Narrating the Pacific When We Talk About "Indo-Pacific"

I just sat down for one of my podcast interview episodes w/ Dr. Sandra Tarte, who teaches at the University of the South Pacific. We touched on a range of issues, including my own Pacific heritage, how Pacific Island nations think about security, and a lot more.

Two issues worth highlighting.

One, Pacific Island nations broadly share what I call the Hard Rock Cafe theory of security—“love all, serve all.” The Pacific, like Southeast Asia and much of the global South, has a deliberate strategy of not aligning with one great power versus another but instead being a “friend to all, enemy to none.”

We might code this kind of strategy as hedging, but it’s pluralistic worldmaking from the bottom up. It’s a sensible strategy for a smaller power trying to secure itself in a world of self-aggrandizing larger powers.

Two, Pacific nations have self-consciously conceived of themselves as constituting a “Blue Pacific”—a region of continental magnitude. Outside powers—including the United States—are accepting this narrative in a tokenistic way that is marginalizing the Pacific.

The conceptualization of a “Blue Pacific” region serves a number of purposes that we talk about in the episode, but it stands counter to the spirit and the reasoning that led to Washington adopting the term “Indo-Pacific.” I spend a good chunk of Pacific Power Paradox explaining why “Indo-Pacific” is a problematic way to identify Asia.

What Tarte adds to that is the Pacific standpoint, which converges with my argument. The way US policymakers talk about and act on the idea of an “Indo-Pacific” reduces the Pacific region to essentially a bunch of sites for ships and missile defense radars and Marines.

Very 19th century.

Using the correct words when you meet with Pacific leaders might help the meetings go down smoothly, but they can see what your policy priorities are and how you’re actually conducting yourself in their region.

They know you maintain a sphere of influence in the Pacific and deny self-determination to one of its own.

They know you haven’t made amends for your legacy of nuclear testing and chemical dumping.

And they hope you’re not wrecking any prospect for economic development by bulldozing the previous economic order in favor of an America-First geoeconomics. More on that later.

The full episode is available wherever you get podcasts, including here.

You can watch the episode too: