Finding the Indo-Pacific
Canada's new strategy, or "there be monsters"
It might be helpful to start with a map and a bit of history. What is the Indo-Pacific actually? As a term of art in geopolitics it dates back to the 1920s and the writings of a German scholar, Karl Haushofer, some of whose ideas were later absorbed in the imperial dreaming of the Third Reich. More recently, it has come to define an arena of great power tensions, especially between a rising China and the United States. As a geographic region it encompasses the confluence of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, with ASEAN countries (the Association of South East Asian Nations) at its centre. For marine life, in a very rich and biodiverse ecosystem, it has an entirely different meaning, as a struggle to cope with climate change, environmental damage and over-fishing. The small island nations that dot the Indo-Pacific face an existential struggle for existence in the face of rising sea levels.
That Canada now has, for the first time, an Indo-Pacific strategy, is a recognition of two things. One is potentially dangerous great power competition and attendant security threats, with enormous implications for the international order and for Canadian national interests; the other is great economic opportunity. The challenge for any Indo-Pacific strategy is to navigate between the two. The basic premise of the Indo-Pacific strategy is a classic 19th century liberal one—the region needs peace, and can live in peace through trade and societal connections.
The most eye-catching element of the Indo-Pacific strategy is its tougher language on China. This should surprise no one. The strategy talks about an “evolving approach to China,” which it describes as an “increasingly disruptive global power.” The strategy pledges to “challenge” China over its coercive behaviour, human rights abuses and threats to national security. At the same time it notes the “significant opportunities” for Canadian exporters presented by China’s economy. The need to cooperate with China as a rising power is understood, especially in three areas: climate change, global health, nuclear proliferation.
Cooperation on climate change needs no elaboration. By 2040, the Indo-Pacific region will account for 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Reference to cooperation on global health does need some unpacking. In part, it reflects concerns about the willingness and ability of China to fully meet its UN obligations under something called the International Health Regulations (IHR). The IHR requires states to provide timely alerts of indicators of major zoonotic disease outbreaks. The constricted nature of China’s public reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan was a factor in its rapid global spread.
Cooperation on nuclear proliferation is not really aimed at China’s own growing arsenal, but rather directed to concerns about regional conflicts with and between nuclear armed states such as India and Pakistan, as well as the hope that China can have some influence on nuclear sabre rattling by North Korea. It is not a hope that has demonstrated much in the way of results to date.
If China is the inevitable bulls-eye for the Indo-Pacific Strategy, with its balancing act between confrontation and cooperation, there are other elements that are either quietly left to the margins, or treated in a very selective manner.
An unspoken reality is that a Canadian strategy for the Indo-Pacific is deeply embedded in decisions made elsewhere, in Beijing on willingness to cooperate and maintain some elements of the rules based international order, and in Washington, D.C., in its own pursuit of its own high-stakes dance with China involving competition and cooperation, exemplified in the recent US National Security strategy.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf
While the Canadian strategy for the Indo-Pacific actually tracks closely with the U.S. one, the U.S. posture gets no attention, beyond indications that Canada will create a diplomatic position in Hawaii (nice!) and that there will be a “Canada-United States Strategic Dialogue on the Indo-Pacific” in 2023. Whatever this means, let’s hope it is not the first.
While the United States, Canada’s principal security partner in the region, goes mostly unmentioned, it is clear that Canada is seeking to selectively strengthen relationships with some key Indo-Pacific states, including India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the ASEAN grouping. The overarching principles behind this expanded engagement have some common sense drivers, especially in terms of diversification of economic opportunities. Other strategic elements of this engagement strategy are less clear.
For example, India is described as a critical partner in the region, but partnership is defined primarily in economic terms. India is, frankly, more problematic as a security partner in the region, and is currently offside with Western approaches to the Russian war against Ukraine. At best, India is a hybrid democracy and it is not averse to engaging in its own forms of foreign interference.
Japan and the Republic of Korea are identified as important partners for Canada’s strategy. Both are situated geographically in the region of Indo-Pacific designated as the “North Pacific.” The North Pacific as a geopolitical region is partly about the nuclear rogue state that is North Korea, but it also about China and using friendly states in the region as a counter-weight. The discussion about engagement with Japan and Korea better incorporates the dual strategies of economic engagement and security strengthening in the Indo-Pacific, compared to the India piece. The same is true for ASEAN, though its component member states are not broken out, and they are very diverse, from tiny, princeling Brunei to the most populous country in the region, the island conglomerate (‘archipelagic’) Indonesia, with a population of 275 million and a GDP of 1.2 trillion USD.
