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Wooing ASEAN: Delhi looks
east
By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
India's determined push to the east is starting to
produce diplomatic dividends ahead of the November
summit with Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN)
leaders. But Delhi may have to turn over a few mildewy
rocks in its own backyard if it is to pull off one of
the most significant shifts in Indian foreign policy of
recent decades.
The Look East strategy could
sink without a trace under the weight of Muslim
hostility unless Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari
Vajpayee can dispel regional anxiety over his country's
weapons procurements programs - especially those from
Islam's avowed foe Israel.
Vajpayee has kept the
upgraded relationship with ASEAN on strictly business
terms. He wants a formal trade and investment pact that
could put India on the same rostrum as Japan, China and
South Korea in an expanded ASEAN Plus 3 dialogue. After
that would come membership of the Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) caucus, offering enhanced access to
markets in the US, East Asia and the Pacific rim.
Two-way trade between India and ASEAN is already
greater than India's commercial links with either Japan
or China, while Southeast Asia is a potentially
lucrative source of foreign direct investment. However,
Islamic leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia see only
security aspects at this point: specifically, how would
closer economic ties impact on the worn regional
geopolitical tapestry?
Delhi's problem is that
Cold War isolationism left it out of step with the
changing political and security landscapes elsewhere in
Asia, and there is no easy road back. Despite a long
cultural affiliation with Southeast Asia, India saw
little gain in building economic bridges until the
growth surge of the 1980s, by which time there were too
many diplomatic chasms.
India had turned to the
Soviet bloc for weapons in the 1960s after being spurned
by a Western alliance that was edgy over its border
frictions with China and Pakistan and a reported
ballistic-missiles program. ASEAN was already locked in
a proxy war with Moscow in Indochina and fighting
alleged communist incursions in northern Thailand,
Malaysia, Singapore much of Indonesia and the
Philippines.
Tentative overtures by Delhi for a
thaw toward the end of the Cold War were met with blank
hostility from Kuala Lumpur, which saw the missiles and
a blue-water navy buildup as indicative of wider Indian
strategic intents. Any further hopes of a reconciliation
ended four years ago with the dual missile tests in
India and Pakistan, and the subsequent confirmations
that both countries possessed a nuclear capability.
Malaysia's implacable opposition appeared to be
rooted to a large degree in its emerging status as a
mentor of the Islamic world, which ironically saw Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad brandish the same Third World
banners that Indian leaders had been forced to drop once
their power base vanished with the end of the Cold War.
One sticking point was an apparent decline in
religious tolerance, with Mahathir continually referring
to the failure of the ruling coalition to prevent the
destruction of Babri Masjid mosque by Hindu zealots a
decade ago.
Another was India's divided
allegiances between its aggressive courting of ASEAN and
affiliation, since 1985, with the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The other
SAARC members are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
According to Asian
diplomats, the breach with SAARC is probably permanent:
Delhi believes it has become paralyzed by the strains
between India and Pakistan, the two key power brokers.
With the help of Indonesia, Malaysia has
succeeded in limiting India's participation in ASEAN to
observer status at its annual gathering of foreign
ministers, though low-level technical dialogues have
also started.
But when Delhi proposed a leaders'
summit two years ago, Malaysia was the lone dissenting
voice, out-muscled by a Third World alliance of ASEAN
Indochina states that saw merit in an economic axis.
Last year Mahathir backed down, though only part of the
way. A summit will be held in November, but the reward
for Indian perseverance will be a typical ASEAN
face-saver that ranks Delhi well below Tokyo, Seoul and
Beijing on the regional pecking order.
Under
Mahathir's concept, which appears likely to be adopted,
India will be installed as ASEAN Plus 1, giving it
access rights to the 10 members of the main bloc but not
a position at the top table of regional unification
moves.
And there is one more catch: summits will
probably be held only every two years, in contrast with
the annual gatherings of ASEAN Plus 3. The message is
that India will have to earn its keep before it advances
any further into the ASEAN embrace.
The two
catalysts for this breakthrough were terrorism and a
shared fear of Chinese economic domination.
Delhi, having pedaled furiously to match
Pakistan's diplomatic coup over the military
intervention in Afghanistan, has become a fully fledged
member of the US security alliance after Washington's
decision to drop sanctions on arms procurements.
Malaysia undoubtedly recognizes the important
role that India can play in controlling the growth of
extremist religious sects, and may also have been
mollified by its strengthening ties with Turkey, an
Islamic member of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
Yet India's fierce streak of
independence in security matters makes it an
uncomfortable ally for ASEAN. Having watched Delhi dance
with Moscow for decades, the association is now
witnessing the unnerving spectacle of a furtive alliance
with Tel Aviv unfolding. Many security analysts believe
that the Israeli influence on India at a military level,
partly as an offshoot of the terrorism phobia, is
profound, and could become an immovable obstacle to
normalized relations.
It is not the decision by
Delhi to downgrade its Palestinian ties, polished for
years through the Non-Aligned Movement and other Third
World forums, that upsets Malaysia and Indonesia, even
though they remain frontline supporters of Yasser
Arafat. Rather it is the strategic implications of India
sharing vital intelligence data with the sworn enemy of
Islam, and possibly even using reconnaissance satellites
with Israeli technology to snoop on the activities of
ASEAN countries.
Then there is the reported
cooperation on strategic missiles, which goes against
the entire spirit of ASEAN's disarmament efforts,
including an ostensibly nuclear-free naval zone.
The ability of ASEAN to influence India's
foreign policies, even if it went outside the
traditional policy of non-interference in the affairs of
neighboring states, would be questionable at best. Delhi
gave a quick brushoff when ASEAN foreign ministers
complained of rising tensions in Kashmir at their last
summit in Brunei. As terrorism constitutes a global
threat, ASEAN contended that it had a moral obligation
to press for a dialogue between India and Pakistan. Not
so, said External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha,
arguing that this was the concern only of the two
protagonists.
While there are no suggestions
that the summit agenda in November will stray beyond the
more palatable subject of economic ties, it is unlikely
that the Islamic caucus will sit on the sidelines
indefinitely, especially as India has been a full
participant in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asia's
only formal security dialogue, since 1998, while
Pakistan is pointedly excluded.
In any case,
India is becoming more involved militarily in the
region, to the point where its views will be difficult
to ignore. Naval exercises are planned with Japan and
Vietnam, and closer ties are being explored with the
Thai armed forces.
Joint membership of the wordy
Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation
(IORARC), with ASEAN members Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore and Thailand has also helped break the
diplomatic ice, though the emphasis is again on economic
ties.
Strategic affairs will also come to the
fore if, as widely expected, India intends to use the
ASEAN linkage as a platform for advancing its greater
ambitions of obtaining a seat in the United Nations
Security Council alongside the US, Russia, China,
Britain and France. Long an advocate of UN reform, Delhi
will need the full support of the Third World, in
particular the emerging countries of Asian and Africa,
if it is to force - and win - a vote in the General
Assembly.
But before that can happen, Delhi will
have to play the good neighbor by mending a few damaged
fences in its own back yard. And ASEAN may well be
wielding the biggest hammer.
(©2002 Asia Times
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