Can India lead Asean in South China Sea storm?

The Asean-India Commemorative Summit, marking 20 years of sectoral dialogue commencing India’s “Look East” policy and 10 years of summit-level engagement, was held on December 20-21. Despite the attendance of nine out of the 10 Asean heads of government/state, it received remarkably little attention.

The electronic media, of course, was preoccupied with the dastardly rape and bludgeoning in a Delhi bus. The government may have had another reason to keep it low key. China was expectedly watching the deliberations closely in view of the acrimony at the November Phnom Penh Asean Summit over the Chinese nine-line map of the South China Sea. Cambodia, as the chair, had faced rejection by most members of its formulation that the issue should not be internationalised, implying that the Chinese assertion not be questioned.
Besides the agreement on free trade in services and investment, which should facilitate cooperation in healthcare, tourism, transport etc, the contours of future engagement are in the Vision Statement. According to that, the Asean-India partnership “stands elevated to a strategic level”. It envisages a full-spectrum relationship bolstered by appropriate institutions. It reiterates a shared vision of a “peaceful, prosperous and resurgent Asia”.
These are pious incantations, but lurking in the background was the spectre of China, which was invoked by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s reference to the South China Sea and Burmese President Thein Sein’s subtle remark that India was “crucial” for peace and stability in the region. The Vision Statement’s reiteration of freedom of navigation as critical to sea lanes of communication and endorsement of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea openly challenge the Chinese argument of
historical precedent to justify claims to islands and related usurpation of the economic zones of their neighbours.
The Chinese media picked from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s plenary address where he referred to “shared values, convergent world views and similarities in approaches to the region”. Implicit was, inter alia, concern over the rise of China, its new assertiveness and an untested leadership formally assuming power in March 2013. External affairs minister Salman Khurshid added to the conundrum by intoning that “doing something about it includes not doing something about it.” India’s China policy, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of India’s humiliating rout at the Chinese hands in 1962, was being shaped by caution laced with indecision, sending thus mixed signals to the 10 Asean nations.
National security adviser Shivshankar Menon, whose recent trip to Beijing was marked by his inability to meet the incoming leadership, guides the China policy. By contrast, there was high-level access rolled out later for the defence minister of Maldives. This may or may not be related to the ejection of the Indian company GMR from airport management in Maldives, but signals are mounting of a rising Chinese profile in that country. Did India, thus, miss an opportunity of sending a more direct message to China by clasping more forthrightly the Asean hand in Delhi?
The car rally of 8,000 km from Yogyakarta in Indonesia to Guwahati in Assam and the Vision Statement’s articulation of socio-cultural cooperation and civilisational links are the bedrock on which rests India’s “Look East” policy. Asean is, however, reliving its historical dilemma of managing a dominant China. The US, which renamed its “Asian Pivot” as rebalancing, has inserted itself to shape the emerging Asian security architecture. A senior Australian Labour Party politician in Delhi a few weeks ago explained why his party, on assuming power in December 2006, sensing Chinese sensitivity, erroneously rejected the Quadrilateral Dialogue between India, US, Japan and them, four democracies of the Indo-Pacific region. The Australian decision now to allow the US to base 3,000 marines on its territory is belated rectification of its earlier China wooing. By historical irony, the Japanese Prime Minister who had championed that dialogue was Shinzo Abe, who is now set to resume power. Though Mr Abe is commencing by de-escalating the tension with China over Senkaku Islands, he will have to calibrate this with intensified solidarity with the countries on Chinese periphery, including the Asean, Australia and India.
Taylor Ford of MIT has calculated that since 1949 China has had 23 border disputes, and used force in case of six. Thus, while the Commemorative Summit in Delhi has produced a theoretical construct for multi-tiered engagement with Asean, including the idea of connectivity via Burma and Thailand, and a new Plan of Action for the period 2010-15, India has to bring more coherence to its China policy. Many members of the Asean are looking for leadership from India, not to confront China but to ensure that China rises in conformity with accepted principles of international law and equity. Capitalism, Western liberal democracy and the European welfare state are being challenged as unsustainable in their current form. As the global economic and political centre of gravity shifts to Asia, the Asian models of governance will assume importance. For instance, will China follow the Singapore template? Will India continue to be a semi-functional electoral democracy, or become a model that presents an alternative to the Confucian Singapore-China example? Two millennia ago, Emperor Ashoka advocated respect for human rights, freedom of religion and peaceful exercise of power — a message enshrined in the UN Charter. Addressing nations abroad Ashoka, in Dhauli rock edicts, pronounces that “my only intention is that they live without fear of me, that they may trust me...” While this should be the core of Indian foreign policy, unlike Mr Khurshid’s witticism, inaction and silence before injustice ill behoves a great nation.

The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry