The United States has just issued a new maritime strategy. It tells a good deal about Washington’s current concerns in what it calls the Indo-Asia-Pacific Region and provides an agenda to which China and other countries in the region will have to respond.

The United States has just released its new maritime strategy, which for the first time, has been officially made available in Mandarin. If it was meant as a signal to China, what will Beijing make of this? Will the Chinese see it as a challenge, or an invitation to cooperate in defence of a rules-based order?

‘A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower: Forward, Engaged, Ready’ appeared in March 2015. It aims to ‘refresh’ the strategy with the same primary title which first appeared back in 2007, and which has to a significant extent guided US maritime policy ever since.

… Geoffrey Till is a Visiting Professor in the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.