This book focuses on the scope, potential and future of the India-Japan-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) trilateral. Through this book, contributors examine the strategic and global partnership between India and Japan and the collaboration with ASEAN. Analysing contemporary strategic issues in the Indo-Pacific, the book takes up the complex link between security and economics. It offers a thorough understanding on how the major Asian powers, India and Japan, cooperate and coordinate with the ASEAN. It delves into few critical questions: Is there a scope for India-Japan-ASEAN triangularity in the Indo-Pacific? Can a formal or institutional cooperation be forged between these three actors? What specific cooperation could India and Japan forge with ASEAN as an institution? To what extent can each ASEAN member independently become a partner with India and Japan? A novel assessment of the post-pandemic economic and political balancing and restructuring, this book will be of interest to Asian politics, international relations, strategic studies, regional organizations in Asia and think tanks specializing in foreign policy, security studies, international trade and economics.

This book examines key issue areas of Indo-Pacific strategies such as cyber security, space security, maritime security, emerging technologies, and institutional frameworks in the context of deepening US–China rivalry. With greater interconnectedness across various fields, the Indo-Pacific region faces greater security challenges including future strategic power competition. States are increasingly engaging in intense strategic activities and strengthening partnerships. The first part of book focuses on the strategic competition between the United States and China in different areas including cyber security, space security, maritime security, emerging technologies, and institutional frameworks. The second part of the book presents the perspectives of different local actors in the regional theatre and the intentions and concepts behind their growing interconnectedness under Indo-Pacific strategies, including China, Russia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and North Korea. Through examining different aspects of US–Indo-Pacific strategy, this edited book contributes to a better understanding of Indo-Pacific strategy and its implications for broader security cooperation in a more interconnected world. The book will be of interest to scholars and policy makers working on Asian Security, Politics, International Relations, and the security dynamics of East Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

In December 2022, Japan announced it would drastically increase its defence budget by 2027. The decision came as a wake-up call for the whole region: Japan was gearing up for a world of heightened tensions and rivalry in the Indo-Pacific Region. This Report analyses the present and future of Japan's security and defence policies. Within the context of a rising China, Tokyo has broadened its defence ties with the US, India, Australia, and Taiwan. However, China remains its biggest trading partner, meaning Tokyo's policymakers are charged with the task and challenge of striking a balance between defence policies and business and trade relations with China.

This book explores how the Quad Plus mechanism is set to reshape the global multilateral economic and security co-operations between Quad partner countries and the rest of the world. With the Quad partners – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – seeing deteriorating ties with China, the book provides a holistic understanding of the reasons why Quad Plus matters and what it means for the post-COVID Indo-Pacific and Asian order. It goes beyond the existing literature of the global Post-COVID reality and examines how Quad Plus can grow and find synergy with national and multilateral Indo-Pacific initiatives. The chapters analyze the mechanism’s uncharacteristic yet active approach of including countries like South Korea, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand and ASEAN/Vietnam for their successful handling of the pandemic crisis, thereby reshaping the new world’s geopolitical vision. A unique study focused solely on the intricacies and the broader dialogue of the ‘Quad Plus’ narrative, the book caters to strategic audiences as well as academics researching International Relations, Politics, and Indo-Pacific and Asian Studies.

The United Nations, Indo-Pacific and Korean Peninsula focuses on the United Nations (UN) and its frameworks to examine the power politics on the two of the world’s more politically sensitive and geo-strategically crucial regions of the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific. This book provides answers to broader questions that are relevant to the global emerging peace architecture. The book is divided into three parts: global, Indo-Pacific and the Korean Peninsula. The first part analyses the competing world views of the U.S, China, Japan, and Korea and the evolvement of UN debates on global and regional security, with special emphasis on the Indo-Pacific and the Korean Peninsula. The second part concerns major bilateral or multilateral security issues facing Indo-Pacific countries and their UN debates in this regard. In particular, with new developments in the Indo-Pacific, such as the Quad process involving the Australia-India-Japan-United States and an anticipation expansion of the Group of Seven (G-7), chapters analyse how these mechanisms expand their focus within the scope of Indo-Pacific power politics. Part three focuses on the UN centered debates on two Koreas and their strategic fallouts at regional and global levels. Examining the security order evolving around the politics of the Indo-Pacific regions and Korean Peninsula and analysing the relevance of the UN and its mechanisms, this book will be of interest to researchers studying International Relations, Security Studies, Asian Studies, in particular Korean Studies and the Indo-Pacific.

