an important editorial..india south east asia

India’s core interests in S. Asia
Foreign policy must reflect the reality
by Zorawar Daulet Singh

The recent fad in Western security commentary on India has sought to portray this country as a natural member of East Asian political life. The impetus for this narrative began last November with the US administration’s public endorsement that India was an East Asian power with President Obama urging India’s lawmakers to “not only ‘look East’ but also ‘engage East’”. More recently, American diplomats have prodded India to a “Be East” policy, reflecting perhaps impatience with the pace of India’s Pacific rendezvous.

India, in fact, began to look east in the early 1990s, much before Washington’s courting began. And simply because the West is now encouraging this, doesn’t mean that India should do the opposite. What India’s political and strategic community should, however, debate is a geostrategy that is consistent with the geopolitical context of South Asia.

It can be argued that by diverting India’s geostrategic attention eastwards, Washington is attempting to re-orient Indian threat perceptions away from Pakistan. And it is not difficult to discern why. India’s strategic bifurcation away from the subcontinent would enable Washington to maintain its preferred South Asia policy of increasing investments in both India and Pakistan without their bilateral contradictions complicating US regional strategy. This is something that recurred throughout the Cold War, and continues to be a potential nuisance to the US.

Now, China is undoubtedly both a regional challenge and a geostrategic threat to Indian security, and most analysts would find US prodding on India’s “East Asia” credentials an opportunity that should be leveraged both to enhance Indian influence and perhaps even increase its bargaining leverage vis-à-vis China.

But it is arguably not an overriding factor that should compel India to abandon its multivector worldview, which seeks to expand Indian influence in West Asia, South-East Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral states. Plainly put, by looking eastwards, the reality of Pakistan will not disappear. Moreover, by exclusively and openly focusing on a future Chinese threat, India would merely invite a larger deployment of Chinese offensive forces in Tibet, requiring an Indian counter-response and thus producing an offence-defence dynamic that could hardly enhance Indian security. It would presumably also give the Pakistani military a window of opportunity to rehabilitate itself and maintain its position as a regional balancer, ironically a situation that would favour China.

In fact, a threat-based assessment goes against the very grain of strategic discourse in security establishments today. The mantra of capability-based military modernisation is now the preference for most aspiring powers, including India, in a post-Cold War era where the dissolution of entrenched ideological and material conflicts are reducing the salience of the notion of permanent threats. What does this essentially mean? A focus on capabilities rather than threats is advantageous because threats may be transient and continue to assume different avatars, and a grand strategy or military modernisation programme that tailors itself exclusively to preconceived threats will usually find itself behind the curve. In contrast, focusing on capabilities will offer more flexibility to re-divert or re-deploy national instruments toward dynamic threat contingencies.

To be sure, capabilities are not acquired in a vacuum. Capabilities require a context and a reference point if they are to be acquired and developed efficiently. This context is derived from a nation-state’s self-image of its place in international life, the geopolitical location of the state, the material and military attributes of its peers, and the desired zone of influence.

Returning to the contemporary flux in India’s political and security posture, what geostrategic orientation must India assume to channel its grand strategic agenda? India’s potential and aspiration to be a pole in the international system coupled with the complex geopolitical reality that includes at least two uncooperative and allied states on its periphery implies that it would be imprudent to focus on Pacific China as an exclusive symbol of India’s rise. India’s core interests are in South Asia and it is continental China rather than naval China that remains a priority, and it is the balance of power on the Himalayan frontiers that India must seek foremost to improve. And insofar as the regional challenge of unchecked Chinese power to Indian influence is concerned, that can only be effectively dealt with by a policy of internal balancing or building India’s domestic capabilities. Improving governance, logistical connectivity across the subcontinent and adopting an economic model that produces true pan-Indian development complemented by a more astute and nimble regional policy will keep Chinese power at bay.

On the broader Asian arena, India recognises the challenge that surrounds China’s rise and is keen to participate in diverse bilateral and multilateral initiatives that can both serve as a hedge against a more assertive China and advance the search for a stable and plural multipolar equilibrium. The track-1 US-India dialogue on East Asia, of which a couple of rounds have already been concluded, is but one manifestation of such a multivector approach.

India’s abiding belief that a bloc-based system usually produces lesser security for all implies that India’s vision for Asian security is broader than that of the status quo actors in East Asia and the Western Pacific. It is perhaps instructive to note that India’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Shiv Shankar Menon recently remarked that an Asian security system “should be plural. No one-size solution or simplistic prescription will work. We should learn from the failure of Cold War alliance systems in the area, and of earlier Asian Collective Security proposals”. The NSA further argued that a new Asian order must include “the entire Eurasian landmass” from the “Suez to the Pacific”.

The underlying logic for such an open security system is underscored by the global political economy. The economic interdependence within Asia, especially in East Asia, and the complex web of extra-regional trade and investment linkages that connect Asia to Western economies only underscore the preference for an open economic and security system. US-China economic interdependence, for all the recent bluster, has merely been dented. The geoeconomic linkages between the West and China continue to be deep, profitable and include the participation of a multitude of state and corporate actors from across East Asia India’s perfunctory contribution to this division of labour is the true failure of India’s Look East policy.

So yes, look East, but don’t stop looking behind your shoulder too. This would produce a manageable relationship with China and its neighbours without compromising India’s strategic flexibility and options in West Asia, and especially when that region is primed to witness tumultuous change in the coming years.

India’s geopolitical location makes it a Eurasian power, and India’s foreign policy must reflect that.