- The Indo-Pacific, sometimes known as the Indo–West Pacific or Indo–Pacific Asia is a biogeographic region of Earth's seas. Stretching from the west coast of the United States to the west coast of India, the Indo-Pacific is a 24 nation’s regional framework comprising the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two in the general area of Indonesia.
Key Highlights:
- The first major highlight of this arrangement is the sharing of US nuclear submarine technology to Australia, with that Australia will join an elite group of only six countries – India, the US, the UK, France, Russia and China – that operate nuclear-powered submarines.
- Australia will become only the second nation, after the U.K. that the U.S. has ever shared its nuclear submarine technology with.
- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that under her country’s 1984 nuclear-free zone policy, Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines would not be allowed into the former’s territorial waters.
- A second major highlight is that it complements several pre-existing similar arrangements for the region, including the Five Eyes intelligence cooperation initiative, ASEAN and the Quad, the last including India.
Competing with China: A Strategic Framework
- Undersea capabilities including the ability to patrol may be vital to deterring Chinese military coercion in the region.
- In a 2021 joint statement, "The Spirit of the Quad," Quad members described a shared vision for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, and a rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas, which Quad members state are needed to counter Chinese maritime claims.
- AUKUS will involve a new architecture of meetings and engagements between the three countries as well as cooperation across emerging technologies including applied AI, quantum technologies and undersea capabilities.
The Five Eyes Alliance
- The Five Eyes alliance is an intelligence-sharing arrangement between five English-speaking democracies: the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The alliance was created during the Cold War (1946-1991) that was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as their respective allies.
QUAD
- The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD, also known as the Quad) is a strategic dialogue between the United States, Japan, Australia and India that is maintained by talks between member countries and the dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
ASEAN
- ASEAN, officially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is an economic union comprising 10 member states in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, military, educational, and sociocultural integration between its members and other countries in Asia.
- These members are: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam
- HQ of ASEAN: Jakarta, Indonesia
Source: The Hindu
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