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By Scott Simon
CIPS Working Paper, March 2023

• Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) broadens Canada’s commitment to a broad coalition of democracies that Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō first proposed to the Parliament of India 15 years previously. Ecological thinking, which Abe framed as a cultural affinity between India and Japan, is useful for understanding the Indo-Pacific and all partners who are linked by the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is important to begin all reflection of the Indo-Pacific with an understanding that it is a maritime region that nourishes human and non-human lives, all of whom would be negatively impacted by military conflict.
• Formosa, a verdant island of forested mountains in the azure waters near Okinawa, lies near the geographical centre of the Indo-Pacific. Now known as Taiwan, a society of 23.5 million people, it is the lynchpin of regional security and thus central to consideration in defence and foreign policy. The main challenge is that China has a firm goal to annex Taiwan, with the assumption that controlling the first island chain is necessary for them to gain unfettered access to the Pacific Ocean. China has made it clear in decades of laws and public pronouncements that they are unwilling to renounce the use of military force to take Taiwan. An ecological perspective means that one has to consider, not just geopolitical competition between states, but the impact of state actions on Indigenous peoples and all other lives.
• China’s military exercises in the air and waters around Taiwan, conducted just six months after China and Russia forged a “no limits” partnership and Russia invaded Ukraine, sent a stark message to the world that military threats made by authoritarian regimes must be taken seriously. Canada’s IPS is a part of the international reaction to these threats. A conflict in the Indo-Pacific would destroy lives, while draining resources needed to deal with existential issues of global warming and biodiversity loss. How can the world move from the threat of war to collaboration on these more urgent issues? How can Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy contribute to that goal? To seek answers to those questions, we need to understand China’s threats in the region and Canada’s response in the Indo-Pacific Strategy, first in terms of human interaction and eventually in terms of human entanglements with other forms of life.

Scott Simon (Ph.D., McGill University, 1998), is a socio-anthropologist trained in both disciplines (anthropology and sociology). He is Professor and Assistant Director of the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa, as well as researcher with the Human Rights Research and Education Centre and the Centre for International Policy Studies. Co-holder of the Chair of Taiwan Studies at the University of Ottawa, he has lived in Taiwan for ten years and returned annually for field research until the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also done field research in Japan and Guam. His research interests include Indigenous rights, development, political anthropology, and Taiwan’s international status. He has written four books and numerous articles about Taiwan. He has also published various policy papers about Taiwan for Canadian and international think tanks. This year, he will return to Taiwan to finish his SSHRC-funded research on “Austronesian Worlds: Human-Animal Entanglements in the Pacific Anthropocene.” He is developing a socio-anthropological approach to international relations.