Table Of ContentThe Indo-Pacific: Trump,
China, and the New Struggle
for Global Mastery
Richard Javad Heydarian
The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New
Struggle for Global Mastery
“Richard Heydarian’s splendid new book is a wide-ranging, creative, informative,
thoughtful, and venturesome antidote to complacency regarding the future of
the Indo-Pacific region. Well worth reading for its scope, ideas, and verve.”
—Don Emmerson, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Stanford University
“Richard Heydarian’s new book deals front and center with the two great
geo-stratetegic issues of our time: the rise of the Indo Pacific, and the strate-
gic competition between a Donald Trump led US and a Xi Jinping dominated
China…. Richard weaves these themes through his book, importantly, including
from the perspectives of middle and small powers in the Indo Pacific.”
—Stephen Francis Smith, Former Australian Defense and Foreign Minister
“This is an ambitious effort, a survey of global strategic risks and diplomatic oppor-
tunities from one of Southeast Asia’s most authentic and articulate policy voices.”
—Rory Medcalf, Professor and Head of the National Security College (NSC),
Australian National University
“Richard Heydarian is part of a thinning line-up of young dynamic Asian stra-
tegic thinkers. Coming from a country still grappling with major powers rivalry,
Richard’s views brings credible insights to the dilemmas faced by many countries
in the Indo-Pacific. I have always found Richard’s strategic analyses to be origi-
nal, thoughtful and most importantly, honest. He does not compromise when it
comes to intellectual integrity. Richard’s thoughts on the evolving IndoPacific, as
well as US and China competition, deserves the attention of policy-makers, many
of whom are still searching for the right path forward for the region.”
—Dino Patti Djalal, Former Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, and
Founder of Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI)
“Heydarian examines the shifting landscape of the Indo-Pacific, the Sino-
American competition that will define the region for decades to come, and the
efforts of small and middle powers seeking to hold the line against both Chinese
revisionism and potential American decline. His project is ambitious, undeniably
necessary, and offers important insights on topics that will likely dominate inter-
national relations for much of this century.”
—Gregory B. Poling, is director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative,
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
“Heydarian’s book is an ideal read for those who want an informative account
with a panoramic view and in-depth analysis of the emerging Indo-Pacific. This
region is the main theater of the century’s contest—the strategic competition
between the United States and China. Heydarian incisively examines the com-
peting visions and approaches of the two great powers, but he also shows how
several other regional states can shape the strategic environment.”
—Alexander L. Vuving, Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies
(APCSS)
“Richard Javad Heydarian, a leading voice among a new generation of Asian
strategic thinkers, has composed a wide-ranging, timely, and thought-provoking
illustration of a region of immense importance. He draws upon an astonishingly
broad range of intellectual sources and covers many of the dominant strategic
issues of our times, including the impact of the Trump presidency, the motiva-
tions behind China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and Japan’s ambitious reengage-
ment with the world.”
—Dhruva Jaishankar, Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings India
“In the plethora of literature on the Indo-Pacific, this is a rare insightful account.
Richard artfully parses the paradoxes surrounding the construct, and examines its
many competing versions. Through a careful study of theoretical frameworks—
old and new—he explains why regional states interpret the idea differently; how
the concept’s natural evolution is impacted by the innate impulses of key actors;
and why its eventual form might depend on the outcome of the contest for
supremacy between powerful states.”
—Abhijit Singh, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), India
Richard Javad Heydarian
The Indo-Pacific:
Trump, China,
and the New Struggle
for Global Mastery
Richard Javad Heydarian
Visiting Research Fellow
National Chengchi University
Taipei, Taiwan
ISBN 978-981-13-9798-1 ISBN 978-981-13-9799-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9799-8
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To my loving father, Nasser, who introduced me to the world of global
politics in my younger years; and N. for pushing me to evolve beyond myself.
A
cknowledgements
This book marks the culmination of almost a decade of research, which,
incidentally, coincides with the beginning of my career as a writer and
geopolitical analyst. It all started in Cairo in December 2009, when
I began, with focused intention and analytic obsession, to reflect on
the intimations of a revolutionary upheaval in the Near East, a region
that I was quite familiar with. As I wrote in an article entitled “Egypt’s
impending political earthquake” (March 31, 2010) shortly after my visit,
the North African nation faced a “potential watershed…and a fierce
[political] battle for Egypt’s soul” in the coming months, especially
ahead of crucial elections that could determine the post-Hosni Mubarak
era. Apparently, what was on the horizon was nothing short of a total
revolution, which toppled the Mubarak regime the following year. Soon
after, I found myself writing my first book, still in my early 20s then,
on the Arab uprisings, its roots, and its long-term implications for Asia
and beyond. Afterwards, I never looked back again, deciding to devote
myself fully to a newfound calling as a dispassionate, yet committed, ana-
lyst of geopolitics, from Cairo to California and beyond.
