November's East Asia Summit in Bali witnessed a dramatic change in India's stance on security in the Indo-Pacific region, as concerns escalate over China's increasingly forceful policies. G Parthasarathy reports.
The recent East Asia Summit in Bali saw a significant transformation in India's approach to issues of regional and maritime security, in what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently described as the 'Indo-Pacific region'. This region, considered now as the core of India's security perimeter, extends from across the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and the Western Pacific. India has, for decades, fought shy of giving a security dimension to regional economic groupings. This was, amongst other reasons, due to the legacy of nonalignment it inherited from the Cold War. Progressive modification of Cold War era security policies commenced as its 'Look East' policies led to greater multilateral engagement with its ASEAN neighbours, together with its participation in ASEAN in institutional arrangements like the ASEAN Regional Forum and in meetings of Defence Ministers organised by ASEAN. However, India chose to take a backseat, while supporting an ASEAN consensus in such forums, because, among other reasons, it did not wish to get drawn into contentious differences between the US on the one hand and its ASEAN partners and China on the other.
But things changed dramatically at the Bali Summit. Disregarding Chinese reservations, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserted that as political and security issues had become an integral part of the discourse of the region, the East Asia Summit 'provides an opportunity to discuss all issues' while 'respecting differences and ensuring synergy between different forums'. Only the previous day, Dr Singh had pointedly told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that India's involvement in off-shore gas and oil exploration in Vietnam was entirely 'economic'. China had taken serious objection to recent agreements between India and Vietnam on oil and gas exploration. Moreover, an Indian naval warship visiting Vietnam had received a wireless message warning that it was intruding into China's territorial waters. There were also indications that Chinese vessels might try to ram Indian ships involved in off-shore exploration, or even just sailing through what China claimed as its territorial waters.
While China insisted that it would handle differences on its maritime boundaries with countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia bilaterally, India has now made the point that issues involving maritime boundaries and freedom of navigation have to be settled in conformity with the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Roughly 40 per cent of India's trade with the United States traverses through the South China Sea. Moreover, its entire trade with Japan and South Korea traverses through waters claimed by Beijing to be areas of its 'core interest'. In these circumstances, undefined and contested maritime boundaries, where one party appears ever ready to use force, are seen as an impediment and inhibiting factor in the freedom of navigation.
From a larger perspective, China's policies are now seen by virtually all its neighbours as being excessively 'assertive'. Across Asia, there is now a widespread feeling that this is occurring at a time when its economic power and military muscle have grown. This Chinese approach has also more or less coincided with a relative decline in American global influence. Moreover, at a time when the United States is facing a serious economic downturn, China has been given to acting with a certain sense of disdain for virtually all its neighbours. Japan has seen its shipping vessels rammed and its supplies of rare earth materials cut off by China because of differences over maritime boundaries. The Chinese media went ballistic when South Korea and the US decided to hold joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, after a South Korean naval vessel was torpedoed, quite evidently by a North Korean submarine. The Chinese were also not averse to a show of force across areas of their disputed maritime boundaries with the Philippines on the South China Sea.
While ASEAN member states were formerly not too alarmed at the prospect of a drawing down of the US military presence in the Western Pacific, their concerns have grown as China has sought to dominate the strategic space in their neighbourhood. The entire region breathed a sigh of relief when the US accepted an invitation to join the annual ASEAN-sponsored East Asia Summit, which earlier included China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. As a major Asia-Pacific power, Russia has also joined the grouping, after it was invited to the Bali meeting. Despite Chinese reservations, four ASEAN member States — Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — together with India, Australia and the US raised the issue of maritime boundaries and freedom of navigation at the Bali Summit. Russia, Indonesia and five other members of the grouping talked in general terms about maritime security. Only Myanmar and Cambodia avoided any reference to the issue. An embarrassed Wen Jiabao, who was described by American participants as being 'a little bit grouchy at first', sounded conciliatory, but did not give up Chinese insistence on dealing with each neighbour separately and bilaterally.
Like China's other neighbours, India has also faced a fair measure of Chinese assertiveness in recent days. In response to a massive build up of Chinese roads along its borders, combined with the augmentation of China's airpower and missile capabilities in Tibet, India has decided, in principle, to raise an additional Strike Corps, comprising around three Mountain Divisions, for deployment on its north-eastern borders with China. This is adjacent to areas where China has laid claim to the entire Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh. In response to this Indian move, the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper People's Daily warned India that it should remember that any additional troops it deploys can be taken out by Chinese precision guided weapons. Moreover, China has consistently opposed India's increasing association and cooperation with ASEAN. India, in turn, is increasing its military cooperation with Japan and Vietnam and concluded Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreements with Japan and South Korea.
The admission of the United States into the ASEAN- led East Asian Summit has introduced a new dynamic in promoting a viable balance of power in Asia. Significantly, just prior to the East Asian Summit Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard revoked a ban imposed at the behest of the ruling Australian Labour Party on the sale of uranium ore to India. This was almost immediately accompanied by an announcement of American troop deployments in Australia. Clearly, as China increasingly flexes its military muscle, countries like India, Australia, Japan and Vietnam are getting together to ensure that their legitimate interests are not undermined. Across the Pacific, the Americans appear to have every intention of playing an important role in shaping a new security architecture for the Indo-Pacific.