A Stroll Through the Indo-Pacific, the Most Important Region in the World

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, we get into what's driving the Indo-Pacific's security dynamics, from China's threats to Taiwan to AUKUS and the Quad to stability (or lack thereof) on the Korean Peninsula to bases in the Philippines. We also touch on how prepared the United States may be to deliver military power in the Indo-Pacific based on forthcoming resourcing decisions by the Trump administration and Congress. Get ready for a smart, insightful conversation you won't want to miss with Lisa Curtis (CNAS), Zack Cooper (AEI), and Dmitri Alperovitch (Silverado). Cooper has a great new book out called Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries (https://a.co/d/cP4OPgU). And so does Alperovitch, who wrote World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century (https://a.co/d/eUDRdlF) with Garrett M. Graff.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.
0:14.5	My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, we take a
0:18.3	jaunt through the Indo-Pacific, the most important region in the world economically, perhaps militarily, and increasingly the most dangerous region in the world.
0:26.7	I'll let our experts introduce themselves.
0:29.3	I'm Lisa Curtis. I'm director of the Indo-Pacific security program at the Center for a New American Security.
0:35.0	Dimitia Parvich, Chairman of Cilera Policy Accelerator and author of World Own the Brink. Zach Cooper, a senior fellow at the American security. Demitia Parraich, Chairman of Solerata Policy Accelerator and author
0:38.2	of World Own the Brink. Zach Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
0:42.7	Dimitri, Lisa, it's your first time on the show. Welcome, Zach. It's not your first time.
0:47.1	I wanted it to be your last time, last time, but you know, you have a lot of good blackmail material on me, so here you are again. I do. So we're here to talk about Indo-Pacific
0:56.0	Security, which is a pretty big topic when you're talking about such a broad swath of geography.
1:00.5	But let's start with China, the biggest and most important country in the region. What have we
1:07.6	seen so far in terms of signals and actual policies from this new administration when it comes to China?
1:13.9	Well, I think what we've seen from the second Trump administration is that they will definitely be prioritizing the Indo-Pacific region.
1:24.1	We could see that with the fact that Secretary of State Mark Rubio held a quad meeting,
1:28.3	the quad being India, Australia, Japan, holding a meeting with the quad foreign ministers.
1:34.4	You saw early visits by the Japanese prime minister, the Indian prime minister.
1:39.9	So clearly the Trump administration is signaling it will work closely with allies and partners to
1:45.8	deal with competition with China. But on China itself, on the bilateral relationship, Trump is
1:52.1	clearly signaling he wants to have some kind of deal with China, some kind of economic deal.
1:58.6	Of course, we all remember the phase one trade deal that they
2:01.7	concluded in January 2020. Thanks to some delicious chocolate cake at Maralago. Yeah, I remember.
2:08.1	So, I mean, we can debate how successful that was, but...
	...

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