competition in South and East China Seas:
Background and Issues for Congress, CRS Report no. R42784 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research
Service, 2019); Office of Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s
Republic of China 2019 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2019); Edmund J. Burke et al., China’s
Military Activities in the East China Sea: Implication for Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force, Research Report no.
RR-2574-AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 2018).
iii
For a thorough analysis of the intellectual debate over the changing priorities of American naval strategy
in the 1990s and early 2000s, see Gary Anderson, Beyond Mahan: Proposal for US Naval Strategy in the
21st Century (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1993); James Goldrick and John Hattendorf, eds.,
Mahan Is Not Enough: The Proceedings of a Conference on the Works of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir
Herbert Richmond (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1993); John Hattendorf, ed., US Naval Strategy
in the 1990s: Selected Documents (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2006); and Peter D. Haynes,
Toward a New Maritime Strategy: American Naval Thinking in the Post–Cold War Era (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 2015).
iv
White House, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: 2017); Chief of Naval
Operations, A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0 (Washington, DC: US Navy, 2018).
v
Ministry of Defence, Defence in a Competitive Age (London: Ministry of Defence, 2021), 9.
vi
Gary Roughead, The Trident Returns: Reactivating the US Second Fleet and Revitalizing Anti-submarine
Warfare in the Atlantic <AU: Titles get capped headline style according to Chicago rules (in this case
8.161) regardless of how they originally appeared.> (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and
International Studies, 2018); “US Navy Resurrects Second Fleet in Atlantic to Counter Russia,” BBC News,
May 5, 2018; Mark D. Faram, “Second Fleet Continues to Grow,” Navy Times, May 30, 2019.
vii
Jacob L. Shuford, “President’s Forum—A New Maritime Strategy: Admiral Mullen’s Challenge,” Naval
War College Review 56, no. 4 (2006): 7–10; Ronald E. Ratcliff, “Building Partners’ Capacity: The Thousand-
Ship Navy,” Naval War College Review 60, no. 4 (2007): 45–58. For a formal implementation of the
concept in USN strategy, see US Marine Corps, US Navy, and US Coast Guard, A Cooperative Strategy for
21st Century Seapower (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2007). For a critical analysis of the
process that led from the thousand-ship navy to the cooperative strategy, see Haynes, Toward a New
Maritime Strategy, chaps. 11–12.
viii
US Department of Defense, Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, 16.
ix
For a comprehensive and enlightening treatise on the relationship linking naval power and American
security policy, see Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, The End of Grand Strategy: US Maritime
Operations in the 21st Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), chap. 1. For a critical view on
the matter of the exercise of American naval hegemony, see Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation
for US Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).
x
Geoffrey Till, Asia’s Naval Expansion: An Arms Race in the Making? (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012);
Geoffrey Till and Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, eds., Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia: Problems and
Prospects for Small and Medium Navies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
xi
An assumption informing, for example, Anders Corr, ed., Great Powers, Grand Strategies: The New
Game in the South China Sea (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017).
xii
Peter A. Dutton and Ryan D. Martinson, China’s Evolving Surface Fleet, CMSI Red Books (Newport, RI:
Naval War College Press, 2017); Scott N. Romaniuk and Tobia Burgers, “China’s Next Phase of
Militarization in the South China Sea,” The Diplomat, March 20, 2019; Steven Stachwick, “China’s South

30
China Sea Militarization Has Peaked,” Foreign Policy, August 19, 2019; Ian Bowers and Collin Koh Swee
Lean, eds., Grey and White Hulls: An International Analysis of the Navy–Coast Guard Nexus (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
xiii
Peter A. Dutton, Isaac B. Kardon, and Conor M. Kennedy, Djibouti: China’s First Overseas Strategic
Strongpoint, China Maritime Report no. 6 (Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies Institute and US Naval
War College, 2020); Ryan D. Martinson and Peter A. Dutton, China’s Distant Ocean Survey Activities:
Implications for US National Security, China Maritime Report no. 3 (Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies
Institute and US Naval War College, 2018); Peter A. Dutton, Beyond the Wall: Chinese Far Seas Operation
(Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies Institute and US Naval War College, 2015).
xiv
State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, China’s National Defense in the New
Era (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2019).
