ABSTRACT
As the Asia-Pacific region continues to undergo major economic and political transformation, the challenges and opportunities it now presents are perhaps more influential than ever in shaping the policies of major international actors like the US, the European Union, Russia, Japan, and, of course, China. The geopolitical significance of the region and the import of competition between major state actors (China, Japan, Russia, and the US) are frequently discussed, and in more recent years energy competition and supply has become a hot topic. Such discussions, however, often focus only on how the Asia-Pacific’s fast evolving, and increasingly interdependent, political and economic landscape affects inter-state relations in what is essentially a great game of strategy played according to the rules of national interest, military power, and the anarchical system. Comparatively little attention is paid to how transnational threats, like energy shortages, can internally impact on states in ways that the ‘great game’ perspective has difficulty recognising or understanding.
