Participants in the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) panel “Allies and Geopolitical Competition in the Indo-Pacific Region” on May 4 stressed the participation of allies in the region.
CSIS and the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney cohosted the panel. Participants discussed geopolitical dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region and ways to optimize coordination between allies.
The event was divided into two panels, according to CSIS. Panel one was titled "Regional Geopolitics: Are We Fit for Purpose?" and panel two was titled "Economic Security." Michael Green, the CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), moderated the first panel. The second was moderated by Matthew Goodman, the senior vice president for economics at CSIS.
“Increasing strategic competition means we now have the power of proximity in Australia," Peter Dean, director of Foreign Policy and Defense, U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said in the discussion. "We sit on that hinge between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans with our great connectivity we have through the Asian countries into the rest of the region.”
Regional military modernization is important, Dean said, specifically with Chinese military expansion that’s been the largest and most ambitious since the Second World War.
“But the real problem with that has been done without transparency and without reassurance from China," Goodman said, "about how that extension how that military power is going to be used within the region,” he said.
Victor Cha, CSIS senior vice president for Asia and Korea Chair, said the U.S. and countries in the region "went through a period as we all know, where these bilateral relationships were deeply damaged."
"I would say countries like Japan, Australia tried to put their best face on it," Cha said at the forum. "But, you know, the reservoir of trust and goodwill, I think was quite completed at the end of the Trump administration. So reestablishing those bilateral relationships was quite important."
Statements from joint summits in Korea and the Philippines summits included language that he said acknowledged the need for a more ground level of consensus-based rule- and decision-making. The other area where he said coalitional diplomacy needs to do a better job is in dealing with economic coercion.
Military power is needed beyond just the physical virtual realm.
"The digital landscape has inadvertently created an ecosystem or information environment that is really vulnerable to exploitation and interference,” Miah Hammond-Errey said.
Decision makers in science centers were misinformation targets, she said.
"And we can think about the Chinese influence in the Pacific, specifically about how information science operations were targeted against key decision makers prior to the security agreement being signed with China," Hammond-Errey said during the panel. "It was coordinated, you can see that.”
The U.S. and Australia, along with the U.K., are engaged in a landmark defense agreement called AUKUS, which aims to counter China’s military threat in the Indo-Pacific region, Reuters reported.
The pact, which is Australia's largest defense project, requires at least one U.S. nuclear-powered submarine to visit Australian ports in the coming years. Several submarines will be deployed by the U.S. in Australia, tentatively in 2027. In the early 2030s, Australia will purchase three submarines with an option for two more.
