Description
This paper examines the evolution in Canada’s Indo-Pacific policy, using hedging and triangulation as competing explanatory concepts and contrasting both with the free-riding that characterized its previous regional approach. The paper asks whether the policy can balance Canada’s economic interests in the region with long-standing security relations, most particularly with the United States and Australia. Canada’s past differentiation of security and economic approaches has become increasingly hard to sustain with China’s aggressive regional policy and use of coercive diplomacy. Canada has increasingly participated in ad hoc regional security initiatives but has limited capacity and engagement with Indo-Pacific security architecture. Canada inconsistently participates in the region’s economic architecture, despite the Indo-Pacific’s growing importance to Canada. Canada’s attempts to develop a new Indo-Pacific strategy reflects growing interest in the region and increased expectations from Canada’s allies that it will participate in regional governance more fully. The paper will therefore also consider the developing security and economic governance architecture in the Indo-Pacific as a series of opportunities for Canada to participate, or not, as part of its evolving regional posture.
