New Delhi must look east again as global relations change shape

The US having binned its East Asia playbook has thrown up opportunities that India mustn't miss

- NITIN PAI

I concluded my previous column arguing that the current geopolitical moment is similar to 1991 and that India ought to do now what it did then: undertake economic reforms and Look East. Even if it were not for the problems with the US, there has long been a case for a second round of economic liberalization and engagement of India's Southeast Asian neighbourhood. Now these are both urgent imperatives.

While India has increased its engagement of Southeast Asia since the 1990s in several important ways, there has always been a distance between the two. This is perhaps because India's motivations for engaging the region have primarily been geopolitical, with an eye on balancing Chinese power, while most countries part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) looked towards India as their second large geo-economic partner after China. Thus, geoeconomics was secondary for India and geopolitics for Asean.

This misalignment of objectives is the underlying reason why India is engaged but not integrated with Southeast Asia. India was wary of entering any regional trade agreement that included China. Asean countries, except Vietnam and the Philippines to some extent, were lukewarm to a security relationship with India if that meant rubbing Beijing the wrong way. This has led to a kind of sub-optimal equilibrium that exists to this day.