Shinzo Abe Forged a New Asia
He transformed “Indo-Pacific” from a catchphrase into an aspiration, defining a security and economic architecture to preserve free thought and free trade in the region and beyond.
Abe promoted sea-based alliances.
Photographer: Frank Robichon/Getty Images
No single term is as ubiquitous in the strategy documents of the free world today as “Indo-Pacific.” And yet the phrase never appeared in defense white papers or summit readouts two decades ago. The geopolitical, geo-economic, and military links between these two great oceans, as well as the democracies that depend on them, are so widely understood today thanks to one man: Shinzo Abe.
Abe, modern Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, tragically assassinated on Friday while taking part in a campaign rally, invented the Indo-Pacific. In a landmark speech to India’s Parliament during his first term in office, he urged the two nations to create a “broader Asia” at the “confluence of the two seas” — an Asia that would necessarily include other maritime democracies such as Australia, Indonesia and the United States.