Why India isn’t going to save Australia from China’s power | East Asia Forum

It is founded on the belief that as America’s position in Asia fades, India will step forward to help balance and contain China’s power and prevent it from dominating countries like Australia. It imagines that countries right across a vast region stretching ‘from Hollywood to Bollywood’ will stand united and work together to contain China. Rory Medcalf’s new book, Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China won’t map the future , offers the most comprehensive and engaging argument for it yet. In early March, both the Australian Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, and her Labor Party counterpart, Penny Wong, appeared together to launch Medcalf’s book in Canberra. That says a lot about how eager both sides of Australian politics are to convince themselves and the rest of us, that the Indo-Pacific concept is the answer to the challenge of China. By presenting this vast swathe of the earth as one integrated region, it assumes that India and China will both eagerly compete with one another across its entire expanse. That offers Australia important opportunities to maximise its independence from both the Asian behemoths by playing them off against one another — a bit like the way Mongolia juggles China and Russia. But it means Australia faces a much more complex, demanding and lonely diplomatic and strategic future than it would have if Medcalf’s enticing vision of the Indo-Pacific somehow materialised instead. It is an invitation and an excuse to assume that Australia’s worries about its future in Asia will be solved by other countries, especially India, without much effort of its own. Hugh White is Emeritus Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University.