xv
Alessio Patalano, Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience, and the Making
of a Navy (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), chap. 7.
xvi
In the English language, two volumes that well capture Chinese debates on maritime affairs are Michael
McDevitt, Becoming a Great “Maritime Power”: A Chinese Dream (Arlington, VA: Center for Naval
Analyses, 2016), and Hu Bo, Chinese Maritime Power in the 21st Century: Strategic Planning, Policy, and
Predictions (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019).
xvii
Stansfield Turner, “Missions of the US Navy,” Naval War College Review 27, no. 2 (1974): 2–17.
xviii
Ratcliff, “Building Partners’ Capacity,” 46–49. Also, a similar approach informed important documents
such as European Commission, European Union Maritime Security Strategy: Responding Together to
Global Challenges (Brussels: European Union’s Publications Office, 2014), and Council of the European
Union, Council Conclusions on the Revision of the European Union Maritime Security Strategy (EUMSS)
Action Plan (Brussels: Council of the European Union, 2018). For a critical overview of the different
meanings of “maritime security,” see Christian Bueger, “What Is Maritime Security?,” Marine Policy 53,
(2015): 159–64, https//doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2014.12.005.
xix
For a definition of “good order” at sea, see Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century
(Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2009), chap. 11.
xx
Eleanor Freud, Freedom of Navigation in the South China Sea: A Practical Guide (Cambridge, MA: Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, 2017). For an informed view on the origins of the US
freedom-of-navigation program, see Elliot L. Richardson, “Power, Mobility, and the Law of the Sea,”
Foreign Affairs 58, no. 4 (1980): 902–19.
xxi
US Department of Defense, The Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy (Washington, DC: US
Department of Defense), 25–29.
xxii
Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper, “Reassessing Hedging: The Logic of Alignment in East Asia,” Security
Studies 24, no. 4 (2015): 696–727, https//doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1103130.
xxiii
Alessio Patalano, “Beyond the Gunboats: Rethinking Naval Diplomacy and Humanitarian Assistance
Disaster Relief in East Asia,” RUSI Journal 160, no. 2 (2015): 32–39,
https//doi.org/10.1080/03071847.2015.1031523. For a broader overview of “soft power” and naval
activities, see Bruce A. Elleman and S. C. M. Paine, eds., Navies and Soft Power: Historical Case Studies of
Naval Power and the Nonuse of Military Force (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2015).
xxiv
James Goldrick and Jack McCaffrie, Navies of Southeast Asia: A Comparative Study (Abingdon, UK:
Routledge, 2013).
xxv
Alessio Patalano, “Commitment by Presence: Naval Diplomacy and Japanese Defense Engagement in
Southeast Asia,” in Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia, ed. Jeff Kingston and James Brown, 100–113 (New
York: Routledge, 2018); Alessio Patalano, “Japan as a Maritime Power: Deterrence, Diplomacy, and
Maritime Security,” in The Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy, ed. Mary M. McCarthy (New York:
Routledge, 2018), 155–72; John Bradford, Understanding Fifty Years of Japanese Maritime Security
Capacity Building Activities in Southeast Asia (Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 2018.
xxvi
Alessio Patalano, Japanese Naval Diplomacy, in The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Politics, ed. Robert J
Pekkanen and Saadia Pekkanen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
xxvii
Graeme Dobell, “South Pacific Security at Shangri-La,” The Strategist, June 5, 2019; Jesse Barker Gale,
“Competition and Cooperation the South Pacific National Bureau of Asian Research, August 15, 2019,
https://www.nbr.org/publication/competition-and-cooperation-in-the-south-pacific/. See also Sandra

31
Tarte, Fiji Islands’ Security Challenges and Defense Policy Issues, NIDS Joint Research Series no. 5 (Tokyo:
National Institute for Defense Studies, 2010).
xxviii
In this volume, we use the term “naval forces” to capture a state’s “architecture” designed to tackle
the wider spectrum of security challenges at sea. Bowers and Koh have provided the most comprehensive
examination of the diverse ways in which state actors implement national security in a maritime context.
