India's eastern engagements

Sources: Asian Affars

By: Inder Malhotra

November 17, 2011: Inder Malhotra considers India's burgeoning strategic relationships with two of its key south-eastern neighbours, which are causing China some concern.

India's 'Look East' policy was first propounded in 1991 by the countries then prime minister, P V Narasimha Rao. During its first two decades, this policy remained largely theoretical, a fact about which Singapore once voiced objections. Then it gathered real momentum, partly because of India's increasingly impressive economic growth, in which neighbouring south-eastern countries wanted to share. Even more importantly, China's growing assertiveness vis-à-vis all its neighbours, especially its aggressive stance towards India, drove the ASEAN nations to the conclusion that India was their best bet as a counterpoise to China's expansionist might in Asia.

No wonder, then, that by 2009 India and ASEAN had signed a Free Trade Area Agreement that has started working well, though its capacity to trade goods is limited for the present. The two sides are now engaged in negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation pact that would cover both goods and services. Of all the ASEAN nations, only the Philippines has some difficulty on this score, but India is determined to address its concerns. Agreements for comprehensive economic cooperation with Japan and South Korea are already in force.

Now there has been a sudden surge in India's ties with its eastern neighbours, of which the growing bond with Vietnam and Burma (Myanmar) is most notable. The former is a traditional friend and partner of India, while the latter, which had gone into isolation, first under Ne Win's autocratic rule and then under the even more tyrannical military junta, has shown refreshing signs of a return to the path of reconciliation with the long-struggling democratic forces at home, and of much greater reliance than before on friendship with India.

In 1988, when the army seized power in Burma, annulling the elections won hands down by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), India initially took the side of those demanding the immediate restoration of democracy. But this inevitably drove the military regime deeper and deeper into China's arms. Beijing reciprocated by becoming Burma's only source of arms and the country's biggest politico-diplomatic supporter at a time when the rest of the world had imposed the strictest sanctions against it.

Soon enough, New Delhi rectified its position and engaged with the Generals, while advising them privately to make peace with the democratic forces. No wonder the new relationship lacked the warmth of the Nehru era.

Before returning to the brave new developments relating to Burma, it is necessary to discuss the trajectory of the Indo-Vietnamese strategic partnership, if only because Vietnam's president, Truong Tang Sang, has recently visited Delhi ahead of Burma's new president Thein Sein. Moreover, President Truong's visit took place shortly after China's muscle-flexing in the South China Sea against Indian-Vietnamese cooperation in oil exploration in those waters.

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after signing a slew of agreements with his honoured guest, the strategic relationship with Vietnam 'stood by itself' and was a 'factor for peace, stability and development in the region'. The new agreements signed include an extradition treaty and a protocol for strengthening defence cooperation, especially 'maritime ties and more naval exchanges'.

Only a few months before the signing of these agreements, an Indian naval ship, after calling at Vietnamese ports, was sailing back home through the waters in which India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Videsh and the corresponding Vietnamese company are exploring jointly for oil. A Chinese voice from an unseen source told the Indian vessel that it was in China's waters. The ship's captain ignored this, and nothing further happened. However, the Indian public was indignant when the 'incident' was first exposed in the United States.

Chinese official sources retorted that the entire South China Sea was 'under Chinese sovereignty', and that India must not explore for oil there in partnership with Vietnam. India's reply has consistently been that the oil exploration area is within Vietnam's continental shelf and that the agreement on joint exploration was signed in 1988, and until last year China had not objected. In any case, at the end of the Vietnamese president's visit, Indian defence minister A K Antony announced categorically that the joint oil exploration would continue.

As usual in any contention with China, a large section of the Indian population has expressed a great deal of anger. There are demands that we must make sure China gets its comeuppance. At the same time, there are more sober voices counselling restraint. China, according to experts, including a former naval chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, is saying to India exactly what it is telling the US, which has much greater naval power than China and India combined. Their advice is that India should concentrate on developing the necessary maritime muscle before asking the Indian navy to extend its reach to the South China Sea. In all conscience, it must also be recorded that the day Mr Truong signed a series of agreements in Delhi, in Beijing a Vietnamese deputy prime minister and his hosts inked an agreement not to let the maritime situation get out of hand.

Despite all this, it is no exaggeration to say that new stirrings in the India-Burma relationship are geo-strategically more important than even the developments in India's links with Vietnam, a courageous if small country that, in 1979, gave an invading Chinese army a bloody nose. The credit for this undoubtedly goes to Burma's newly elected president, Thein Sein, who came to New Delhi immediately after his Vietnamese counterpart.

To be sure, Thein Sein is a supporter of the Burmese Army. Some might even say that he became president entirely because of the army. Be that as it may, soon after coming to power, he displayed remarkable wisdom. He reached out a hand to that great icon of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been so long repressed by the military. He then released political prisoners. The outside world needs to encourage him to continue this process.

Well before coming to India (heads of state visits are planned months in advance), Burma's president took a step of profound geo-strategic importance: he stopped a massive Chinese hydroelectric project in the north of his country. This had nothing to do with India or Chinese-Indian competition in Burma; Thein Sein acted purely because the project had outraged the Kachin minority in the area, since it would have displaced the people and destroyed their lands and forests, indeed their entire way of life,

The Chinese may be dismayed but the way has been cleared for a closer relationship between India and Burma. Cooperation between the two countries is vital for Indian security in the north-east, and for preventing China from extending its huge presence to the west of the Irrawaddy River.