ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific: Old Wine in New Bottle?

Abstract

Since the roll-out of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy by US President Donald Trump and the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the Quad (comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia) in late 2017, the Indo-Pacific concept has gained a lot of traction in international relations discourse. Yet there is no common understanding or authoritative definition of the term even among its proponents. During the past two years, the US, Japan, India and Australia have laid out their own articulations of the Indo-Pacific as they incorporate this concept into their respective foreign policy. China meanwhile shuns the Indo-Pacific discourse, suspecting that this is a China containment strategy. At the initiative and urging of Indonesia, ASEAN had held internal discussions to formulate a common ASEAN position on this issue. As a result, the 34th ASEAN Summit in Bangkok in June 2019 adopted the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). This article examines the content of the AOIP and analyses what it may mean for ASEAN and its member states.