Bowers and Koh, Grey and White Hulls, 5–11.
xxix
Notably, see James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1991: Political Applications of Limited Naval
Force, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994); Jonathan Alford, ed., Sea Power and Influence:
Old Issues and New Challenges (Westmead, UK: Gower Publishing, 1980); Edward N. Luttwak, The Political
Uses of Sea Power, Studies in International Affairs, no. 23 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1974); J. J. Widen, “Naval Diplomacy: A Theoretical Approach,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 22, no. 4 (2011):
715–33, https//doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2011.625830; and Andrew T. H. Tan, ed., The Politics of
Maritime Power: A Survey, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2011).
xxx
Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, 1998), 10–15. For specifics on East Asia, see Barry Buzan, “Security Architecture in Asia:
The Interplay of Regional and Global Levels,” Pacific Review 16, no. 2 (2003): 143–73,
https//doi.org/10.1080/0951274032000069660, and Barry Buzan, “The Southeast Asian Security
Complex,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 10, no. 1 (1988): 1–16, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25797984.
xxxi
Kei Koga, “Japan’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ Question: Countering China or Shaping a New Regional Order?,”
International Affairs 96, no. 1 (2020): 49–73, https//doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz241.
xxxii
Rory Medcalf, “The Indo-Pacific: What’s in a Name?,” American Interest 9, no. 2 (2013): 58–66;
Brendan Taylor, “Is Australia’s Indo-Pacific Strategy and Illusion?,” International Affairs 96, no. 1 (2020):
95–110, https//doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz228.
xxxiii
Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, “Modi’s Vision for the Indo-Pacific Region,” IISS Analysis, June 2, 2018,
https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2018/06/modi-vision-indo-pacific; “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-
Pacific,” Association of Southeast Asian Nations, June 23, 2019,
https://asean.org/storage/2019/06/ASEAN-Outlook-on-the-Indo-Pacific_FINAL_22062019.pdf; Dewi
Fortuna Anwar, “Indonesia and the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific,” International Affairs 96, no. 1
(2020): 111–29, https//doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz223.
xxxiv
“The Indo-Pacific Region: A Priority for France,” Ministry for European and Foreign Affairs, updated
July 2021, https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/asia-and-oceania/the-indo-pacific-region-a-
priority-for-france/; Gudrun Wacker, “Europe and the Indo-Pacific: Comparing France, Germany, and the
Netherlands: Analysis,” Eurasia Review, March 10, 2021; HM Government, Global Britain in a Competitive
Age, CP 403 (London: HM Government, 2021), 66–68.
xxxv
Dingding Chen, “The Indo-Pacific Strategy: A Background Analysis,” Italian Institute for International
Political Studies, June 4, 2018, https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/indo-pacific-strategy-
background-analysis-20714; Feng Liu, “The Recalibration of Chinese Assertiveness: China’s Responses to
the Indo-Pacific Challenge,” International Affairs 96, no. 1 (2020): 9–27, https//doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz226.
xxxvi
Rory Medcalf, Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America, and the Contest for the World’s Pivotal Region
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 5.
xxxvii
Medcalf, Indo-Pacific Empire, 6.
xxxviii
Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, 15.
xxxix
Till, Seapower, 23–33.
xl
Chris Parry, Super Highway: Sea Power in the 21st Century (London: Elliott & Thompson, 2014), 1–3;
Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006),
26–27.
xli
Till, Seapower, 23–33.
xlii
Andrew Lambert, “The Pax Britannica and the Advent of Globalisation,” in Maritime Strategy and
Global Order: Markets, Resources, Security, ed. Daniel Moran and James A. Russell, 5–19 (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2016). For an example of a small navy defending a set of wider economic
interests, see Deborah Sanders, “Small Navies in the Black Sea: A Case Study of Romania’s Maritime
Power,” in Small Navies: Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace, ed. Michael Mulqueen,
Deborah Sanders, and Ian Speller, 151–67, and Ian Speller, Understanding Naval Warfare (New York:

32
Routledge, 2014), 28–32. On the impact of the sea on the nature of naval operations, see Roger Barnett,
Navy Strategic Culture: Why the Navy Thinks Differently (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009), 22–
31.
