General Studies Mains Test Series (International Relations)

The new Indian Defence Policy is creating a road map towards expansion of the Look East Policy. Explain

The dominant impulse of India’s Look East Policy (LEP) that was launched in 1992 was economic and cultural, the objective being to reintegrate India economically and culturally with our civilisational neighbours of South East (SE) Asia.

In December 2012, the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit was held in New Delhi to signify two decades of India’s LEP. Growing trade ties have corresponded with the expansion of relationship in the areas of defence and security and thus the engagement which was primarily political and economic has acquired strategic content in the recent years.

India and countries of South Asia share many threats and challenges especially in the areas of non-conventional security. India and SE Asian nations have been strengthening their defence and security relationship both at bilateral and multilateral levels to address such threats. Defence cooperation with ASEAN members is geared primarily towards exchanges of high-level visits, strategic dialogues, port calls, training exchanges, joint exercises and provision of defence equipment.

Prime Minster Dr Manmohan Singh during his visit to Myanmar in April 2012 observed that both India and Myanmar need to “expand our security cooperation that is vital not only to maintain peace along our land borders but also to protect maritime trade which we hope will open up through the sea route between Kolkata and Sittwe.”

Malacca Straits is the pivotal transiting point through which most of the oil and gas transportation of India, Southeast and East Asian countries take place. Increasing incidence of piracy for ransom and smuggling in the high seas, which threatens uninterrupted transportation of oil and gas, has prompted these states to secure the sea lanes. Here cooperation with Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia to secure Malacca Straits and the neighbouring areas remains strategically important.

India has also been supporting the freedom of navigation and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) through South China Sea where some of the ASEAN countries are at the receiving end of China’s assertive policies.

Further, as part of deepening its engagement with the Southeast Asian countries through military to military relations, India has provided access to Singapore armed forces to use Indian training facilities like Air Force and Artillery firing ranges. Singapore has signed Defence Cooperative Agreement in 2003 and a “Bilateral Agreement for the Conduct of Joint Military Training and Exercises in India”. Naval exercises between both the Navies are being conducted annually since 1994; in 2011, the naval exercise between both the Navies were conducted in South China Sea and the shore phase of the exercise was conducted at the Changi Naval Base of Singapore

India has defence cooperation and exchanges with Cambodia, Laos, Brunei and Philippines. For instance, India is setting up an Air Force Academy in Laos.
Both India and ASEAN members have been on an upward economic trajectory and as they grow, the security and strategic environment has also been becoming complex. While these nations have been in a beneficial economic relationship with India and China, they remain wary of China’s growing assertion and irredentist tendencies

India’s efforts in defence cooperation with ASEAN also aims at addressing its own strategic concerns both in the Indian Ocean littoral as well as in South China Sea.

There is also a case for reviewing our restrictive policies on export of defence hardware to South East Asian nations.