The term 'Indo-Pacific' as conceptualised in the language of international law

DOI 10.51634/2307-5201_2023_2_6

УДК 327

ГРНТИ 11.25.91

G.V. Toropchin

PhD in History, Research Fellow, 

International School of Huế University (Vietnam, Huế),

Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Novosibirsk State Technical University

(Russia, Novosibirsk)

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This paper is dedicated to scrutinising the problem of how the term “Indo-Pacific” is conceptualised in the international law from both linguistics and IR (International Relations) perspectives. The relevance of the topic is defined by a growing number of corresponding legal documents adopted by regional and external actors, which in turn has an impact on the realm of international law. The goal of the study consists in tracing back the peculiarities accompanying the described process of conceptualisation. A brief literature review demonstrates a clear lack of related analyses in the legal dimension; the academic novelty can thus be substantiated by the fact that the groups of sources of law introducing the “Indo-Pacific” concept are categorised in a hierarchical manner. From a methodological point of view the paper is aimed at adding linguistics and international law to the mix of disciplines that can assist in comprehending the relatively recent phenomenon of “Indo-Pacific”, political science already being paramount among these. As for the findings, it has been shown that bridging the gap between the designated areas is in principle possible thanks to an interdisciplinary approach, allowing thereby to create a multidimensional image of the macroregion. Another associated inference concerns the dynamics of how exactly the notion under discussion has been rooting in the sources of international law: namely, this happened due to a transfer from national legislation. The article is concluded with the discussion on the evolution stages of incorporation of the term “Indo-Pacific” in the international law, as well as recommended directions of further research.

Key words: Indo-Pacific, Asia-Pacific, international law, linguistics, interdisciplinary studies.

Introduction

The goal of this paper is tracking the evolution of how the term “Indo-Pacific” has been regularised in various sources of law, against the backdrop of volatile geopolitical circumstances. Regardless of the heightened attention to the concept in the scholarly literature as of late, the issue has hardly been covered extensively from an international law point of view, being underplayed in the legal dimension on the whole. Indeed, in spite of abundant research undertaken in such disciplines as World Politics or Area Studies, few papers by experts in jurisprudence have been dedicated to the subject under discussion. One of those is narrowed down to the case of the regional interplay between China and India. Others constrain themselves to independent branches of jurisprudence such as law of the sea. More specific studies cover freedom of navigation in the region. As such, despite the impressive quantity of generalised papers in political science and cognate disciplines that deal with revealing the semantics of this freshly coined term, this field is clearly underexplored in the context of international public law given the potential of linguistics and jurisprudence tools.

The word combination “Indo-Pacific” has been gradually replacing the traditional and habitual notion of “Asia-Pacific” throughout the past decade. It is quite sympomatic that the fixation of the latter in the discourse and language of international law is normally assigned to the end of Vietnam War in the 1970s. Nevertheless, within the United Nations structure with its numerous bodies the well-established definition of “Asia-Pacific” still remains.

It is rather plausible to state that regions per se are constructs, being an abstract medium of re-envisioning certain fragments of geographical space consolidated by a set of factors, from economic and trade ties to cultural commonalities. The semantic fields of the two notions, “Indo-Pacific” and “Asia-Pacific” mostly – if not overbearingly – overlap. In terms of the subject matter, the issue of geography comes at the fore as the territorial framework remains one of the most important and convoluted aspects. Critics of the “Indo-Pacific” idea have been raising the problem of the existential necessity of the novel term, allegedly a redundant one. Applying the Occam’s razor principle, it would be reasonable to pose the question whether multiplying entities has been of use.

Chronologically these trends manifested themselves in a most pronounced manner during the previous decade. The term has in fact become omnipresent, which necessitates the urgency of scrutinising it in more detail.

Conceptualising the “Indo-Pacific”: Sources and Key Actors

As for the conceptualisation of the term, it has initially been broadly used in biogeography and other adjacent natural sciences. Still, it was utilised in parallel by one of the classics of geopolitics, K. Haushofer. However, another bipartite notion, that of “Asia-Pacific”, grew far more ubiquitous in the second half of the 20^th century. In the 2000s, though, the adjective “Indo-Pacific” was revitalised in the discourse again, presumably thanks to its popularisation by G. Khurana and other Indian (sic!) pundits. Therefore the incipient stage of the conceptualisation was characterised by reinstalling the semantic borders of the term in scholarly debates.

