How Does the 'Pacific' Fit into the 'Indo-Pacific'? The Changing Geopolitics of the Pacific Islands

In the 2013 Defence White Paper the Australian Government identified its zone of strategic interest as the ‘Indo-Pacific’, which it described as “connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia”. That formulation was repeated in the 2016 Defence and the 2017 Foreign Policy White Papers and is increasingly used by the United States (US), India, Japan, France and Indonesia.