Indias Policy of Non-Reciprocity in South Asia by Carbone Christian;

Author:Carbone, Christian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)
Published: 2018-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

4

India and Regional Rivalry

in Southeast Asia

Why is Southeast Asia important? India and China are locked in a struggle not only for global hegemony but in the first instance for Pan-Asian leadership. Three regional economic and security organizations—South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—illustrate the jostling for power. Of these, SAARC is symbolically significant with little political or economic substance. ASEAN combines Southeast Asia’s economic concerns with its security needs through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), while the SCO primarily remains a security organization dominated by Beijing’s interests (Niazi 2006).

These regional organizations, however, articulate multilateral concerns, which are greatly shaped by the competing interests of Beijing and New Delhi. India and China thus build bilateral relations to influence the regional agenda. As a result, it is the economic strength and to a lesser degree military might of each country that is fuelling the drive for ascendancy in Asia. Although there are several cooperative initiatives between Beijing and New Delhi at bilateral, regional and global levels, they seem to engulf a sense of competitive tension with important exceptions like the BRICs initiative and collaboration and speaking with one voice in global governance institutions like the UN, Climate Summits and international trade and labor negotiations.

Another area of contestation is the Strait of Malacca which runs for 600 miles between Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to the east and Sumatra to the west in Indonesia. In the east it flows into the South China Sea where the natural resource-rich Paracel and Spratly island groups are contested between China and three member states of ASEAN.

Some estimates show that more than 50,000 ships pass through the Malacca strait annually, transporting 30 percent of the goods traded in the world including oil from the Persian Gulf to major East Asian nations like China, Japan and South Korea.

As many as 20 million barrels of oil a day pass through the Strait of Malacca, an amount that will only increase in the near future. More than 50 percent of India’s trade while more than 80 percent of China’s oil needs go through the Malacca Strait This makes the Strait one of the worlds most vital strategic water passages.

The US has conducted annual naval exercises codenamed Malabar with India in the Bay of Bengal, immediately north of the Strait of Malacca, and included 25 warships from five nations: The US, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore. Japan became the ninth country with which the Indian Army has a bilateral dialogue, joining the US, Britain, France, Australia, Bangladesh, Israel, Malaysia, Korea and Singapore. More recently there have been naval exercises involving Japan, the US and India, partnership and bilateral and trilateral strategic security dialogues.

With both China and India rising fast combined with the West’s withdrawal over the past three decades, Southeast Asia is once again a chessboard on which the Chinese and Indian pieces are multiplying. China and India offer the largest markets and greatest economic spoils, and it would seem little threat in exchange for simple allegiance.

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