Throughout the 2010s, the world witnessed the inoculation of the notion in the documents. To be precise, the term was allegedly used officially for the first time in 2013 Australian Defence White Paper. Since then, it has been frequently utilised in the bilateral documents between the U.S. and their allies, from summit declarations to intergovernmental meetings and even Track 1.5 diplomacy events like Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

Yet it was in the late 2010s that countries and regional organisations embarked upon formalising their policies towards the Indo-Pacific. The types of the documents regarding the Indo-Pacific posture adopted at a national and international level can be provisionally divided into three groups based on their status:

- Strategies (i.e. documents of a higher order). This is the most widespread and well-structured form of such papers, the first of them adopted by France in 2018. The freshest examples involve Republic of Korea and Canada who joined the club of nations with their Strategies in 2023.

- Guidelines (or documents of a medium-range order). Such policy prescriptions have been adopted by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office in 2020 as well as the Netherlands’ in the same year.

- Outlooks (documents of a lower order). This less common type was originally enshrined by ASEAN as a traditional regional organisation that published its Outlook in early 2021. Curiously enough, Bangladesh followed their suit in 2023 with its individual document. These papers are of considerably shorter volume, more resemblant of press releases, and only delineate the vision of the region descriptively.

Admittedly, the selection of a proper category by an international legal entity is rather defined by internal considerations and priorities of stakeholders concerned. In case of nation states, such sets of documents are most of all produced by representatives of the executive power, in particular foreign ministries.

Retrospectively, empirics prove that it is the geopolitical shocks that clearly predate the adoption of the respective documents. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic was followed by the announcement of EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and analogous Guidelines by some European states in 2020, whereas overall securitisation of world politics in 2022 resulted in a reboot of the U.S. document which also preceded the proclamation of individual Strategies by Canada and South Korea.

With the exception of ROK, the strategic allies of the U.S. in the region (such as Japan or Australia) conspicuously distance themselves from forging a separate Indo-Pacific strategy – or its analogue – of their own. Thailand and Philippines, Washington’s major non-NATO allies in the Asia-Pacific, limit themselves with expressing their stance within ASEAN as member states of this regional forum.

Country-wise, a vital constituent of this reformatting is India that still has not issued its Indo-Pacific document either. As the name itself suggests, the recognition of India as a key term of the equation is – at least ostensibly – the raison d’être for this process of expanding Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. Even though India has perpetually been included into the wider generic notion of “Asia” (more specifically, South Asia), this argument apparently was not compelling enough for the proponents of switching the first part of “Asia-Pacific” with “Indo-”. Geopolitically, the U.S. has been concentrating on its attempts to pull India into its orbit, garnering New Delhi’s support by concessions such as striking a deal on civil use of nuclear power (also known as 123 Agreement) or doubling down on engagement within the Quad. These coincidentally go in line with India’s individual quest for finding a more appropriate place in global affairs, including by extending its presence in the Pacific. The motivation is clear: a rapid rise of what is frequently labelled as the most populous democracy – moreover, world’s largest country by the number of dwellers – also predetermined the need for this rectification of names.

Formalising the “Indo-Pacific”: On a Quest for Institutionalisation?

With regard to the Indo-Pacific construct, the degree of formalisation is comparatively amorphous as the transfer to the tenets of international law is complicated and lengthy. International structures, newly founded or revived within the Indo-Pacific narratives, feature flexible groupings rather than full-fledged organisations. For instance, AUKUS was announced by means of a declaration as opposed to a treaty in the conventional sense but still constitutes a security pact in terms of classification. It is grounded on pre-existing bilateral defence trade cooperation treaties of the 2000s, and could in the future be underpinned with an actual trilateral treaty itself, according to Australian Defence Minister. Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, for reference, has no founding document at all, which leaves the question of its legal platform open. Over the last few years the term has been penetrating the sphere of economy as well, even if not pronounced explicitly: IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity) headed by the U.S. is one of such rarer cases.

To further advance the institutionalisation of the term domestically, the U.S. officially altered the nomenclature in a number of positions in the Department of Defence, most notably Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs and their Principal Deputy. One more instance is renaming of the U.S. Pacific Command that became U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) in 2018. This definitely bears record to a special focus on security, while the Department of State retains the usual language (e.g. East Asian and Pacific Affairs). The UK Government follows the same line of behaviour, having created the role of a Minister of State (Indo-Pacific). Australia, for its part, decided to make its contribution by setting up Indo-Pacific Centre for Military Law under Australian Defence Force.

