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Strategic Geography and the Changing Prosiding Seminar Nasional (Pendidikan Geografi, FISH UNESA) Surabaya, 23 Mei 2017 PENGELOLAAN POTENSI MARITIM INDONESIA Strategic Geography and the Changing Indo-Pacific: Lesson from Australia by Juniawan Priyono and Purnomo Yusgiantoro Indonesia Defence University e-mail: [email protected] Abstract Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper reflects a revolution in the way in which Australia thinks about its strategic geography. Strategic geography refers to the control of, or access to, spatial areas that has an impact on the security and economic prosperity of nations. The “Indo-Pacific” has now decisively displaced the “Asia-Pacific” as defence planners’ preferred term for describing their neighborhood. The Indo-Pacific can be understood as a maritime super-region with its geographical center in Southeast Asia. The reawakening of the Indo-Pacific reflects three wider realities, first, its geographically-defined interests and economic-societal enmeshment with Asia. Second, the rebalancing imperatives of the US alliance. Third, the fact that the major states of Asia have some fundamental economic and strategic drivers. 1. Introduction Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP) marks the return of geography to defence planning. The Turnbull government’s DWP clearly recognises geographical strategic imperatives. It lists Australia’s strategic defence interests as: (i) a secure, resilient Australia, with secure northern approaches and proximate sea lines of communication; (ii) a secure nearer region, encompassing maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific; and (iii) a stable Indo-Pacific region and a rules-based global order. According to Dibb (2016), it seems that they now have close to bipartisan agreement on the geographical priorities that support Australian defence planning. Certainly, the Indo-Pacific has gained considerable currency of late. Its acceptance as a distinct biogeographic region in marine science is of long standing. But in geopolitics, the term lay dormant for decades, until its recent re-emergence in a gathering tempo of speeches, press reports, government documents and think-tank reports (Medcalf, 2012). Over the past ten years, having previously seen it deployed in an internal Australian government think piece around 2005, Richardson (2005) presciently wrote that the nascent East Asia Summit could be the emerging capstone for an Indo-Pacific order. A broadly-agreed definition is a work in progress (Medcalf et al., 2012), which “an emerging Asian strategic system that encompasses both the Pacific and Indian Oceans, defined in part by the geographically 134 Prosiding Seminar Nasional (Pendidikan Geografi, FISH UNESA) Surabaya, 23 Mei 2017 PENGELOLAAN POTENSI MARITIM INDONESIA expanding interests and reach of China and India, and the continued strategic role and presence of the United States in both”. Todays, the Turnbull government makes it clear that Australia’s security isn’t linked only to their geography or to confronting threats solely in their maritime approaches. It recognises the reality that Australia also has the responsibility and the capability to respond the threats to the rules-based global order. This sweeping assertion needs to be qualified by the recog-nition that there are distinct limits to Australia’s defence capacity. As the Australian Government drafts a new defence white paper, the aim of this paper is to analyze the fundamentals of Australian strategic geography. It will suggest some defects in current strategy and identify a number of steps that need to be taken to reset Australia’s defence strategy given the evolving Indo-Pacific environment. 2. Theory: Strategic Geography Strategic geography refers to the control of, or access to, spatial areas (land, water and air; including outer space) that has an impact—either positive or negative—on the security and economic prosperity of nations. It embraces all dimensions of geography, which includes both physical and human geography (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). This is a more focused definition than the classical concepts of geopolitics succinctly defined by Cohen as "the relation of international political power to the geographical setting" (after Sen, 1975). It has a more specific meaning in that it is more directed at the tactical elements of geography that contribute to grand strategy. The physical geography of a region generally changes very slowly, though some features change at different rates than others. Over centuries topographical features such as mountains, lakes, river, and shore lines can be altered significantly—with far-reaching consequences—and the climate of a region can change, often more rapidly than its topography. Some physical changes can occur within decades, such as the depletion of natural resources, and some can happen over ten to fifteen years, which is the approximate time range covered (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). The human geography of a region—which can and does change very rapidly, depending upon a number of factors—can be broken down into dozens of subcategories. For our purposes, we will focus on three of them. Political geography describes the control and organization of territory, including people and assets. Economic geography refers to the infra- 135 Prosiding Seminar Nasional (Pendidikan Geografi, FISH UNESA) Surabaya, 23 Mei 2017 PENGELOLAAN POTENSI MARITIM INDONESIA structure and industrial and rural facilities that contribute to the economy of a region, including roads, ports, airports, pipelines, energy utilities, factories, farms and patterns of trade. Military geography concerns the deployment and power projection of military assets as they relate to space, time and distance; and the impact that physical constraints have upon both offensive and defensive military operations (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). Military geography has been strongly influenced over the centuries by developments in technology. Ports and routes that were essential for navies during the age of sail ceased to be important once steamships dominated fleets, and instead coal bunker ports and access to coal supplies became critical. But in less than sixty years oil had replaced coal as the best fuel for ship propulsion and a new set of logistical priorities to provide oil for ships became important. Britain's interest in the Persian Gulf evolved rapidly in the early twentieth century because of its desire to control Mesopotamian oil and not be dependent on the United States. In the 1950s the development of nuclear propulsion for ships virtually eliminated the need for overseas base access for U.S. nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). 3. Discussion Applying the concept of strategic geography to the Indo-Pacific, we can identify a great many contemporary examples of its continuing importance, such as Australia’s lessons learnt. 3.1 From Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific The map of Asia is being reimagined. The idea of the Asia-Pacific, which made good sense as a framework for regional order in the late twentieth century, is giving way to another construct: the Indo-Pacific. This changing use of geographic terms has real-world consequences for how states and leaders perceive the regional strategic order, the challenges it faces, and the ways to address them (Medcalf, 2015a). Accordingly, a contest is emerging over how to define Asia conceptually, including choice of terminology. This will have strategic implications, not least on managing the growth of China’s power and interests (Medcalf, 2015b). Leaders and senior policy figures from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States are increasingly using the term “Indo-Pacific” or similar language in 136 Prosiding Seminar Nasional (Pendidikan Geografi, FISH UNESA) Surabaya, 23 Mei 2017 PENGELOLAAN POTENSI MARITIM INDONESIA speeches and statements. Even where the precise wording differs there is increasingly an intersection between the idea of the Indo-Pacific and terminology used by policy leaders to describe the changing regional order. Notable among these is the “Maritime Silk Road” idea, which China under President Xi Jinping has promoted since late 2013 as a way to define its economic and diplomatic engagement across the Indian Ocean and beyond (Xi, 2013). The evolution of India’s “Look East” policy to an “Act East” agenda under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is part of a serious effort by India to become a more influential power east of Malacca. Since 2007, Japanese policy speeches and statements have occasionally referred to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s formulation of the “confluence of two seas” (Abe, 2007). And Indonesian President Joko Widodo has, since his inauguration speech in late 2014, defined his archipelagic nation as a strategically important maritime nexus between the Indian and Pacific oceans (Witular, 2014). Other Asian middle powers, such as the Republic of Korea, while not necessarily yet embracing Indo-Pacific terminology, are acknowledging their economic and strategic dependence on developments across a much wider maritime region, from the Middle East to the U.S. (Yun, 2014). According to Medcalf (2015b), Indo-Pacific tendency is much more than a matter of superficial or semantic difference. The way policymakers define and imagine regions can affect, among other things, the allocation of resources and high - level attention; the prioritization of security partners among countries; and the membership and agendas of regional diplomatic institutions. Thus, the increasing use of the term Indo-Pacific carries implications for
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