Looking West, Acting East: India's Indo-Pacific Strategy

Summary

Ever since the Indo-Pacific re-emerged as a viable strategic concept in 2017 and Asia's four democratic major powers — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — reconvened their quadrilateral security dialogue (the Quad), Southeast Asian countries have been wary of ASEAN losing its centrality in the regional political and economic order. The conceptual linkage of the two oceans and consequent expansion of geopolitical space was bound to have this effect to some extent. Moreover, the combination of four democratic major powers in a region largely home to single-party governments and authoritarian regimes raised the spectre of goals beyond the containment of China, or at least the containment of China through the creation of democratic transitions on its periphery — this was an argument the original boosters of the Quad in Washington had made in 2007. Finally, the overlaying of the Quad on the Indo-Pacific concept gave rise to fears of a return to Cold War–style containment, this time of China, and major-power politics rearing its ugly head yet again in Southeast Asia.

Although these concerns are real and require a response from ASEAN, Southeast Asian countries can expect to find support from an unexpected quarter: India. When the Quad was originally proposed in 2007, diplomatic protest from China had caused India and Australia to roll back their commitments, and the initiative went into stasis after George W. Bush and Shinzo Abe subsequently left office. A decade later, as the Quad returns, Australia's and China's positions have changed but India's remains the same. Canberra is now an enthusiastic supporter — arguably because of China's growing attempts to influence Australian civil society and government — and Beijing is less concerned as its own power has grown by leaps and bounds in the intervening decade. New Delhi, however, is and always has been keen to create significant distance between the concept of the Indo-Pacific and the institutional arrangement that is the Quad.

It was telling, for example, that India's official statement following the Quad's landmark Manila meeting in November 2017 diverged significantly from the statements of the other three powers in choosing to omit any mention of freedom of navigation, respect for international law, and maritime security (though these are causes that India has supported in bilateral and trilateral statements).