The region hardly represents a uniform picture, rather resembling a quaint patchwork of varying socioeconomic patterns, types of governance, legal systems etc. It is quite evident that the Indo-Pacific narrative is aimed at reframing the vast area as a global region along with Euro-Atlantic. In comparison with the previous interpretations of the Asia-Pacific, Indo-Pacific comprises aquatic expanses of the two oceans, whereas the exact volume of the landmass spanning the region remains questionable. Furthermore, the competition in the Indo-Pacific stretches as far as the eastern shores of the African continent. One of the benchmark cases is Djibouti with its military bases of the U.S. forces and PLA (People’s Liberation Army) located just several miles within each other. On the opposite facet, both China, on the one hand, and the U.S. with their allies, on the other hand, struggle to win over Papua New Guinea and manifold island nations of the Pacific.

Defining the “Indo-Pacific” in the Language of Law: A Linguistic Approach

Rethinking the topic through the prism of linguistics, the term appears not without its connotative hues in its usage. The word combination is exposed in the form of well-established units of language, in the first place, “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” and several others. The view of the region can be heterogeneous: as such, in the rendering by the Republic of Korea, it is by contrast denominated as “free, peaceful and prosperous”. At times those represent conflicting ideologemes, e.g. in case of the (in)famous dichotomy of the “rule of law” vs. a “rules-based order”. This seemingly insignificant difference hides subtle yet essential nuances: it is in the latter case that international law is stressed as the imperative. Reliance on a “rules-based order” may hinder the transit of the “Indo-Pacific” notion to international law – which, in truth, might not always be the intent of the countries voicing the concept.

This does not mean that the term is totally dissociated from the legal domain. A particular emphasis is made on the law of the sea, namely UNCLOS (The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) and documents pertaining to maritime security, as well as related compliance practices. An embodiment of this trend is the widely discussed decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the Philippines v. China case carried out in 2016. It is curious that the word combination “Indo-Pacific” is only encountered once throughout the transcripts of the hearings – in a footnoote at that. At the same time, some authors are skeptical of how the regime of ‘freedom of navigation’ is functioning in the region depending on who turns out to be the beneficiary. But the advertence to the admiralty law is tangible amongst cases investigated in the literature.

The equivalence of translation also constitutes a problem, considering the utmost significance of rigorous formulation in legal paperwork. Apart from the sources of international law, this can be exemplified by the 2007 “Confluence of the Two Seas” keynote speech given by Abe Shinzō during his visit in India in his first term as Prime Minister. Indeed, the employed Japanese noun 海 is standardly translated as both “sea” and “ocean”; however, it stands to reason that it is the two oceans that are implied in this case. Moving to a different tier connected with international law, one has to keep in mind the UN is known to operate six official languages whereas this is all the more sensitive in the region with a number of caveats with respect to linguistic conflicts, notwithstanding the role of the English language as a lingua franca.

In certain paradigms, fundamental works by renowned scholars may serve as a source of international law. Nevertheless, to the best of the author’s knowledge, those hardly contain any mention of the Indo-Pacific. A simultaneous attempt to force the term into the customary law can also be observed. As a matter of fact, “Indo-Pacific” can be evaluated as a concept with a certain discursive power that has been penetrating international law in a step-by-step process. That said, the term seems more readily used in acts of descriptive rather than prescriptive origin.

The adjective “Indo-Pacific” is actively employed in performative speech acts that ultimately propel into the formation of paraorganisations. This manifestation is especially palpable in the modes of multi- and minilateralism, as the latter has been a prominent trend in the region recently. It reveals itself in declarations of abovementioned semi-formalised groupings such as Quad, AUKUS etc., and these documents contain a substantial amount of mentions of “Indo-Pacific” as an attribute. Content-wise, a progressively distinct securitisation of the regional policies is a crucial sequacious trend in this terminological shift. Security on this occasion is an umbrella term, its semantic field ranging from cyber and space activities on out to fish trawling.

The lack of a global consensus pertaining to the attribute is also remarkable: China views the term as levelled against itself, accusing the ‘authors’ of the Indo-Pacific project of its exclusivity. Russia also hardly endorses the use of this term, relying on its established equivalent, “Asia-Pacific”.

Findings

First and foremost, the term took its rise in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, inherently conceived and popularised in the English-speaking countries, spread and adopted globally afterwards. The U.S., together with its closest partners in the region, has been arguing in favour of this concept, pushing forward its distinctive agenda. The precedents of applying the notion in its contemporary meaning in the scholarly and official types of discourse are attributed to India and Australia respectively. The concept was subsequently developed jointly by both regional states and external powers.

