India is cementing closer relations with ASEAN

India is cementing closer relations with ASEAN

S.D. Muni looks at how common interests are drawing India and ASEAN closer together.

India's maiden participation in the Jakarta ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC) meetings was low-key but confident. It could not have been otherwise in view of India's broad harmony with the ASEAN states on the ARF's basic agenda and security concerns. India understands the anxieties in this region emerging from the fluid and uncertain security situation.

New Delhi is not unfamiliar with the assertive claims made by China in the South China Sea, as it has experience of Chinese behavior on the disputed Himalayan border. China's growing military capabilities and willingness to use force confirm India's own worries because China not only poses a direct challenge to India's security through its nuclear missiles deployed in Tibet, but also continues to arm India's adversarial neighbors with lethal weapons -- including M-11 missiles.

Yet India agrees with ASEAN that "constructive engagement" is the best way to deal with China. Even at the cost of displeasing many of its friends, particularly the U.S., India has been pleading for such engagement vis-a-vis China since 1949. China's most unfriendly response in 1962 did not change this.

Even now, while reckoning with the long-term security challenge posed by China, India is doing its best to engage the former constructively, on the issues of economic co-operation, and also on the reduction of troops deployed on their common border. India's Foreign Minister I. Gujral, pursued the agenda of bilateral confidence-building with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines during the Jakarta meeting.

India was also on ASEAN's side on the question of Myanmar. Apart from the obvious hypocrisy and public posturing involved in the Western position, India disapproved of the West using "human rights" and "concern for democracy" as political sticks to beat Asia with. Accordingly, India joined ASEAN in drawing attention to the mockery of human rights in Bosnia. If ASEAN's stance on Myanmar also reflected its internal political dilemma, or the desire to secure business niches vacated by European multinationals in Myanmar, India was not concerned. For India itself has been pursuing pragmatic co-operation with the junta in Yangon since 1993.

Without dropping its sympathies for the cause of Aung San Suu Kyi, to whom India gave the Nehru Peace Award, New Delhi has been securing Yangon's help in containing tribal insurgences along its vulnerable north-eastern frontier. India shares ASEAN's assessment that isolating the generals in Yangon would mean pushing Myanmar closer to China.

Further, inherent in the Myanmar issue at Jakarta was also the question of leadership of the ARF. India is firmly committed to ASEAN leading the ARF's gradual evolution. The idea of the West dominating it and transforming it to an organization with more bite than bark, may not serve the long-term interests of either ASEAN or India.

The ARF is already widening its scope of activities in the areas of confidence-building as well as "search and rescue" and "peacekeeping" operations. India has both the capabilities and the will to actively participate in these activities and it also welcomes the accent on transparency in matters of defense policy. In New Delhi's perception, it is still premature to think, as some Japanese politicians do, that the ARF can undertake security responsibilities in the Asia-Pacific region in the event of a retreat or drastic reduction of US military forces.

One issue on which India could have faced serious embarrassment in Jakarta was that of nuclear non-proliferation, as India is the only ARF country not to have signed the Non-proliferation Treaty and has been insisting on a time-bound link between a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and global disarmament. India's Foreign Minister said: "India, like others in this room, remains committed to the elimination of all nuclear weapons and bringing forth a comprehensive and genuine test ban treaty that would not only out-law nuclear weapon testing, but also non-explosive techniques for refinement of nuclear weapons".

ARF Chairman and Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas remarked: "India's position is born out of a principled struggle... We knew India's position and some of the basic points of that stand are shared by all members of the Non-aligned movement. We want really to work for non-proliferation." He also endorsed India's emphasis on stopping not only horizontal, but vertical proliferation as well.

India could not have expected more than this in view of the clear ARF position that "the on-going negotiations" in Geneva on the CTBT should "receive support of all concerned parties".

There were two important messages that India wanted to convey through its participation in the ARF and PMC meetings in Jakarta. One, that the prospects of governmental instability and political confusion in India notwithstanding, the process of Indian economic reforms is irreversible. And secondly, that India, through active economic and strategic collaboration with ASEAN and others, is keen in the long run to rediscover its foot-prints in the Asia-Pacific region that were lost earlier in the strategic currents of the Cold War. Indian Foreign Minister Gujral, the eldest among all those present in Jakarta, did his best to convey these messages.

Professor S.D. Muni is Professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and concurrently Duncan Macneill Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.