This book studies the internal framework of the Indo-Pacific region and examines the strategic issues faced by the countries that belong to it. Over the years, the Indo-Pacific region has become a prime driver of global economic growth and has generated considerable interest from countries both within and without. The region is now witnessing an intensified great power competition for greater geostrategic space, thus shaping the 21st-century world order. The volume focuses on the emerging strategies of the main actors involved in this competition. It discusses various key issues such as the purpose of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and its post-pandemic agenda, the conceptualisation of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) amid an intensifying Sino-US great power competition, the strategies of ASEAN and South Korea, China’s activities in the Indo-Pacific, economic architecture and supply chain disruption in the region, as well as the geopolitical strategy of the European Union for the Indo-Pacific. A crucial study of the Indo-Pacific region in the post-COVID-19 world, the book gives fresh insights into the areas of convergence and divergence in the strategic visions of the many regional actors. It will be of great interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of political science, international relations, foreign policy, geopolitics, security studies, strategic studies, as well as area studies, namely East and Southeast Asian studies, European Union studies, American studies and Australian studies.

This book focuses on emerging new multilateralism in the Indo-Pacific and offers a useful analysis of various existing and evolving formulations and alignments in the region. The book problematises the evolution, relevance and changing contours of emerging economic and security architectures and connects these to various unilateral and multilateral initiatives that undergird the overall transformation in these economic and strategic multilaterals in this region. The chapters offer a comprehensive overview of organisations and institutions, and the contributors provide their historical background and contemporary focus with implications for the future. Consequently, the book provides a balanced assessment of evolving trends elucidated by both its theoretical debates and empirical analyses. It assesses the outline and influence of non-traditional threats that have received only stand-alone, and not integrated, examination involving issues as climate change, piracy, smuggling and terrorist activity, triggering a whole gamut of humanitarian and disaster relief strategies. Comprehensive in analysis and approach, the book will be of interest to scholars of Political Science, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, International Political Economy and Area Studies, including Asian, East Asian or Indo-Pacific Studies.

This book identifies differing approaches to the issues of conceptualising hegemony, hegemony-building processes and the relationship between a hegemonic state and a rising power. It focuses on transformations of the Chinese state, society and political-economy, China’s rapidly ascending status in the world order and changing relations with the outside world, in particular with the US. Bringing together mainstream and critical approaches from Anglo-America and China, which occupy different positions in the core-periphery structure of social sciences knowledge production and provide diverging standpoints to understanding the phenomenon of a rising China, the book questions the existing division of labour in IR and in general social sciences knowledge production. Through the lenses of multiple Anglo-American and Chinese scholars, it offers a nuanced and multifaceted view on the issue and focuses on a direct comparison of different localized perspectives. The author scrutinizes the heterogeneity of knowledge, the relationship between power and knowledge production and the region-centricity, in particular the Western-centricity, of knowledge production by analysing the discourse on the "(re-) rising" status of China in the world. The book problematizes the close link between power and knowledge production and presents a more critical view on the conclusions drawn by each approach. Offering an understanding of the nexus between knowledge production and power structures, the heterogeneity and multiplicity of knowledge and the influence of locality on the knowledge produced in social sciences, the book will be of interest to academics working in the fields of International Relations theories, critical approaches, non-Western theories, Euro- or Western-centrism, and social sciences in China, Area Studies, in particularly China and East Asia.

This book examines the quality of democracies in Asia and determines why current democracies—especially during the so-called “new normal” era following the 2008 financial crisis—have become less stable and less resilient to increasing authoritarianism. Based on the assumption that the concept of democracy consists of three elements—procedure (participation, competition, and distribution of power); effectiveness (representation, accountability, and responsiveness); and performance (social welfare, inequality, and trust)—the contributors to this book determine which elements are responsible for diverging trajectories within the Asian democratic recession. Examining South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, and China, the authors employ different research methods—quantitative, comparative, or individual case studies—to explore the conditions under which democratic rules and norms erode over time, and which type of governance is preferred by citizens in this region as an ideal type. The book puts forward the argument that a procedure-oriented concept of democracy is not sufficient for understanding the source of democratic recession and develops a new concept of “new democracy” based on procedure, effectiveness, and performance. It also demonstrates to what extent the experience changes and how the countries respond to these changes. A novel contribution on the state of democracy in Asia written by experts from the region, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of political science, especially comparative politics and international relations, regional study of East and Southeast Asia, sociology, public policy, economics, and social science methods. Also, this book will appeal to think tanks and policy-oriented researchers.

This book examines Korea’s foreign direct investment policy dynamics and points out the importance of mutual synergy between multinational corporations and their host countries in a win-win framework and the increasing importance of this in a post-pandemic world. A multitude of case studies shows many of the business difficulties foreign investors in Korea face, and how the Foreign Investment Ombudsman has intervened to resolve each one. The book addresses Korea’s challenges and efforts to become a truly preferred FDI destination through active FDI inducement and effective aftercare services. Investigating the ambivalent attitude toward foreign direct investors and foreign migrants in an increasingly globalizing world, the author also analyses the issue of xenophobia. The book demonstrates empirically that appropriate and timely aftercare services can serve as not only a robust facilitator for cross-border investment but also a preventer of undesirable friction between foreign investors and host economies, before disputes become serious legal matters. Finally, it draws policy implications towards a liberal investment order post COVID-19. The book will be of interest to policymakers, investors, and researchers on Korean and East Asian economic studies, FDI promotion, and deregulation for better business environment.