Suchergebnisse

Notwithstanding its exit from the European Union itself, the United Kingdom still remains an influential European power with significant interests and equities in the Indo-Pacific region. This article probes the substance of London's engagement with the region through a distillation of relevant policy documents/statements appertaining to the Indo-Pacific. It reconciles this material within a three-tiered analytical framework that encompasses British 'aims'; the 'assets' it holds; and then 'assesses' its performance and prospects. Like the other European actors considered in this Symposium, it reveals the strong confluence of economic, security and normative elements that define its regional strategic outlook. While there are many synergies with the approaches of the other European powers, what makes the United Kingdom case distinctive is a more prolific set of regional partnerships alongside multilateral engagement ('networks and grids'), and a greater accent on hard power capabilities. The latter however are placed in service of the former – Britain has no aspirations to shift the regional balance of power independently.

The South Pacific region is in the international spotlight once more as resident and extra-regional powers jockey for influence and allegiance as part of a broader strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. This article reveals the geostrategic, geopolitical and geoeconomic issues at stake and provides a capsule analysis of the approach taken by all the key competitors. It also reveals the responses of the Pacific Island countries themselves to the strategic rivalry unfolding on their doorstep.

Abstract
Deeping superpower rivalry between the United States and China has created acute strategic dilemmas for secondary powers in the Indo-Pacific such as Australia and Japan. This predicament is exacerbated by their divergent security and economic interests which cut across the superpower divide; a condition dubbed a 'security/economic disconnect'. These two intimately related dynamics preclude clear-cut implementation of conventional balancing/bandwagoning alignment choices and have led to mixed hedging strategies to cope with this situation. To address these issues, the article presents a refinement of the hedging concept in International Relations (IR) that emphasizes its multi-dimensional nature, within a broader interpretation of alignment itself. It applies this to the case of the Australia and Japan with reference to their Strategic Partnership, which is both emblematic of hedging responses to systemic uncertainty, and an institutional mechanism through which to operationalize joint hedging policies. This provides insights into how middle power strategic partnerships are managing strategic risks across the security, economic, and other, domains.

The complex security dynamics of the pivotal Asia Pacific region, involving disparate and contentious power blocs, clearly have implications far beyond the region itself. Thomas Wilkins sheds new light on those dynamics, providing a rich framework for better understanding the nature of security alignments in Asia Pacific, as well as a reexamination of the dominant forces at play: the US alliance system, ASEAN, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

A reassessment the nature of "alliances" and "alignments" since the end of the Cold War, both practically and conceptually, is long overdue. Treaty alliances have become partially obsolescent as new models of security cooperation, such as the 'strategic partnership', and other "minilateral" configurations, have emerged as preferred instruments of alignment. The evolving nature of alliance and alignment is nowhere better illustrated than in the metamorphosis of the venerable Hub-and-Spokes US alliance system in the Indo-Pacific. This article captures the changes occurring in the US alliance system from both a macro-level (structural) standpoint, before proceeding to the micro-level to evaluate individual alliance/partnership dyads to illustrate the complexion of the hub-and-spokes "plus" configuration of today. It argues that we are witnessing is a "reshuffling of the deck" in terms of traditional treaty allies – with Japan and Australia now forming the "core" of the system, with South Korea effectively confined as a "single-issue" alliance focused on the peninsula, and with Thailand and the Philippines (arguably) becoming increasingly "peripheral". But even as the original treaty-system contracts, Washington is seeking to "network" the original model through the acquisition of non-treaty strategic partnerships with key states such as India, Singapore, (and, more circumspectly – Taiwan), whilst also welcoming European engagement. This networking strategy is also designed to achieve second and third order effects through incentivisation of direct "spoke-to-spoke" security cooperation and through the concentration of allies/partners into minilateral formations. The resultant reconfiguration might be dubbed a Hub-and-Spokes "plus" model. (Asian Aff / GIGA)