The Indo-Pacific is a strategic system encompassing the Indian and Pacific oceans, reflecting the expanding interests and reach of China and India as well as the enduring role of the US. The Lowy Institute's International Security program presents a weekly selection of links illuminating the changing security picture in this increasingly connected super-region.
- Indian Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi has received his first briefing on security and defence matters. There will be significant opportunities and challenges for the new Prime Minister in these fields.
- James Holmes over at The Diplomat has published the comments he gave at a Lowy Institute workshop in Singapore last week: SSBNs and Strategic Stability in the Indo-Pacific.
- North Korea is investing heavily in anti-submarine warfare, with two brand new helicopter-carrying frigates.
- India has conducted the first test of its next-generation submarine-launched ballistic missile, the K-4.
- A new blog called On the Margins is taking a closer look at the political and economic geography of the Indo-Pacific region.
- What effect will continuing Chinese economic reforms have on the wider Indo-Pacific strategic system? Ian Bremmer argues that either the political elite or the country itself are in for a hard landing.
- Last week the Chief of the People's Liberation Army General Staff, General Fang Fenghui, toured US military facilities with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey in a military-to-military exchange. The transcript of their joint press conference is available, but the best sound bite came from General Fang:
We do not make trouble. We do not create trouble. But we are not afraid of trouble.
The Lowy Institute International Security Program's work on Indo-Pacific security is supported by two grants from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation.
