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Opinion | How the Indo-Pacific became the new arena for US-China rivalry
- As Washington ups its interest in Southeast Asia, it has made ‘Indo-Pacific’ its preferred term for the vast region that stretches from India to Australia
- The name is an attempt to align geographic and political categories as the US competes with China for influence
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During his recent visit to Southeast Asia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken found just the right diplomatic note to describe the sudden uptick of US interest in a region long neglected in Washington’s corridors of power.
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“It’s not about a contest between a US-centric region or a China-centric region – the Indo-Pacific is its own region,” he said.
Diplomatic niceties aside, the competition between the US and China for the hearts and minds of Southeast Asia is heating up. It is a contest, and Washington and Beijing are keen to outdo one another in spreading influence in the region.
As for the Indo-Pacific being “its own region”, that anodyne phrase is also up for debate. Every region is its own region, but when boundaries are conjured up with little basis in reality or fact, purely for political purposes, is it even meaningful to think of it as a region?
The term “Indo-Pacific” remains controversial. Outside marine biology, it is close to meaningless. Historically, it was used between the two world wars in Berlin, where policymakers envisioned a German alliance with India and China. Nowadays, the only reason it is being bandied about is because the United States is changing the terminology of the game as it goes along.
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It’s a linguistic sleight of hand that lets the US include India in its China encirclement strategy.
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