Indo-Pacific vs. Pacific Asia: Warring Regionalisms?
Indo-Pacific vs. Pacific Asia: Warring Regionalisms?
Regional futures hang in the balance amid escalating geopolitical risks and economic uncertainties.
A new book argues that the concept of Pacific Asia is much more useful than the Indo-Pacific in capturing the twin realities of economic connectivity and political division in a more uncertain and complex multipolar world.
Indo-Pacific vs. Pacific Asia: Warring Regionalisms?
Context
While the proliferation of Indo-Pacific strategies speaks to the increased traction of the term “Indo-Pacific”, its usage in parts of the region is still quite uneven relative to more established alternatives like Asia depending on the country, subject or initiative in question (take the trend of increased traction within Southeast Asia on the Quad, relative to uncertainty over the more nascent IPEF, as just one example, with one survey snapshot shown below1). Few would contest trends like the maritime confluence between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and India’s rise noted by policymakers like the late Shinzo Abe or strategists Rory Medcalf and C Raja Mohan2. Yet some still see the term’s relation to intensifying U.S.-China competition as being politically sensitive, while others view the Asia-Pacific as more useful to focus on the region’s growth story. Names aside, an additional regional complication is that economic and geopolitical realities are becoming increasingly intertwined as the world is becoming more divided, which can narrow and aggregate choices few want to make. “We see the outlines of a new paradigm emerging for the global order,” Singapore’s prime minister-in-waiting Lawrence Wong told a forum this week, “one where business is increasingly going to be organized not just by economic logic, but also by geopolitical orientation and national security.”3
Regional Example of Aggregate IPEF Perceptions
A new book by professor emeritus Brantly Womack, Recentering Pacific Asia, argues that the true story in the twenty-first century is the emergence of “Pacific Asia” as the world’s largest and most cohesive economic region and the key locus in a multinodal global order. The book is divided into six main chapters (see snapshot table below). The first four chapters trace the origins of Pacific Asia (a neologism for what some refer to as East Asia) through the centuries, which Womack divides into three notions of connectivity — “thin connectivity” by ritual in the premodern era; “sharp connectivity” amid imperialism and Western-oriented modernization; and “thick connectivity” in an increasingly globalized region since 20084. The last two chapters then chart out the contours of a Pacific Asia amid a multilayered, interconnected global matrix, with dynamics that are far beyond the control of either China or the United States. Key chapters also integrate commentary from other noted scholars, such as Wang Gungwu and Evelyn Goh.
Key Chapters in Recentering Pacific Asia
Analysis
The book is an important reminder of the need to focus on Asia’s growth story in its own right and intraregional dynamics within that. As important as China and the United States are to the region, a blinkered focus on dynamics between the two powers alone can miss regional realities Womack notes, such as the fact that East Asia already surpassed the combined GDPs of both the European Union and the United States by 2020, and that it is set to account for almost half of global growth this year by one count5. Within Asia, the book rightly observes that the region is characterized by the dual dynamic of economic cohesion and political division — about half of regional trade is now intraregional, but issues such as cross-Strait ties, the South China Sea, and Sino-Japanese tensions make triumphalist notions such as the “Asian Century” seem premature, as even some Southeast Asian leaders have admitted6.
Womack’s situation of Asia within a so-called multinodal world is also a noteworthy contribution for those looking to make sense of the current global order and where it is headed. The notion of a post-hegemonic “multinodal matrix” of states — deliberately distinguished from multipolarity — acknowledges the role of power but also adds the importance of location, connectivity and multiple levers of influence such that no single actor controls the entire system, with ASEAN’s diplomatic centrality being a case in point7. For those with an interest in forecasting, the book also delves into a whole spectrum of future possibilities across variables in a multinodal world, including the state of U.S.-China “asymmetric parity” and the role of regional institutions and non-governmental organizations (see table below).