Indo-Pacific Region in the 21st Century: Geostrategy for Making or Breaking an Emergent New World Order

Abstract

The world order is currently evolving and there is an evident shift as the Western-centric United States unipolar order’s is relatively weakening and its hegemony is challenged by the rising Non-Western-centric multipolar order. This is happening across different strategic geopolitical regions, including the Indo-Pacific region. The decline of a hegemony can be heralded by an increasing level of competition and conflict between different geopolitical actors in the international system, when the ‘old’ hegemonic order is not yet ‘dead’ and the ‘new’ hegemonic order is not established. A situation arises where interpretations and representations of geostrategic imperatives take place as ‘informational geopolitics’ as the various international actors seek to be subjects and not objects of the unfolding process and events, such as India that inhabits a unique position, but not without its risks. This paper analyses academic literature on those geostrategic imperatives of the different actors and finds a rather transactional US approach to maintain its hegemony and a more relational approach by actors in the emergent new world order.