Territorialization of the indo-pacific: A critical geopolitics perspective

This thesis is an inquiry into the notion of the Indo-Pacific to explain how it was territorialized and why it has taken the place of Asia-Pacific by using the theoretical perspective of critical geopolitics. Using the discourse analysis as its method, the thesis analyzes the discourses of four states – the US, Australia, Japan, and India – on the IndoPacific with the premise that geopolitical knowledge is not a natural fact but a discoursive knowledge. The thesis has three arguments. First, the Indo-Pacific is an old but forgotten discursive construct that has been re-employed in the mid-2000s to denote a specific geographical space, not a natural region. Secondly, the geopolitical identity of the IndoPacific differs both temporally and spatially, meaning it has changed over time because of different reterritorializations and deterritorializations of the discursive space. At the same time, which is the key argument of this thesis, the territorialization of the IndoPacific by different actors resulted in two different Indo-Pacific geopolitical constructs. The first one is named "maritime Indo-Pacific", which signifies the geopolitical imagination of the US and Australia, and the second one is named "wider Indo-Pacific" which signifies the geopolitical imagination of Japan and India. Thirdly, to answer the question of why this territorialization has taken place, the thesis will argue that both geopolitical imaginations represent inside/outside distinction on regional security issues, the most notable of which has been the issue of the "rise of China". As a result, geopolitical imaginations are being used as justifications for foreign policy choices of four discourseproducing states.