India and Southeast Asia: Towards Security Convergence

1. Politico-Security Landscape

Politico-Security Landscape 13 1 POLITICO-SECURITY LANDSCAPE The title of this book may raise a question in the reader’s mind — why security in India and Southeast Asia? For all the challenges they face, they appear strong and resilient. How should security between India and Southeast Asia be defined or understood? Security should encompass both traditional as well as non-traditional security. It should thus be comprehensive security. The latter would refer to the overall state of relationship in which there is mutual trust and confidence with no apprehension or fear. Fortunately, in their long association, the two had no history of territorial ambitions or wars. In recent times, they might have had little by way of security dialogues or formal security cooperation . In fact, in the Cold War days the two seldom looked at a number of questions of war and peace through a common prism. And yet, close interaction on security issues between India and Southeast Asia at the present time appears imperative even as the politico-security order in the Asia-Pacific region has undergone a major shift and new sets of norms and parameters are evolving. Extraordinary geostrategic changes have occurred in the past decade or so. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and emergence of the United States as the sole superpower and the rise of China as a significant military and economic power, the geopolitical realities of the region have greatly altered. India has gradually reoriented itself to this transformation. For ASEAN, too, consolidation after the addition of four new members and the Asian financial crisis has been a challenging situation. SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA: A GEOPOLITICAL CONTINUUM Seemingly, India’s and ASEAN’s priorities and areas of security concern may appear different and their policy approaches to deal with them may also vary. Though geographically proximate, the two have dissimilarities 02 India&SEA Ch 1 11/11/05, 8:17 AM 13 14 INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA: TOWARDS SECURITY CONVERGENCE with regard to ethnic and demographic composition, experiences of nation-building or political governance and constitutional structures. Moreover, “geographic propinquity alone does not determine geopolitical impact. Two regions pursuing a policy of self-reliance and isolation from the rest of the world and from each other are unlikely to have political impact on one another.”1 Yet, there is enough historical evidence to show that European colonialism cast its sway without drawing any distinction between South or Southeast Asia. As a matter of fact, the entire area of the Indian Ocean extending from the eastern coastline of Africa to India and stretching beyond to the peninsular and archipelagic Southeast Asia is a strategic continuum. Looking back into history, the first European expedition to India led by Vasco da Gama travelled from the southern part of Africa in the Indian Ocean to Calicut on the west coast of India in 1498. In a short span of time, the impact of the maritime strength of the Portuguese was felt in the Malacca Strait and beyond, in the spice islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Subsequently, the colonial powers continued to regard the security of South and Southeast Asia as integral to each other. During World War II, Japan tried to conquer India from its occupied territories of Burma, Malaya and Singapore in Southeast Asia. This also brought out a very important strategic aspect, namely, India was equally vulnerable from its eastern and southeastern frontiers. For India’s policy-makers, India’s defence from the east was, therefore, equally important as from the west or north. It is generally recognized that during World War II, Mountbatten’s command in Kandy in Ceylon came to be known as the Southeast Asia Command following which the usage of the term Southeast Asia came in popular parlance (though the term Southeast Asia included India, Pakistan and Ceylon at the Colombo Conference of Southeast Asian countries in 1954). Denoting the subregions as South or Southeast Asia is thus a recent development which clearly had led to a compartmentalization of security and defence thinking. For the past three to four decades, South Asia and Southeast Asia were not regarded as part of the same security matrix. It is only after the end of the Cold War, and more specifically, after September 11 when the Indian Ocean started to come into prominence that the need to recognize the strategic integrity of the Asia-Pacific region covering all subregions is being felt. This is an important lesson from history, which should serve as a...