Indian Defence Review

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh in a group photo with the ASEAN/EAS Heads of State/Government and ASEAN SG 1st at Gala Dinner for the 21st ASEAN Summit and Related Summits, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

As economic power shifts increasingly to Asia and affects global political equations,  adddressing security issues in the region becomes more pressing. Can the often discussed pan-Asian security architecture be created?

The idea of such an architecture is not new. In 1969, with the Cold War raging and the Sino-Soviet break occurring, the Soviets had proposed the concept of collective security in Asia. In 1967 the South-east Asian countries had created ASEAN for economic and security reasons. From this an ASEAN-centric security architecture has emerged with the establishment in 1994 of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) which now comprises 27 countries, including ASEAN dialogue partners like India, US, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the EU, and others such as DPRK, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Foundations

ASEAN has taken a leadership role in the emergence of the East Asia Summit (EAS). At its first summit in 2005, the 10 ASEAN members plus India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand attended. Russia and US have since joined and their Presidents attended the 2011 summit.

Can ARF/EAS provide the foundation for building an Asia-wide security architecture? If regional bodies with security agendas had successfully emerged in other parts of Asia this could have been attempted, with the pre-requisite of diluting the present ASEAN/East Asia centric nature of ARF/EAS. Central Asia has been gathered under the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2001, with India, Pakistan, Iran, Mongolia and Afghanistan as observers, but the Russians, to counter China’s economic weight in SCO, promote the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) established in 1992 to provide security under Russian tutelage in former Soviet space that includes some Central Asia countries. US exclusion from SCO and CSTO even when it is present in Central Asia is a complicating factor. SAARC has been hobbled by India-Pakistan differences. Afghanistan has seen conflict since 1979 and Iran too. US is currently fighting in Afghanistan and is threatening military action against Iran if the nuclear issue is not resolved through negotiations. Establishing a consensual security agenda in this part of Asia has to overcome these problems.

Indeed, territorial disputes at the western end of Asia have a larger dimension than  those at the eastern end. Terrorism, with its linkage to Islamic extremist groups that have ideological and financial connections to the Gulf, is a far greater problem here than in the east. The international approach to proliferation issues at the two ends is strikingly different. Maritime issues in the Arabian Sea/Bay of Bengal differ from those in the South China sea. At this stage, to create a wider security architecture that would encompass East, South-east, South, South-west and Central Asia seems hardly possible.

A consensus on US role in an Asian security architecture is required. US is not part of Asia geographically, but as the dominant global power it is present there politically, economically and militarily.

Given this, the Asian countries cannot evolve any pan-Asian security architecture independently of  US. The latter will maintain its presence in Asia independent of the volition of individual Asian countries with strategic competition from China and Russia’s Asian reality in mind. In turn, most Asian countries, while no longer seeing Russia as a threat see rising China as potentially one and would want US to provide them a security safety net for the future.

An external power like US will thus be a key pillar of an Asian security architecture.   In Europe such an architecture was built by countries permanently burying old animosities, accepting existing borders and pooling the traditional economic sinews of war etc. In Asia it will be driven by balance of power considerations, which is qualitatively different.

Obstacles

China and Pakistan are the biggest obstacles to the emergence of a security architecture from within Asia itself through a process of normalization of relations between key countries based on shared norms and interests as well as a common world view. Both of them seek territorial aggrandizement, are unwilling to bury historical differences and have opaque or dysfunctional political systems.

US has further complicated the establishment of an Asian security architecture by developing the concept of Asia-Pacific, mirroring the Euro-Atlantic region as a geopolitical concept where the US exercises its hegemony with the consent of its partners.

The Euro-Atlantic security architecture represented by NATO was directed against an external threat- the Soviet Union. Now it has become an instrument for exercise of Euro-Atlantic power outside Europe. US will not be able to exercise such hegemony in any Asia-Pacific security architecture. Nor can China, which is an integral part of Asia in a way the Soviet Union was not part of Europe, be treated as an external threat. US’s own mutually dependent relationship with China adds to the complexity of security arrangements that seek to treat China simultaneously as a partner and a threat.

The Asia-Pacific concept, which gives US allies like Australia and New Zealand a geopolitical anchor in Asia, pulls the continent and international interest in it eastwards, distorting thereby its geographical expression to India’s disadvantage. India remains excluded from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). It was also initially excluded from the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) though this anomaly has been rectified. The tendency to limit the westwards extension of Asia to Myanmar to achieve some kind of ethnic coherence makes Asia unduly China-centric and omits the huge cultural, religious and civilizational impact of India on eastern Asia. India has interest in working with US in developing a security architecture in Asia that seeks to put constraints on China at both ends of Asia, not merely the eastern end.