The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to New Delhi as the chief guest for the 65th Republic Day celebrations in January 2014 apparently sent a clear signal of the importance of Japan to India in the context of changing power dynamics in Asia-Pacific. Notably, for the first time Japanese Prime Minister was a chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations.
The Indo-Pacific is the new geopolitical construction that has emerged to symbolise the seamless contour of the Indian and Pacific oceans. This construction has replaced the Asia-Pacific in 2011 and has been given as a self-evident reality that has embraced the Western Pacific, the Eastern Pacific and the Eastern Indian Ocean rim. The construction has also been defined as a region that envelops a wide area from the Western Pacific to the Western Indian Ocean reaching the East African shores.
In a speech on 25 December to the 2012 and 2013 batches of our Foreign Service, the National Security Advisor (NSA), Shri Shivshankar Menon remarked: 'Life would be far too easy if we only had to deal with ourselves'. He added:
