India's wider ASEAN outreach is strong message to CHINA

With the threat of China's assertive and aggressive agenda looming large over the Indo-Pacific and other geographies of the world, India has started ramping up diplomatic and defence engagement with the ASEAN, a bloc consisting of 10 countries including the ones that are also facing problems due to Beijing's belligerence.

- T. BRAJESH

 After the BrahMos deal with Philippines, India's hectic diplomatic engagement with Vietnam followed by the steps to increase major defence cooperation with Hanoi is being viewed as a signal about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's larger strategic plan to reach out to the ASEAN nations more frequently in the future, with the key goal of dealing with China in the Indo-Pacific region and other geographies. Highly-placed diplomatic sources told The Sunday Guardian that PM Modi has reminded India's Quad partners-the US, Australia and Japan-to focus more on "ASEAN centrality" that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue remains committed to. In all his bilateral engagements in the past, PM Modi told the leaders of the Quad countries that when the forum talks about "ASEAN centrality" for free and open Indo-Pacific, there should always be action to ensure that, sources added. As a result, the Biden administration in the US has repeatedly mentioned the notion of "ASEAN centrality", while discussing Asia and the Indo-Pacific, officials said. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at an event in Singapore, underlined the importance of ASEAN in the Indo-Pacific in term