The Indo-Pacific is a strategic system encompassing the Indian and Pacific oceans, reflecting the expanding interests and reach of China and India as well as the enduring role of the US. The Lowy Institute's International Security program presents a weekly selection of links illuminating the changing security picture in this increasingly connected super-region.
- Richard McGregor on 'Abe's date with history' in DC, and a summary of the implications for the new US-Japanese defence guidelines.
- And here's a transcript and the video of Abe's address to Congress, as well as his joint press conference with President Obama.
- An interesting opinion in Nikkei Asian Review on what China's long-term goals might be in island building in the South China Sea: a Cold War-style submarine bastion.
- Anti-submarine warfare has traditionally been a weak area for the PLAN, but things are improving. This week photos of the GX-6, China's new anti-submarine patrol aircraft, have leaked online.
- The US has expressed interest in eight locations for new military access arrangements in the Philippines.
- Hazel Smith has attempted to debunk some myths about North Korea.
- Afghanistan and India pledged to expand anti-terrorism cooperation this week after President Ashraf Ghani met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.
- While Abe's visit to DC yielded a substantial defence agreement, there was nothing major on the TPP front. Interestingly, as negotiations on the TPP have begun to enter their closing phases, Beijing has been relatively quiet.
- Meanwhile, while President Obama has said cautiously that the Chinese-led AIIB 'could be a positive thing' for the region, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal he was clear on what a failure to close the TPP would mean:
If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region...We will be shut out—American businesses and American agriculture. That will mean a loss of U.S. jobs.