This monograph, written jointly by Australian academics Timothy Doyle and Dennis Rumley—both from Curtin University in Western Australia—is a highly successful attempt to distill the essence of past and present cultural narratives, geopolitical concepts, and the role of various states and actors of a “region” (broadly speaking), an approach only gradually coming back into academic focus. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific as a field of study has been overlooked for quite some time, while the Asia-Pacific as a “region” of economic and political importance has received its due share of academic attention. The Indo-Pacific “region” then encompasses the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean, the littoral zone between the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific, the countries abutting the oceans, and the countries acting and operating within them—in short, it comprises seas, waters, land, and the space above. As the authors note,“ No other region on the planet can boast of such cultural, political, and religious diversity as the Indo-Pacific, even in its narrowest imagined borders” (p. 167). With completion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and India’s Project Mausam, the Indo-Pacific will become one of the focal points of global political, economic, and geostrategic analysis. The renaming of the United States Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command is a case in point and highlights the dramatic US shift (or, as it has been termed, pivot) in geopolitical strategy and regional focus.

The structure of the book does justice to the diversity of the region in nine brilliantly researched and well-written chapters. An introductory chapter lays out different constructions and concepts of the Indo-Pacific region, such as the Indo-Pacific as an oceanic region, a super-region, or even a nonregion. It also poses a question that is especially relevant for political scientists: Does the region as such represent a regional security complex? The question can only be answered tentatively. In terms of methodology, the authors write that they subscribe to “elements of the essential and the socially constructed.”

The subsequent theory section discusses the Indo-Pacific region based on three dominant theoretical frameworks: nonrealist, realist, and universalist theories. This chapter is a superb (though short) contribution to the body of maritime regional theories. The authors claim, “Both realist and constructivist models of geopolitical enquiry, in all their heterogeneity, must be embraced as conceptual tools in order to fully comprehend and celebrate the differing cartographic imaginations of the Indo-Pacific” (p. 26).

This overview of regional theories is followed by a discussion of “traditional” geopolitical thought and its bearing on (or diffusion to) Indo-Pacific states. The authors outline historical geopolitical ideas and consider how they have been adopted, adapted, and/or diffused to important state actors in the Indo-Pacific such as the United States, Japan, China, and India. The chapter is especially noteworthy for tracing the influence of ideas and concepts such as Karl Haushofer’s “geopolitical manometer” (p. 29) and outlining the lasting ideational impact on present narratives in the region by authors or analysts such as Halford John Mackinder, Nicholas John Spykman, Kavalam Madhava Pannikar, and Ellen Churchill Semple.

Chapter 4 deals with the new “multiplex” Cold War in the Indo-Pacific, a term first used by Amitav Acharya. The chapter describes fundamental characteristics of the new Cold War and subsequently contextualizes them for the South Asian and Indo-Pacific regions. The chapter is followed by four extensive chapters dealing in detail with the role and aspirations of the United States, India, China. and several regional middle powers—for example, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam—and the special regional challenges they face. These four chapters in particular shed light on a host of different and differing strategic narratives of countries in the Indo-Pacific region, juxtaposing several nation-states and their culturally based and geopolitically driven narratives.

All in all, the sheer breadth and width of the individual chapters give them an encyclopedic quality. The book does an especially admirable job outlining overlooked cultural and strategic narratives of the Indo-Pacific before colonialization and of piecing together the actions, strategies, and conceptual approaches of various nation-states, both large and small, into a detailed mosaic. What is more, the authors conclude their book with an extensive section on the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), an often-overlooked regional organization that has clearly been eclipsed by the likes of APEC and ASEAN. In fact, IORA has almost been sidelined by academia, apart from a myriad of policy briefs. Very few specialized monographs or research articles have been published on it, and IORA’s inclusion in this book shed lights on its historical trajectory and its (modest) achievements and potential, while not ignoring the difficulties the organization faces in terms of financing and its disparate membership.

There are a few minor shortcomings in the book. First, some of the chapters, especially those devoted to the role of nation-states (for example the United States, India, and China) at times read like stand-alone articles, linked solely by their focus on the Indo-Pacific region, but not necessarily building logically on each other. Also, the introductory chapter does not outline any major thesis or set of research questions; instead, claims, various arguments, or core themes are dealt with at the beginning of each individual chapter. And in terms of methodology, the book could have profited from including primary research—for example, a set of interviews—conducted exclusively for some of the chapters dealing with major powers such as the United States or China. Because of the sheer number of concepts, current developments, state preferences, and strategies—for example, the return of global Russia, the US pivot to the Indo-Pacific, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD), the cyber and chemical Cold War, the large number of Chinese and Indian strategic partnerships, territorial disputes, bilateral principled security networks, and so on—each can only be dealt with fleetingly, for obvious reasons of space, and hence their treatment seems rushed at times. However, these points of critique in no way diminish the outstanding research quality of the book.

All in all, by focusing exclusively on the Indo-Pacific region, the authors successfully close a research gap in political science. Several figures, maps, and tables, in addition to an extensive index and a 30-page bibliography, make the book incredibly useful as a general work of reference. The Rise and Return of the Indo-Pacific is highly recommended for students, practitioners, and everyone interested in an important world region bound to dramatically shape the course of global politics in the foreseeable future, or—to quote Rory Medcalf from the Australian National University (p. 120)—a region that has already forced global politics to enter the “Indo-Pacific century.”