xliii
Till, Seapower, 114–44; Speller, Understanding Naval Warfare, 170–78; Norman Firedman, “Navies and
Technology,” in The Politics of Maritime Power: A Survey, 2nd ed., ed. Andrew T. H. Tan, 45–61 (London:
Routledge, 2011).
xliv
David C. Kang, East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2010); David C. Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems: The Tribute
System in Early Modern East Asia,” Security Studies 19, no. 4 (2010): 591–622,
https//doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2010.524079; David C. Kang, Meredith Shaw, and Ronan Tse-min Fu,
“Measuring War in Early Modern East Asia, 1368–1841: Introducing Chinese and Korean Language
Sources,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 4 (2016): 766–77, https//doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqw032.
xlv
David C. Kang, American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the 21st Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017), 16–17.
xlvi
Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy.”
xlvii
Jo Inge Bekkevold and Geoffrey Till, eds., International Order at Sea: How It Is Challenged, How It Is
Maintained (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
xlviii
Peter Dutton, Robert Ross, and Øystein Tunsjø, eds., Twenty-First Century Seapower: Cooperation and
Conflict at Sea (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013).
xlix
Daniel Moran and James A. Russell, eds., Maritime Strategy and Global Order: Markets, Resources,
Security (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015).
l
Geoffrey Till and Jane Chan, eds., Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia, Nature, Causes, and
Consequences (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013); Nicholas Tarling and Xin Chen, eds., Maritime Security in
East and Southeast Asia: Political Challenges in Asian Waters (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
li
Bernard D. Cole, Asian Maritime Strategies: Navigating Troubled Waters (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 2013).
lii
Geoffrey Till, Asia’s Naval Expansion: An Arms Race in the Making? (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012).
Also, very closely related to this is Desmond Ball, “Arms Modernization in Asia: An Emerging Complex
Arms Race,” in The Global Arms Trade, ed. Andrew T. H. Tan, 30–52 (London: Routledge, 2010).
liii
Thomas G. Mahnken and Dan Blumenthal, eds., Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present, and Future of
Regional Security (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014).
liv
Mahnken and Blumenthal, Strategy in Asia.
lv
Jonathan D. Caverley and Peter Dombrowski, “Too Important to Be Left to the Admirals: The Need to
Study Maritime Great-Power Competition,” Security Studies 29, no. 4 (2020): 579–600,
https//doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2020.1811448.
lvi
For example, see Sam Bateman, “Maritime Security: Regional Concerns and Global Implications,” in
Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?, ed. William T. Tow, 247–65 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009).
lvii
Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post–Cold War East Asia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
lviii
Harvey Starr, “On Geopolitics: Spaces and Places,” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2003):
433–39, https//doi.org/10.4324/9781315633152.
lix
Or Rosenboim, “Geopolitics and Empire: Visions of Regional Order in the 1940s,” Modern Intellectual
History 12, no. 2 (2015): 353–81, https//doi.org/10.1017/S1479244314000547; Or Rosenboim, “The Value
of Space: Geopolitics, Geography, and the American Search for International Relations Theory in the
1950s,” International History Review 42, no. 3 (2020): 639–55,
https//doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1596966.
lx
Robert D. Kaplan, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (New York: Random
House, 2010); Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us about Coming
Conflicts and the Battle against Fate (New York: Random House, 2017); Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron:
The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (New York: Random House, 2015).
lxi
François Joyaux, Géopolitique de l’Extrême-Orient [Geopolitics of the Far East], Tome 1: Espaces et
Politiques [Vol. 1: Spaces and Policies] (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1993).

33
lxii
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), chap. 4; Jack S.
Levy and William R. Thompson, “Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally against the Leading Global
Power?,” International Security 35, no. 1 (2010): 7–43, https//doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00001; Ian Bowers,
“Escalation at Sea: Stability and Instability in Maritime East Asia,” Naval War College Review 71, no. 4
(2018): 45–65.
lxiii
In the modern history of the Asia Pacific, the Japanese expansion in the 1930s and early 1940s
represents the most glaring exception. For a brief summary of changes in Japanese strategy, see Sally C.
Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017).
lxiv
Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2006).
lxv
Kevin Rowlands, Naval Diplomacy in the 21st Century: A Model for the Post–Cold War Global Order
(Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019), 11–14.

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