One could suppose that as the notion originated from the scholarly discourse, it must be mandatorily elaborate and sophisticated, but in reality that does not preclude different schools of thought in IR and other branches of social sciences from debates about the crux of the term. This, in turn, correlates with disparities in understanding of the region by various nations and intergovernmental organisations. As for the language of the strategies, English is (un)surprisingly prevalent, not only due to its role as a medium of international communication but also owing to the fact that the countries fostering the Indo-Pacific agenda use this language officially (U.S., Australia, India etc.) Furthermore, publicising an English version of a strategy could be a shortcut to communicate the view of the region to other key counterparts. Suffice it to note that the expression as well as allied ideologemes have been rendered into other languages mostly as calques.

The notion of Indo-Pacific has predominantly been proactively promoted not only by Washington and its allies in the region (only one of which has so far approved its own Indo-Pacific strategy), but also by European nations. It was also partly embraced by the middle powers and smaller countries of ASEAN. Most conspicuously, this has been a collective decision rather than a sum of solitary efforts. Southeast Asian states’ approach to this dichotomy consists in exercising strategic autonomy and carefully balancing to avoid taking sides.

As for the conceptualisation process, the vector has been at first directed from scholarly discourse into official (i.e. in speech acts of policymakers). Next period was primarily marked by affixing the term in the national legislation of separate countries (the number of which keeps growing). On this level, the documents are of uneven orders per se, which can be explained by differences in how the nations construe their perceptions of the region. Emergence in the international law is the final phase of this complex ‘indigenisation’ of the term. This transfer into the realm of international law is taking place through the national legislation. More generally, the notion is being introduced into the legal dimension from a transdisciplinary scientific discourse. As has been exhibited, the term, as used in its most typical contexts, is not devoid of an ideological complexion, in view of its value-based core.

The actual territorial framework of the macroregion is still to be defined, and the term “Indo-Pacific” hardly shines a light on this convoluted issue (if not causing extra confusion). Same applies to the division of this geographical part of the world into subregions, which is, apart from being not incurious in a theoretical sense, a matter of practical importance. Sources of international law could play a prescriptive role e.g. in specifying the borders of the Indo-Pacific, but to that end the term has to be agreed upon universally rather than by few players.

The operational implementation of the Indo-Pacific concept may differ from country to country, yet some mainstream trends can be singled out on a macroregional scale:

1) The governance of Indo-Pacific is oftentimes associated with tackling both conventional and new challenges and threats resulting in overall securitisation of the discourse. This can be corroborated by a massive increase in defence spending in Asia, militarised rhetoric of countries’ officials etc. Securitisation is especially visible in the nuclear realm, given the related developments furthering the threshold of nations characterised by nuclear latency. The most obvious relatable examples include the decision to eventually arm Australia with nuclear-propelled submarines under 2021 AUKUS pact as well as 2023 Washington Declaration allowing the U.S. SSBNs to make port calls in South Korea. Such actions shaping the regional order lead to a more securitised — though not exactly more secure — environment.

2) Confrontational nature and exclusivity are characteristic of even economic blocs within the Indo-Pacific, let alone geostrategic fora. For example, this refers to the U.S.-led IPEF as opposed to RCEP, or Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, launched in 2020 and commonly ascribed to China’s influence. The number of participants in Quad, AUKUS etc. is finite and the membership is next to impossible to obtain, even though outreach formats serve the goal of attracting potential supporters from the outside. On the flip side, APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) has not been expanded since the moratorium imposed in the 1990s, too.

3) Indo-Pacific projects presuppose an active participation of extraregional players, such as the U.S., UK and EU nations. This, in turn, is bound to create the milieu for a diversified transregional interaction, incentivising both cooperation and competition.

4) Institutionalisation, being an indispensable prerequisite for implantation of the term in the corpus of international law, can at best be assessed as selective with respect to Indo-Pacific. It is by and large realised in the shape of minilateral arrangements, which may not necessarily contradict the somewhat attractive idea of multipolarity. While opponents of the Indo-Pacific construct blame its authors for obtruding a certain modus operandi, it can, on the other hand, be qualified as an endeavour by the apologists to achieve harmonious co-existence with the rising Global East (or Global South).

5) Noteworthy is alternate mentioning and omission of the P.R.C. as a threat (and an implied addressee) in officials’ speeches and other documents. At times the authorised representatives of countries favouring Indo-Pacific denied that the notion is directed against Beijing, leaving thus room for diplomatic manoeuvring. DPRK’s nuclear and missile programme has been another rationale behind the Indo-Pacific project, among others.

Finally, dwelling upon the prospects of future research, it is worth revisiting the term through a combinatorial prism. I.a. it would be advisable to conduct a quantitative and qualitative content analysis in order to identify the co-occurrence as to which definitive units go together with “Indo-Pacific” as an attribute. Resorting to hermeneutics as a framework, another possibility consists in employing the concept of modality to find out the attitude towards the notion under consideration.

