ASEAN-India-Australia: Towards Closer Engagement in a New Asia

Preface

PREFACE Nearly two decades after the Cold War, what type of security order is emerging in the Asia-Pacific remains unclear. Hegemony, power balancing, the politics of concert, and community building have all been designated as possible models for a future regional order, but all of these approaches contain risks for misperception and conflict escalation. Uncertainties are further intensified by the nature of emerging, broader security tests now confronting the region. These “non-traditional” or “transnational” challenges originate largely from “non-state-centric” sources and permeate national boundaries in unprecedented fashion. Climate change, international crime, maritime threats, energy shortages, and various issues of civil society and human security emanating from problems of governance all vie for attention of Asia-Pacific policymakers in an increasingly complex world. What remains constant, however, is the human tendency to seek ways of organizing collectively to overcome the major security challenges of the day. The bipolarity that was shaped by superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and dominated “strategic Asia” for the second half of the previous century is clearly transforming into new geometries that are not yet clearly understood. In the absence of a more certain and transparent world, actors who have either previously formed habits of interacting with each other in a regional context, or who share a common heritage of language, political culture, and geopolitical affinity, often find it easier to communicate and cooperate with each other than to negotiate hard bargains with potential adversaries. ASEAN-Australian relations exemplify the first pattern; Australian-Indian relations potentially reflect the second. The ASEAN-Indian relationship appears to have largely remained outside such orbits to date. Yet both Southeast Asian and Indian analysts have noted that a greater “security convergence” is now materializing within that dyad as well. Visible strategic consensus now clearly exists, for example, in the areas of counter-terrorism, maritime security, and democratization.1 An obvious question flowing from such developments is to what extent these three actors might constructively pursue an implicit form of trilateralism in their security interactions. “Trilateralism” is applied to mean that the three actors under review in this particular volume would forge a series of arrangements or even policy-specific regimes, underwritten by a commonality of interests, derived from increasingly shared democratic values, economic concerns, and geopolitical relativities. India has joined ASEAN and Australia to adopt a robust anti-terrorism posture, and this will only be reinforced in the aftermath of the December 2008 Mumbai attacks. As predominantly maritime entities, all three are largely dependent on unencumbered sea lanes and are apprehensive about Asian land powers developing maritime projection capabilities that could challenge their natural domain reserves. All of them will grapple with developing or accessing effective sources of water, energy, and food needed to sustain growing populations. Australia has a keen interest in encouraging the continued development of democratic forces in both India and in various ASEAN member states. In early 2008, the time appeared opportune to convene a workshop finally of experts representing these three polities for discussions and analysis of these issues. India had reached a crossroads in its “Look East” policy with ASEAN, with initial high expectations for a free trade agreement between the two parties not realized, and with the Indian government becoming more strategically enmeshed with the United States via the Indo-United States nuclear deal. ASEAN was moving closer towards implementing formal, regional community-building processes for Southeast Asia via the ASEAN Charter. Australia had just elected its first new Prime Minister in eleven years and one who was determined to resuscitate his country’s “Asian credentials” after his predecessor had arguably linked it closer to U.S. strategy than had any other post-war Australian leader. By 2007, India had emerged as Australia’s fourth largest export market and was being viewed more seriously as a potential geopolitical counterweight to the expansion of Chinese power in Asia. Indeed, one respected Australian observer noted near the end of the year that, “…(s)ome would even argue that the stability of India’s political system, with the shock-absorber that democracy provides, might make its long-run success more assured than China’s and therefore an increasingly appealing economic and strategic collaborator with Australia”.2 x Preface Exploratory discussions between representatives of the Australian National University’s (ANU’s) Department of International Relations and Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) had resulted in...