Relevance: GS-2 - Groupings & Agreements Involving India and/or Affecting India's Interests, Effect of Policies & Politics of Countries on India's Interests

Key Phrases: Russia-Ukraine Crisis, balance of influence, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient, QUAD, Integrated deterrence

Why in News?

• The new US Indo-Pacific Strategy is released and has evoked limited interest for reasons which includes the Russia-Ukraine crisis that turned into an invasion and war.
• The new strategy maintains continuity in the broad direction outlined in the last US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, which was released in 2019.
• The new strategy like the previous one too highlights its objective as “building a balance of influence” in the region. However, it adds additional text that stresses on managing competition with the China responsibly.
• The United States' Indo-Pacific strategy continues to focus on bolstering its security and counterbalancing China's influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Major Objectives of Indo-US Strategy:

The United States is committed to an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.

1. Advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific
   • The strategy states to begin with building resilience within countries, as has already been done in the United States.
   • It includes efforts to support open societies and to ensure Indo-Pacific governments can make independent political choices free from coercion.
   • Strategy also states of US making efforts through investments in democratic institutions, a free press, and a vibrant civil society.
2. Building Connections Within and Beyond the Region:
   • A free and open Indo-Pacific can only be achieved by building collective capacity for a new age and through common actions.
   • The US in its policy mentions that it will work in “flexible groupings” to tackle major issues, “particularly through the QUAD.” and will also deepen its regional treaty alliances and work with groups such as ASEAN, the European Union (EU) and NATO.
   • This policy also plans to modernize its long-standing alliances, strengthen emerging partnerships, and invest in regional organizations—the collective capacity that will empower the indo-pacific to adapt to the 21st century’s challenges and seize its opportunities.
3. Drive indo-pacific prosperity:
   • US put forward an Indo-Pacific economic framework—a multilateral partnership for the 21st century. This economic framework will help economies to harness rapid technological transformation, including in the digital economy, and adapt to the coming energy and climate transition.
   • The US will work with partners to ensure that citizens on both sides of the Pacific reap the benefits of these historic economic changes, while deepening their integration.
   • New approaches will also be developed to trade that meet high labor and environmental standards and will govern digital economies and cross-border data flows according to open principles, including through a new digital economy framework.
4. Bolster indo-pacific security:
   • This policy also talks about Integrated deterrence that will be the cornerstone of its approach to more tightly integrate Indo-Pacific efforts across warfighting domains and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the United States, alongside its allies and partners, can dissuade or defeat aggression in any form or domain.
   • It will drive activities that strengthen deterrence and counter coercion, such as opposing efforts to alter the territorial boundaries or undermine the rights of sovereign nations at sea.
5. Build regional resilience to 21st-century transnational threats:
   • The Indo-Pacific is the epicenter of the climate crisis, but it is also essential to climate solutions. Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement will require the major economies in the region to align their targets with the Agreement’s temperature goals.
   • Hence, policy states shared responses to the climate crisis are both a political imperative and an economic opportunity in the Indo-Pacific, home to 70% of the world’s natural disasters.
   • Through initiatives like Clean EDGE, US will incentivize clean-energy technology investment and deployment, seek to drive energy-sector decarbonization, and foster climate-aligned infrastructure investment.
   • Resilience efforts will be advanced in close coordination with ASEAN, APEC, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and other organizations.

Strategic significance of Indo-Pacific region for India:

• Strategic significance: Indio-Pacific is a multipolar region, contributing more than half of the world’s GDP and population. A stable, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific Region is an important pillar of India’s strategic partnership with the other countries especially USA.
• Mineral Resources: Maritime territories have also emerged as depositories of vital resources ranging from fish stocks to minerals and offshore oil and gas.48 The South China Sea, for instance, is estimated to hold some 10 per cent of the global catch of fish as well as 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas.
• Economic Growth: According to a report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), countries in the Indo-Pacific produce over 60% of global GDP, making the region the largest single contributor to global growth.
• Commerce: The region consists of many of the world’s vital choke points for global commerce, including the Straits of Malacca which is very critical for the growth of world economy. The Indo-Pacific region also stands at the intersection of international trade, with around 32.2 million barrels of crude oil pass through annually and 40% of global exports come from the region.
• Maritime Trade: Pacific islands are strategically significant from New Delhi’s point of view as they sit astride important sea lines of communication through which important maritime trade is conducted.

Conclusion:

• The Indo-Pacific region is highly heterogeneous in terms of economic size and level of development, with significant differences in security establishments and resources.
• The Indo-Pacific, with its wealth of natural resources and strategic significance, is bound to create conflicts among nations. Ensuring multilateralism is vital for international peace and optimum use of the limited resources available in the region.
• The U.S administration will continue to give the Indo-Pacific a significant priority. The U.S. Indo-Pacific policy can be expected to reach beyond the defense and security concerns as questions of governance and regional diplomacy will receive increased focus.

Sources: Indian Express  Economic Times

Mains Question:

Q. Discuss the New US Indo-Pacific Strategy in light of the strategic significance of Indo-Pacific region for India?