The Lowy Institute examined and ranked nations throughout the Indo-Pacific in its most recent Asia Power Index, which was published on February 6. What do these scores mean and what do they indicate? The Asia Media Centre looks at the report's themes.
Who publishes the Asia Power Index and what is it?
The Lowy Institute, a think firm with offices in Sydney, released a data-driven report titled The Asia Power Index.
The independent organization has been publishing the Asia Power Index since 2018. In the end, it rates 26 nations, ranging from New Zealand and the US in the west to Pakistan in the northwest and as far north as Russia.
It determines the rankings by analyzing each nation's performance on 133 factors that are divided into eight categories: military prowess, defense networks, economic prowess, economic ties, diplomatic influence, cultural influence, resilience, and future resources.
These eight measures encompass each nation's resources and influence in the Indo-Pacific region in general. A country's "comprehensive power" is calculated as a weighted average of these metrics and is expressed as a number out of 100.
The best 10 nations were as follows:
1. United States (80.7/100)
2. China (72.5/100)
3. Japan (37.2/100)
4. India (36.3/100)
5. Russia (31.6/100)
6. Australia (30.9/100)
7. South Korea (29.5/100)
8. Singapore (25.1/100)
9. Indonesia (19.4/100)
Asia's middle force is Singapore. In comparison to 2021, the city-total state's rating dropped by 1.1 points.
Considering its tiny size and sparse populace, Singapore continues to perform exceptionally well. The city-state has a strong network and a strong external emphasis, earning it the fourth-best ranking for economic ties.
Without any formal alliance obligations, Singapore is the only nation to enter the top five defense networks, demonstrating the breadth and depth of its non-aligned security alliances in the region.
However, Singapore faces particular strategic difficulties given its success and small population. Due to being one of the nations in the region with the lowest levels of energy independence, it has the lowest ranking in the resilience measure, coming in at 14th. Singapore's low resource security caused its resilience rating to drop another two spots in 2022.
However, Singapore saw gains in both its economic and military prowess, moving up one spot in each category to rank sixth and ninth, respectively.
Singapore's positive power gap score suggests that it has more influence in the region than might be anticipated given its resourcefulness. Despite being a net overachiever in Asia, Singapore's positive power disparity got worse in 2022.
Source: LowyInstitute.org, AsiaMediaCentre.org.nz
