India and East Asia: The Look East Policy

Abstract

The global centre of gravity is shifting to East Asia, due to its remarkable economic dynamism, but the rise of new power centres and their assertive attitudes also brings huge security challenges. India is renewing its age-old links with East Asia; after a long hiatus it is looking to East Asia once again to engage with it more purposely. Compelled by political and economic imperatives, New Delhi launched the ‘Look East’ policy in the early 1990s, which, despite its slow take-off, has evolved into a comprehensive engagement underpinned by several politicalinstitutional mechanisms, strong economic association through a variety of comprehensive cooperation agreements, and robust defence links and security cooperation. As a result, India has now become an inalienable part of the evolving East Asian economic and security order. While India closely collaborates with the U.S., Japan and a few ASEAN countries in the management of regional security, India’s relations with China are undergoing major changes as they become increasingly complex.

Keywords

• India, East Asia, Look East policy, IndiaU.S., India-China.

References

1. East Asia here includes India, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia.
2. According to Kissinger, one of the three revolutions the world is witnessing is the “… shift in the centre of gravity of international affairs from Atlantic to Pacific and Indian Oceans”, see, Henry A. Kissinger, “The Three Revolutions”, Washington Post, 27 April 2008.
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4. The eight being Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
5. For details, see, G.V.C. Naidu, Indian Navy and Southeast Asia, New Delhi, IDSA and Knowledge World, 2000.
6. India commemorated two decades of its dialogue partnership and a decade of summit partnership with ASEAN by convening a summit meeting with the Association’s heads of state in Delhi in December 2012.
7. Computed from Trade Data Bank of Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India.
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9. http://www.mea.gov.in/mystart.php?id=100517854 [last visited 19 July 2011].
10. It was Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who, for the first time, talked about the growing interface and interdependence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans: ‘We are now at a point at which the Confluence of the Two Seas is coming into being. The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity.’ PM Shinzo Abe’s Address to the Indian Parliament, 22 August 2007.
11. The Trilateral was re-launched in 2011.