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
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”
From the April 15th 2023 edition
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