This book explores how the Quad Plus mechanism is set to reshape the global multilateral economic and security co-operations between Quad partner countries and the rest of the world. With the Quad partners – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – seeing deteriorating ties with China, the book provides a holistic understanding of the reasons why Quad Plus matters and what it means for the post-COVID Indo-Pacific and Asian order. It goes beyond the existing literature of the global Post-COVID reality and examines how Quad Plus can grow and find synergy with national and multilateral Indo-Pacific initiatives. The chapters analyze the mechanism’s uncharacteristic yet active approach of including countries like South Korea, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand and ASEAN/Vietnam for their successful handling of the pandemic crisis, thereby reshaping the new world’s geopolitical vision. A unique study focused solely on the intricacies and the broader dialogue of the ‘Quad Plus’ narrative, the book caters to strategic audiences as well as academics researching International Relations, Politics, and Indo-Pacific and Asian Studies.

The Indo-Pacific is amongst the most important strategic areas in the world today. The four vibrant, committed democracies spanning the Indo-PacificIndia, USA, Japan and Australia have joined hands in a Track II dialogue to discuss their common security interests, including management of the China challenge, in what has come to be known as the Quad. In 2013, The Heritage Foundation, Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), The Tokyo Foundation and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) came together in Canberra, Australia to reinvigorate efforts for the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue. In an effort to expand the dialogue to other democracies with a strategic stake, scholars from the Philippines and Indonesia were also included. The day-and-a-half Quad Plus Dialogue revolved around several papers prepared by select participants, discussants assigned to critique the papers, and roundtable discussion. The papers, as revised, follow in this volume. The plan of the partner organisations is to continue the dialogue indefinitely on an annual basis and rotate the plus role among other democratic stakeholders in the region. This thought-provoking book, with contributions by well-known analysts and experts from the Quad Plus countries, provides insights into the challenges being faced in the Indo-Pacific and the extent of engagement amongst the democracies of the area in meeting them.

This book explains why the idea of the Indo-Pacific is so strategically important and concludes with a strategy designed to help the West engage with Chinese power in the region in such a way as to avoid conflict.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified geo-political headwinds, manifested in all aspects of the globalised world - from trade to military, cyberspace, and new age technology, thus altering the future of any warfare. Blinkers Off makes a case for multi-polar solidarity to challenge the Chinese position, and India's role within it. The book details the rise of China and its impact on global power.

While US-centred bilateralism and ASEAN-led multilateralism have largely dominated the post-Cold War regional security architecture in the Indo-Pacific, increasing doubts about their effectiveness have resulted in countries turning to alternative forms of cooperation, such as minilateral arrangements. Compared to multilateral groupings, minilateral platforms are smaller in size, as well as more exclusive, flexible and functional. Both China and the US have contributed to minilateral initiatives in the Indo-Pacific. In the case of the former, there is the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation mechanism—involving China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam—established in 2015. In the case of the latter, there has been a revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in 2017—involving the US, Australia, Japan and India. This book examines the rise of these arrangements, their challenges and opportunities, as well as their impact on the extant regional security architecture, including on the ASEAN-led multilateral order. A valuable guide for students and policy-makers looking to understand the nature and development of minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific region.

This book focuses on the Indo-Pacific region’s growing prominence as the world’s major powers gravitate toward this space to expand their influence. With dynamic shifts taking place in the globe’s most strategically volatile region, Indo-Pacific Strategies aims at clarifying the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, expounded both as a strategic concept and nascent region, thus contributing to the burgeoning policy and academic debate. The book offers indispensable insights and appropriate remedies to maintain the rules-based international order as threatened by China’s increasingly assertive and bellicose posturing. It offers up-to-date analyses of Covid-19-related geopolitical trends, the strategies of various Indo-Pacific states against the backdrop of great power competition, the increasingly confrontational stance of Indo-Pacific states against China and the 2020 US election results. This unique book presents deep insights into the roles of Eurasia, small island states, the Middle East and Africa, in addition to Australia, India, Japan and the US, thereby providing much needed comparative studies. It also closely investigates the strategic and tactical operationalization of the Indo-Pacific, making it an essential read for scholars, policymakers, students, and strategists in the field of international politics and Area Studies. Excerpt from the foreword by ABE Shinzō, (former) Prime Minister of Japan "I think this book is the timeliest attempt to bring together the wisdom of eleven people to present a multifaceted view of the FOIP [Free and Open Indo-Pacific]. As a reader, I would like to express my gratitude to the editors and contributors for their valuable intellectual contributions." See the preview function on this website to access the full text.

This book brings together a unique team of academics and practitioners to analyse interests, institutions, and issues affecting and affected by the transition from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific has emerged as the world’s economic and strategic centre of gravity, in which established and rising powers compete with each other. As a strategic space, the Indo-Pacific reflects the rise of geo-political and geo-economic designs and dynamics which have come to shape the region in the early twenty-first century. These new dynamics contrast with the (neo-)liberal ideas and the seemingly increasing globalisation for which the once dominant ‘Asia-Pacific’ regional label stood.