… India’s significant stakes are expected to increase in future … regional expectations for a more proactive strategic engagement by New Delhi … China’s dramatically expanding naval forays in the IOR threatens India’s primacy in its prime theatre … imperative for India to further her power projection ...
This paper seeks to investigate the factors that allowed China to emerge as a major player in the Oceania. The paper argues that the traditional powers in the region, the ANZUS, have viewed the region predominantly through the geostrategic lens and in the process, have ignored the core concerns of the Pacific States and instead securitized the region driven by their narrow strategic goals, creating a vacuum and a readymade ground for China to step up and assume a gradually increasing influential role in the region with relative ease and without any credible resistance.
The Indian Ocean has been the hub of major economic activity and global realpolitik since the end of the Second World War. It has assumed greater importance since the penultimate decade of the last century and will continue to remain so in the 21st century. The development and progress witnessed in South East Asia, China and India during this period has further extended this geographical construct to the western reaches of the Pacific leading to what some call the great strategic arc of the Indo-Pacific.