Asia | Putting the Indo into Indo-Pacific

Rivalry between America and China has spread to the Indian Ocean

The world’s most powerful navies are swarming to a long-neglected maritime region

2NX5EKX 230207-N-NH267-1085 INDIAN OCEAN (Feb. 7, 2023) The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60) and the Indian Navy INS Savitri (P53) patrol the Indian Ocean during an exercise. Paul Hamilton, part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, is in U.S. 7th Fleet conducting routine operations. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navys largest forward-deployed numbered fleet, and routinely interacts and operates with Allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region. — Image: Alamy

Apr 10th 2023|PERTH AND SINGAPORE

A“FREE AND open Indo-Pacific”, intended to encompass both the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, is the hottest geopolitical slogan. When strategists talk about the Indo-Pacific, however, they often mean just the Pacific, and then only the far-western part, around the South China Sea and the East China Sea. It is there that a struggle for primacy is at its fiercest between America, dominant since the second world war, and a resurgent China. Yet the Indian Ocean, relatively neglected until recently, is now having a moment.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Putting the Indo into Indo-Pacific”