With the release of the Defence White Paper 2013 on 3 May, Australia officially has a new region, the ‘Indo-Pacific’: a strategic arc ‘connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia’.
Rory Medcalf views the Indo-Pacific as ‘a valid and objective description of the greater regional system in which Australia now finds itself’. In his book There Goes the Neighbourhood: Australia and the rise of Asia, Michael Wesley writes that the concept emerged due to the reality of growing economic and strategic links through Asia: what he terms the ‘Indo-Pacific power highway’.
the 2013 White Paper adopts the concept and ‘adjusts Australia’s priority strategic focus to the arc extending from India though Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia, including the sea lines of communication on which the region depends’. The White Paper sets ‘a Stable Indo-Pacific’ as one of Australia’s four key strategic interests, making the capacity to ‘contribute to military contingencies in the Indo-Pacific’ one of the Australian Defence Force’s four principal tasks.
Australia
The Indo-Pacific pivot - Indian Express
Australia's new defence policy recognises India's eastward orientation
The test will be whether Australia and India can turn their converging interests into naval exercises, technology partnerships and shared maritime surveillance.
A new plan for Australian defence policy has big implications for India. For New Delhi, the good news is that Canberra's 2013 Defence White Paper (WP), launched by Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week, sharply redefines Australia's region of strategic interest as being broadly the same as India's: the Indo-Pacific.
a new "Indo-Pacific strategic arc" is connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia. This new framework is forged by several factors: notably the massive growth in trade, energy and investment flows between East Asia and the Indian Ocean rim, and the rise of India as an important strategic, economic and diplomatic power beyond South Asia.
This declaration makes Australia the first country in the world officially to recognise its region as the Indo-Pacific rather than the Asia-Pacific. It will almost certainly not be the last. Indo-Pacific thinking is also gaining traction in Delhi, Washington, Tokyo and parts of Southeast Asia. The term has been used by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, notably, last December, when he moved to enhance India's relations with ASEAN. And it makes objective sense as a description of the commercial and security linkages that will determine whether the Asian century is marked by prosperity or conflict.
Australia is neither worried nor even ambivalent about India's growing naval weight. The paper emphasises that Canberra wants to work more closely with Delhi and the Indian navy to keep that order stable and peaceful.
The new policy confirms that Australia will also upgrade its airfield on Cocos Islands, some highly strategic territory in the Indian Ocean, for Australia's new fleet of P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft. In time, that runway could also be used by the Americans. And if Australia-India ties grow close enough, conceivably, it might even be visited by India's Poseidons too.
The Indo-Pacific pivot - Indian Express
The 2013 Defence White Paper, which defines the Australian government’s strategic military orientation, codifies its unconditional support for the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia.
http://www.sldinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/WP_2013_web.pdf
The document asserts that “the relationship between the United States and China will determine the outlook for our region”, over the coming decades, and foreshadows that Australia will serve as the military adjunct and physical base for US efforts to dominate the entire “Indo-Pacific”. It stresses the importance of collaboration with the US, as well as states such as India, in controlling the key maritime trade passages between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Australia - The new staging ground for the US's Asia pivot??
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