India and Southeast Asia can join the US in an economic partnership to balance China

 

Southeast Asia, as it was in the 1960s and ‘70s, has again become the fulcrum in the current international relations and global conflict between the two superpowers –this time, however, not between the US and the Soviets but US and China, the latter being the rising delinquent, new muscleman in the town with deep pockets. 

Strategic location between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, together with the region’s proximity to Beijing lends it an added significance in the emerging battleground, if not in military confrontation, but surely in rivalry for influence through other means.

ASEAN centrality has to be rephrased as Southeast Asian centrality, as the region has become the fulcrum not the organization, which is not only divided on the question of China but also has failed to provide any leadership on any major crisis affecting the region, the latest example being the Myanmar crisis.

Individual countries of the region, rather than ASEAN as an organisation have become the focus of outreach for others. This is not to undermine the organisation as such, but only to suggest that ASEAN can act effectively if it is united and speaks with one voice. More importantly, ASEAN centrality could work till the time American and Chinese interests over the region’s security and economic architecture converged.

Deteriorating Strategic Environment and China-American rivalry

Certain developments in recent years have contributed to the deteriorating strategic scenario in the entire Indo-Pacific and America’s concern and renewed interest in the region. Beijing’s bellicosity towards all, except towards its client states, added by its wolf-warrior diplomacy and creeping occupation of most of its neighbours’ territories, as well as its increasing assertiveness in the South China sea finding expression in the salami-slicing strategy and building of artificial islands and their militarization, are the most important factors for building up tensions in the region. This in turn, has resulted in the US worry that it might be losing the ground to the Chinese hegemony and a Beijing-centric economic and strategic order in the Indo-Pacific region.

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