India’s ‘look east’ policy is already paying dividends
The high- level visit earlier this month by Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko to India underscores the growing centrality of India in Japanese foreign policy. In an unprecedented move, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh appointed a former minister as a special envoy to oversee the preparations for the visit.
A multifaceted partnership is burgeoning between Japan and India and this visit, likely to be one of the last foreign trips for the 79-year old emperor, was aimed to put the imperial imprimatur on the ties between the two Asian powers. With the Japanese Emperor deciding to make India the destination for one of his rare visits abroad and Abe bringing New Delhi back in focus in Japanese foreign policy priorities, these are heady days in India-Japan ties.
This development suggests a new drive in New Delhi’s “look east” policy and the growing importance of its foreign policy matrix in East and Southeast Asia.
The general secretary of the communist party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, was also in Delhi last month during which India and Vietnam made a serious attempt to upgrade their bilateral relations. Eight pacts were inked during the visit, with the ones on energy cooperation and protection of information in defence being the highlights as these are two strategically signifi cant issues that have a bearing on the future trajectory of this relationship. Vietnam has offered seven oil blocks to India in the South China Sea, including three on an exclusive basis where Hanoi is hoping for productionsharing agreements with India.
In a significant move, India has also decided to offer a $ 100 million ( Dh367m) credit line to Vietnam to purchase military equipment. Usually a privilege reserved for its immediate neighbours, this is the first time that New Delhi has extended a credit line for defence purchases to a far-off nation. New Delhi and Hanoi have been working towards building a robust partnership for the past few years.
It is instructive that India entered the fraught region of the South China Sea via Vietnam. India signed an agreement with Vietnam in October 2011 to expand and promote oil exploration in the South China Sea and then reconfirmed its decision to carry on despite the Chinese challenge to the legality of an Indian presence. When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, India too was liberated from the structural constraints of the rigid bipolar world order. The government of the late P V Narasimha Rao, which was undertaking a far- reaching economic liberalisation programme in New Delhi, decided that the time had come for a serious engagement with its neighbours in East and Southeast Asia.
Initially, this strategy was pri- marily viewed as an economic strategy so as to draw linkages with the world’s most economically dynamic region. But such engagement soon became a geostrategic necessity for India as the rise of China challenged the fundamentals of Indian foreign policy, forcing New Delhi to rethink its inward-looking strategic orientation. Gradually a process began whereby India was beefing up its security ties with regional states to underpin its centrality in the strategic landscape.
As China has risen economically and diplomatically, its foreign policy has also attained a more aggressive orientation vis- à- vis its neighbours. On the one hand, New Delhi perceives a new offensive by China on its disputed shared border, with Beijing trying to change the facts on the ground through repeated incursions, on the other hand, China’s maritime neighbours have also been troubled by new and more strident claims being made by Beijing. Beijing’s attempt to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to its neighbours has led these states to increasingly look to India as a critical balancer in the region.
As a part of this balancing process, India has reached out to its partners in South and Southeast Asia to ensure a balance of power in the region. India and the 10- member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) have concluded talks on a freetrade agreement on services and investment that is expected to increase bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2022 and will lead to talks on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which would also include Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. With China- Asean ties under stress due to Beijing’s aggressive territorial claims, India has been trying to fill the void by emphasising its credentials as a responsible regional stakeholder. India has made a strong case for supporting not only freedom of navigation but also access to resources in accordance with international norms.
When China suggests that it would like to expand its territorial waters (which usually extend to 12 nautical miles from shore) to include the entire exclusive economic zone (200 nautical miles), it is challenging the fundamental principle of free navigation. All maritime powers, including India, have a national interest in freedom of navigation and open access to the seas as well as respect for international law in the South China Sea.
India is emerging as a major player in the Asian strategic landscape as smaller states reach out to it for trade and partnership. India can potentially be a regional balancer but it still has a long way to go in convincing regional states of its reliability, not only as an economic and political partner but also as a security provider.