Some of the Canadian initiatives discussed in the strategy hide their light under a barrel. This includes intentions to sign what are called “Security of Information agreements” with Japan and Korea. These are formal bilateral treaties designed to allow for greater arms trades, defence technology cooperation, and higher levels of intelligence sharing.
Enhanced intelligence sharing is especially important and fits with an objective announced in the strategy to enhance Canada’s capacity to better understand China through diplomatic reporting and greater intelligence collection and assessment. China has not just achieved status as a leading global power, it has done so without a demonstrated historical track record of exercising great power (unless one reaches back centuries). This means its future global policy agenda is not easy to discern. The knowledge piece, including the ability to draw on the “local” knowledge of regional allies, will be crucial for any Canadian success with its Indo-Pacific strategy. But it will be challenging to build to the capacity that is needed.
Another initiative that deserved a little more air time is the Canadian contribution to combat over-fishing and biodiversity loss in the region, especially in the South China sea. Here Canada makes a multilateral contribution though something called “Operation North Pacific Guard,” which involves an annual exercise of air patrols and surface vessel surveillance, primarily as a deterrent effort. This is augmented through a high-tech program to provide more continuous monitoring from satellite platforms, targeting so-called “dark vessels,” who switch off their required location transmitting devices in order to avoid detection. Going dark is an aid to illegal fishing. The Canadian program is of particular benefit to small island nations in the Indo-Pacific which rely on fishing and whose livelihoods are threatened by the reduction of fish stocks. The Dark Vessel Detection program dates back to a 2018 G7 commitment. It should be considered a modest, but real, signature piece.
The Indo-Pacific strategy lays out five strategic objectives:
promoting peace, resilience and security
expanding trade, investment and supply chain resilience
investing in and connecting people
building a sustainable and green future
being an active and engaged partner
As a framework, this is hard to object to, but there are missing strategic principles that will have to be determined. One concerns the question of whether Canada ultimately intends to pursue its engagement strategy in the Indo-Pacific though a grouping of like-minded democracies. We have existing bilateral relationships with like-mindeds, such as Australia and New Zealand. While these could provide foundations for greater engagement in the region, they get cursory attention.
Canada is also a member the Five Eyes partnership (also all democracies—the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand) for intelligence and threat assessment sharing, potentially a vital building block for enhanced engagement in the Indo-Pacific. The foundational value of Canada’s participation in the Five Eyes gets virtually no discussion in the strategy.
The alternatives to some form of democracries group to advance mutual interests in the Indo-Pacific are not very attractive: Canada cannot go it alone; but it wants and needs a sovereign approach, not simply to be pulled in the wake of US policy. An undifferentiated stance to a very contested geopolitical space with natural fault lines between democracies and authoritarian regimes is likely a recipe for failure.
A democratic grouping designed simply as a pressure point on China is not a workable strategy. But it could be an effective tool, if well orchestrated, to meet some of the other strategic objectives in the Canadian plan, including the people connection piece, pursuit of a green future, economic diversification, and greater regional engagement.
A second missing strategic principle is the related issue of “friend-shoring,” basically reorienting economic relations to ensure trusted supply chains and relations with partner countries that are like-minded in terms of economic policies, norms and laws. There are important drivers behind friend-shoring, including the development of critical mineral resources and supply chains, so crucial for the transition to a green economy. Friend-shoring also advances economic security goals, particularly efforts to fend off foreign direct investment that is not in the national interest.
Neither democratic alignments nor friend-shoring economic policies find any traction in the current iteration of the Indo-Pacific strategy. This is despite the fact that both issues were explicitly raised in a major policy speech by the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, delivered to the Brookings Institute on October 11, 2022, prior to the release of the strategy.
https://deputypm.canada.ca/en/news/speeches/2022/10/11/remarks-deputy-prime-minister-brookings-institution-washington-dc
That the speech was delivered in the United States was no accident, as it signalled a closeness between Canadian and US approaches. I wrote a piece for the Institute for Research on Public Policy exploring the alignment between the Freeland speech and the US National Security Strategy. You can find it here:
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2022/canada-us-security-doctrine/
What do the missing strategic principles represent, I wonder? Divided counsels at the Cabinet table? Sensitivity to backlash from China if the delicate balance between confrontation and cooperation was badly signalled? Misalignment with business interests? Hesitation in the face of an uncertain future? All of the above?
The Canadian Indo-Pacific strategy navigates between geopolitical tension and economic opportunity in the region. Only time and unforeseeable circumstances will tell whether it navigates well. We will continue to cherish a liberal internationalist doctrine about trade as a pathway to peace, at least with regard to the Indo-Pacific, even if the doctrine is currently not faring so well with regard to Russian behaviour in Europe.
But as the old mariners’ fabulist maps used to label stretches of unknown ocean— “there be monsters.”