Sing a song at ASEAN
Twenty-five Years Of India’s Association
By Salman Haidar
NEW Delhi has just played host to a commemorative Summit to mark 25 years of its association with ASEAN. For such a significant occasion, when India’s capital city was crowded with notable leaders from its neighbourhood, it was a somewhat low pressure affair. There were few public events to attract media attention, little ceremonial glitz to draw the crowds, no weighty statements to be released or diplomatic initiatives to be announced. In a way, such matter-of-fact, low-key handling reflects ASEAN’s typical style of conducting business, which eschews ceremony and concentrates on substance. Heads of Government and senior ministers regularly crisscross the region and have built up an easy, informal way of doing business together. Our own SAARC aspires to something comparable but is as yet far from achieving it, and even the EU, the path-breaking regional organization, may seem comparatively ponderous. Consider that the Heads at so many international gatherings typically end their proceedings with carefully weighted statements: ASEAN Heads sing a song.
The easy flow between ASEAN capitals is an important element in the joint activity they have been able to develop and maintain. Coordination of response, especially at times of international crisis, has served them well and become a feature of their way of functioning, especially in economic matters, where national barriers to harmonized policy-making have been reduced, even eliminated in many areas. This bringing together of the policies of the member countries has underpinned the spectacular growth of ASEAN over the last few decades. Economic success has made ASEAN a byword and drawn global attention to this part of Asia.
India, which is now a ‘dialogue partner’ of ASEAN and a participant in several development schemes, remained aloof for quite some time before entering into structured cooperation with the group, for in the early days neither side was especially enthused by what it saw as the characteristic methods of the other. For ASEAN, India was an autarkic holdout, unwilling to shed its centralized processes of economic management, and for India the export-led growth characteristic of ASEAN did not offer many useful pointers for speeding up its own development processes. As a result, there was only limited interchange between them and only slow development of the real potential. It took major policy shifts on both sides to get things moving. India adopted a ‘Look East’ policy in the early 1990s and made a deliberate bid to strengthen economic partnership with ASEAN, while ASEAN found ways of opening its institutional structure to accommodate India. Being accepted as a ‘dialogue partner’, a concept unique to ASEAN, meant that though remaining a non-member, India was able to attend the annual Summit and take part in other ASEAN-centred activities. Institutionalized cooperation brought in a new era, the 25th anniversary of which has now been celebrated in New Delhi.
It is to be recalled that Singapore played a central part in the mutual opening up a quarter of a century ago. Some of its partners in ASEAN had felt that strengthening ties with India without doing the same at the same time with Pakistan was not a good idea; others feared that simultaneous opening to both would mean that ASEAN could become another forum for airing their differences. Undeterred, Singapore helped steer ASEAN towards a closer relationship with India, having concluded that there was much to be gained for both sides and they should not hold back. Ever since, Singapore has been a particularly significant partner for India and a chief driver of a wider relationship with the regional association. The two countries are now on the verge of an agreement for greatly expanded economic and commercial cooperation. Being enormously successful in the development of services like civil aviation and airport management, and port development and management, among others, Singapore has long had an eye on collaboration with India in these sectors, and big steps forward now seem possible. Thus bilateral ties are developing within the broader framework of the regional connection.
In the world’s dealings with South-east Asia, economic matters have been very much to the fore. It was not always so; in fact, the initial impulse owed more to security concerns than to anything else. Cold War considerations and the major war in Vietnam created anxieties about the Asian future, China was an unknown factor that created apprehensions around its periphery and it was feared that an aspiring regional hegemon could be in the making. The smaller countries of the region grouped together just below China felt especially vulnerable and were supportive of the move to create a collective voice and a shared approach to security issues that could strengthen them and help ward off their fears.
ASEAN was never conceived as any sort of pact for collective security but it did seek to provide reassurance within the region by enhancing cooperation and finding means of counterbalancing the major regional and non-regional powers. At one stage, India was sounded about becoming a member but it kept away because of the Cold War overtones of the project at the time. Once the association was formed, the member-states progressed rapidly and made a success of the organization. Within the region, early solutions were found for the inevitable territorial and jurisdictional disputes that had surfaced from time to time. After putting its house in order, ASEAN was able to expand its horizons and press for better and more democratic governance in member-states, something that became an issue when Myanmar joined, for its ruling junta held out for long against all the efforts by ASEAN and its dialogue partners to soften its practices. Nevertheless, ASEAN stuck to its practice of trying to persuade and not to compel the recalcitrant.
Currently, some fresh tremors have arisen connected with disputed jurisdiction in the South China Sea. The rival claims in that area between China and several others have often been aired and in the past there have even been some confrontations between rival naval forces. China has become more strident in making its claims and so there is a revival of the early apprehensions that had encouraged the formation of ASEAN. However, the economic intertwining of the entire region now makes it highly unlikely that there can be any severe deterioration that adversely affects the region as a whole, though the situation in the contiguous waters cannot but be a matter of some concern.
In these circumstances, it is sometimes argued that India should assume a bigger role, perhaps through stepping up its contribution to collective initiatives to maintain the freedom of navigation and maritime security. This is something that will require increased attention in coming years.
The writer is India’s former Foreign Secretary
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