Democratic alliance of the US, India, Japan and Australia wants to work with China – not contain it

The White House has announced that Donald Trump’s forthcoming visit to East Asia will be an opportunity for the president to “present the US vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region” at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in Vietnam on November 10.

This focus on the Indo-Pacific was the central theme of a major policy speech by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington last month. Reference was also made to the “predatory” economic model of China and its less-than-responsible rise – in contrast to India. In the Trump-Tillerson formulation, the United States and India were perceived as the two bookends of global stability. A red rag to Beijing?

Democracy as a lodestar for partnership is enticing. The idea of a concert of democracies and the confluence of the two oceans, the Indian and the Pacific, was mooted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his first tenure in August 2007, when he addressed the Indian Parliament in Delhi.