The Indo-Pacific has entered an era of intensified complexity. Strategic tremors now travel faster. Fault lines run deeper. The contest for advantage now spans every domain, from seabed cables that bind our economies to the circuitry powering tomorrow’s defense systems. Across the region, governments, militaries, and civil societies face a triad of overlapping challenges: disruptive shocks, deepening divisions, and accelerating competition across visible and invisible frontiers.

It is against this backdrop—and in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies—that Edge of Competition: Disruption, Division, and Competition in the Indo-Pacific arrives. This timely volume reflects the Center’s enduring mission: to educate, connect, and empower security practitioners who advance peace and stability through cooperation. Rather than prescribe singular solutions, the contributors illuminate how power is gained, tested, and sustained at the evolving edges of regional security.

Three Lenses, One Imperative
The volume is framed around three intersecting themes:

Disruption explores the shocks, threats, and emergent capabilities that challenge traditional assumptions about stability, deterrence, and power projection.

Division examines the fragmentation of state authority, the erosion of legitimacy, and widening asymmetries that enable coercion, interference, and instability.

Competition investigates strategic maneuvering across the modern Indo-Pacific, from maritime flashpoints and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities to the pursuit of industrial and technological rivalries.

Together, these themes reinforce a clear imperative: advantage belongs to those who can recognize early warning signs, align instruments of power with purpose, and respond with disciplined urgency. This ethos mirrors the Center’s vision for collaborative leadership in an evolving security environment.

A Chorus of Regional Voices
One of this volume’s great strengths is its refusal to frame the Indo-Pacific solely through the lens of major power rivalry. Instead, readers encounter perspectives from large democracies and small island nations, steadfast allies and strategically autonomous partners. These voices remind us that agency is widely distributed and that enduring security is not imposed from above but forged through dialogue, mutual respect, and shared responsibility.

From Page to Practice
For three decades, the Center has brought together civilian and military leaders to address challenges that transcend borders: piracy, pandemics, disinformation, gray-zone coercion, and the persistent threat of armed conflict. We have learned that insight only matters when it leads to action—policy that builds resilience, exercises that sharpen readiness, and partnerships that close vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

Edge of Competition is a resource for that translation. Its chapters offer concrete implications for policymakers strengthening deterrence without provoking escalation, for defense planners balancing modernization with fiscal restraint, and for analysts striving to turn complexity into clarity.

An Invitation to Collaborate

This volume launches the Strategic Edge Series. Its successor, America’s Strategic Edge, will examine how the United States can refine deterrence, cultivate lethality, and deepen partnerships that uphold Indo-Pacific security. Whether that volume concludes the series or opens future avenues of inquiry, the imperative remains constant: to sustain an open, stable, and resilient region amidst the pressures of competitive multipolarity.

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, this book reflects what we have built and where we must go. I commend Dr. James M. Minnich and the contributing authors for their clarity of vision and commitment to actionable scholarship. May this work spark the cooperation and insight needed to meet the moment and shape the future.

Suzanne “Suzy” Puanani Vares-Lum
Major General, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Director
Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies
Honolulu, Hawai’i | June 2025