The Return of Traditional Geopolitical Thought

Abstract

The principal aim of this chapter is to provide an overview and synthesis of the diffusion, perpetuation, and contextual transformation of traditional geopolitical thinking throughout the Indo-Pacific region and assess how these concepts and ideas might still form some input into regional geopolitical thinking, particularly among some key individual states within the Indo-Pacific. The re-emergence of these classical ideas and their deployment through different national lenses reveals the construction of vastly disparate Indo-Pacific regionalisms, in which, we argue, narrow national constructions of the region take precedence over more genuine, pan-regional aspirations. In the twenty-first century, to some degree, the Indo-Pacific concept is a useful enabling tool for regional state territorial expansionism and/or for the geographical extension of military power and control. However, this enabling Indo-Pacific concept contains within it the potential for significant regional and even global conflict. This prospect has also been predicted by Haushofer.