Г.В. Торопчин, т.ғ.к. Хюэ университеті халықаралық мектебінің ғылыми қызметкері (Вьетнам, Хюэ қаласы), Новосибирск мемлекеттік техникалық университетінің гуманитарлық білім беру факультетінің доценті (Новосибирск қаласы, Ресей). Халықаралық құқық тіліндегі «Үнді-Тынық мұхиты өңірі» терминін тұжырымдамалау.

Мақала халықаралық құқық тіліндегі «Үнді-Тынық мұхиты өңірі» терминінің тұжырымдамалық проблемасын талдауға арналған. Тақырыптың өзектілігі өңірлік және сыртқы ойыншылар қабылдайтын тиісті құқықтық құжаттардың көптігіне байланысты, бұл өз кезегінде халықаралық құқық саласында да көрініс табады. Зерттеудің мақсаты тұжырымдаманың ізденіс процесін сүйемелдейтін ерекшеліктерді айқындаудан тұрады. Әдебиетке қысқаша шолу жасау заң өлшеміндегі тақырып бойынша жұмыстардың анық жетіспеушілігін көрсетеді; Осылайша, ғылыми жаңалық жарияланымда Үнді-Тынық мұхиты өңірінің тұжырымдамасы айналымға енгізілетін құқық көздерінің иерархиялық негізде санатталуымен айқындалады. Әдіснамалық тұрғыдан алғанда мақала лингвистика мен халықаралық құқықты қазіргі заманғы «Үнді-Тынық мұхиты аймағы» феноменін түсінуге көмектесуі мүмкін басқа пәндерге қосуға бағытталған (мұндай салаларға бірінші кезекте саясаттану жатады). Нәтижелерге келер болсақ, аталған салалар арасындағы алшақтықты еңсеру пәнаралық тәсілдің арқасында түбегейлі мүмкін болатыны көрсетілді, ол осылайша макроөңірдің көп өлшемді көрінісін жасауға мүмкіндік береді. Осыған байланысты тағы бір қорытынды талқыланып отырған ұғымды халықаралық құқық көздерінде бекіту динамикасына қатысты: бұл ұлттық заңнама арқылы транзиттің арқасында болды. Мақала «Үнді-Тынық мұхиты өңірі» терминін халықаралық құқыққа енгізу эволюциясының кезеңдерін талдауды, сондай-ақ одан әрі зерделеу бағыттары туралы ұсынымдарды аяқтайды.

Кілт сөздер: Үнді-Тынық мұхиты өңірі, Азия-Тынық мұхиты өңірі, халықаралық құқық, лингвистика, пәнаралық зерттеулер.

Торопчин Г.В., к.и.н., научный сотрудник Международной школы Университет Хюэ (Вьетнам, г. Хюэ), доцент факультета гуманитарного образования Новосибирского государственного технического университета (г. Новосибирск, Россия). Концептуализация термина «Индо-Тихоокеанский регион» в языке международного права.

Статья посвящена анализу проблемы концептуализации термина «Индо-Тихоокеанский регион» в языке международного права с точки зрения лингвистики и науки о МО (международных отношениях). Актуальность темы обусловлена всё большим количеством соответствующих правовых документов, принимаемых региональными и внешними игроками, что в свою очередь отражается и на сфере международного права. Цель исследования состоит в определении особенностей, сопровождающих искомый процесс концептуализации. Краткий обзор литературы демонстрирует явную нехватку работ по теме в юридическом измерении; таким образом, научная новизна определяется тем, что в публикации в иерархическом ключе категоризованы источники права, в которых вводится в оборот концепт Индо-Тихоокеанского региона. С методологической точки зрения статья направлена на подключение лингвистики и международного права к другим дисциплинам, которые могут помочь в понимании относительно современного феномена «Индо-Тихоокеанского региона» (к таковым областям в первую очередь относится политология). Что касается результатов, было показано, что преодоление разрывов между указанными отраслями становится принципиально возможным благодаря междисциплинарному подходу, который позволяет тем самым создать многомерную картину макрорегиона. Ещё один связанный с этим вывод касается динамики закрепления обсуждаемого понятия в источниках международного права: это произошло благодаря транзиту через национальное законодательство. Статью завершает анализ этапов эволюции внедрения термина “Индо-Тихоокеанский регион” в международное право, а также рекомендации о направлениях дальнейшего изучения.

Ключевые слова: Индо-Тихоокеанский регион, Азиатско-Тихоокеанский регион, международное право, лингвистика, междисциплинарные исследования.

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