Author: Lalit Kapur

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s foreword to the Integrated Review of Global Britain’s Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy spoke of HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the two largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy, leading a British and allied task group on the United Kingdom’s most ambitious global deployment for over two decades, visiting […]

The utility of the Indo-Pacific as a geo-strategic concept remains the subject of debate, particularly in the “Quad” countries; the United States, Australia, Japan, and India. A series of views published in the Australian National University’s East Asia Forum last month provides several perspectives in this continuing debate. The first questions U.S. strategy in extending […]

Geography dictates two divergent perspectives for ASEAN countries. The first belongs to the “continental” group and the second to the archipelagic nations, especially Indonesia and the Philippines, which constitute nearly half of ASEAN’s population, GDP, and land area, and over 80 percent of its exclusive economic zones. A maritime outlook could be expected to dominate […]

When discussing the Indo-Pacific, John Henry Saxe’s poem of the blind men and the elephant comes to mind. His blind men likened the elephant to a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, or a rope, depending on which part each had touched.  In a similar manner, leaders in the region focus on […]

Today’s globalized world increasingly depends on the Indian Ocean for trade connectivity. In 2018, Indian Ocean-connected nations had a combined nominal GDP of over $54 trillion and included 12 of the 16 members of the trillion-dollar club. By 2033, the Indian Ocean will connect 21 of the 25 global members of the projected trillion-dollar club. […]