ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses regional order and the erosion thereof conceptually, and it highlights some of the most pertinent risks that the erosion of order entails. This includes the risk of hot conflict. But even short of war, great power estrangement leads to a situation in which the region’s – and ultimately the world’s – capacity to cooperate is severely restricted. However, many of the challenges the world will increasingly be confronting – including financial, health, and ecological crises, including the COVID-19 and other pandemics as well as climate change – are beyond one nation state’s management capacity. For these reasons, any sustainable future order must account for lasting Sino-US rivalry, for the real risk of hot conflict, for the legitimate interests of all states, including China, and for the cooperation imperative of future challenges. A new Indo-Pacific equilibrium seeks to account for all that by embarking on two parallel order-building projects that seek to establish both a new modus vivendi for all to co-exist and a modus operandi so that the Indo-Pacific region can remain functional. It aims to avoid the most undesirable consequences of great power competition, and it seeks to manage the difficulties related to structural changes.