Over the next decade, I traveled, in my capacity as an academic, policy
adviser, and writer, across the world, meeting senior officials and lead-
ing experts from Perth to Pyongyang, Brussels to Beijing, New Delhi to
New York, and Tehran to Tokyo, as well as giving talks and lectures on
geopolitics in the world’s leading universities. During this period, I also
had the pleasure of having exchanges, some longer and on the record,
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
with various heads of state and world leaders, including the Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Presidents of the Republic of China
(Taiwan) Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen, Australian Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. I also
had the pleasure of meeting, interviewing and/or exchanging views with
former world leaders, who appeared as world-weary yet cosmopolitan
and hopeful, such as President Fidel Ramos, a pillar of regional integra-
tion in post-Cold War Asia, and Prime Minister Helen Clark, a pillar of
global peace and development in recent decades, not to mention other
former leaders such as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Not to men-
tion meeting foreign and defense ministers as well as a plethora of senior
officials from nations across the Indo-Pacific, who eagerly and earnestly
shared, with unabashed candor and sincere puzzlement, their personal,
bureaucratic, and strategic dilemmas to me. Each leader, bearing his/her
own idiosyncrasies and eloquent tryst with destiny, not only revealed a
new layer of psychology of leadership, but also, and more importantly,
the depth of challenges faced by nations across the Indo-Pacific. This
book is precisely about revealing, through my own eyes and based on my
decade-long research and exchanges with senior policy-makers, the exis-
tential challenges haunting the world’s most promising yet also belea-
guered nations.
This book is also very personal to me, a form of vindication even. My
father wanted me to be a doctor, following his (and my sister’s) footsteps
in the medical field. My mother, herself an academic and university pro-
fessor, wanted me instead to become a lawyer, the first in our family. I
eventually became neither, striking my own direction by carving out an
improbable niche at the intersection of academe, media, and policy-mak-
ing realms—fixing my gaze on the world and trying to capture its many
nuances with more than 1000 articles over the past decade and millions
of published words. This book is dedicated to my loving father, who
helped me hone my linguistic skills (I grew up with multiple languages
and in multiple countries) and, from a very young age, encouraged me
to listen to BBC Radio and remain constantly interested in international
news to keep abreast with global geopolitics. Thus, before reaching the
age of 10, I already developed some familiarity with the intersection of
petro-politics, capitalism, and the American empire. Never had a fully
“normal” childhood, yet I’m eternally grateful to my loving parents, who
introduced me to world culture and global politics with patience, tender-
ness, and all-out support throughout my developmental years.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
This is also my longest book yet, taking more than three years to
write, and drawing on a decade of scholarly and journalistic material. It
also brings together my perspective as someone who spent years in both
ends of the Eurasian landmass—my father hailing from the Caspian Sea,
while my mother is from the city of pines in the Cordillera Mountains,
with a large chunk of my extended family residents and citizens of the
United States. The book is a mélange of the melancholy sweet contem-
plation of my father’s folks—who told me about the Soviet invasion dur-
ing the First World War and the horrors of conflict and confrontation
that bedeviled the Near East for the next hundred years—as well as the
Latin-Asiatic dynamism of my mother’s clan, who have spread across
the world with an inscrutable tenacity and irrepressible yearning for the
many permutations of the American dream.
This book is also about my personal advocacy and convictions. Once
settled back in East Asia, having had to leave my birthplace in the
Philippine for few years following a horrific earthquake that devastated
our home town (Baguio) in 1990, I devoted much of my early adult-
hood to making sure that, at least in my own little capacity, the South
and East China Seas don’t turn into another Persian Gulf, a theater of
war where many of my loved ones spent their golden years fighting,
though under different flags, against the brutal Saddam regime. The
Indo-Pacific, therefore, is something personal to me; it represents the
broad landscape of my mixed identity, heritage, and psycho-emotional
horizons. In phenomenological lexicon, the geopolitics of the Indo-
Pacific has constituted my “life world” of meaning and purpose and geo-
political imagination.
This book wouldn’t have been possible without the support of count-
less family members, friends, and colleagues, who helped me better
understand the internal politics and strategic orientation of a plethora of
complex nations across the mega-region. Let me begin by thanking my
aunt Rodelisa Foronda, who has always been by my side throughout very
trying moments in my life and even accompanying me in some of my
foreign visits. I would like to thank my mentor Professor Walden Bello,
who arranged my visit to Cairo back in 2009 and, throughout the years,
encouraged me to write, develop my own voice, and helped me connect
with a global network of thinkers. I am also very grateful to long-time
friends and colleagues such as Ambassador Dino Djalal, and the Foreign
Policy Community Indonesia folks, who have helped me understand
Indonesian politics and foreign policy, not to mention arranging our
