India, Vietnam and the Indo-Pacific

Expanding Horizons

Pankaj K Jha, Vo Xuan Vinh

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000067347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Relazioni internazionali

This book delves into the examination of bilateral relations between India and Vietnam in the 21st century and how the Indo-Pacific as a geo-political construct lends itself to the improvement of their engagement.

With the rise and increasing assertiveness of China, the slow growth of the United States, the resurgence of Japan, and the oscillating role of ASEAN as a multilateral organization, the Indo-Pacific has emerged as a theatre of international geostrategic competition. This book studies these changing geopolitical realities and new evolving strategic configurations, while addressing political, economic, defence, and strategic aspects of the relationship along with the role of China and the US in facilitating ties. India's Act East Policy that was upgraded from the Look East Policy – one of the main drivers for India's increasing presence in the Asia-Pacific region – is also examined in this volume.

An important intervention in the study of international relations, this book will be indispensable to students and researchers of maritime studies, security studies, politics and international relations, geopolitics, and Asian studies.

1 India, Vietnam and the Indo-Pacific security architecture

Southeast Asia, as a region, has been witness to a global power struggle between major powers. It was used as a strategic staging post by multiple colonial powers, such as France, the Netherlands, Portugal, the US and Britain, to sustain their presence in the geopolitically sensitive region of Asia and expand their trade linkages. The developments in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar were testimony to such a power struggle. In Vietnam, the division of the country into North and South Vietnam, and the three Indo-China wars fought by the Vietnamese with major powers such as France (1954), the US (1975), and China (1979) manifested the importance of Indo-China. Subsequently, efforts were directed to contain the surge of communism and maintain control by western colonial powers after Japan’s withdrawal from South Asia in the post-war phase. Indonesia had its own struggle with Dutch and Portuguese colonial powers to maintain control over its 17,000 islands and the surrounding archipelagic waters of the country. The accessions of East Timor and Papua were examples of this struggle. Malaysia witnessed the withdrawal of British troops from the country and declared independence. However, even after Malaysia became independent, Britain played a critical role in keeping the country protected from communist insurgents. Lastly, Myanmar, which had seen the military rule for the major part of its history after independence from British rule, failed to maintain the democratic fundamentals which were seen as an increasing reflection of West-imposed order. Within Southeast Asia, organizations were formed to build an anti-communist edifice, bringing together like-minded countries which were wary of the influx of communism in the region. The evolution of an anti-communist front came in the form of ASEAN, which was transformed in the late 1960s into an inclusive and consensus-based organisation. The regional organization was meant to address the core challenge of communism, while at the same time maintaining the Asian value of consensus building.

The question of peace and stability in Southeast Asia has always defined the trajectory of ASEAN-centred multilateralism. This was demonstrated in the development of security alliances across the region, such as the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), the Five Power Defence Agreement (FPDA), and a more moderate visiting forces agreement between the US and the Philippines. Barry Buzan had talked about the security complexes,¹ but even before his prognosis, Asia was always a geopolitical lab for different permutations and combinations which have defined the strategic scenario of the Asian continent.² From ideological underpinnings, which subsequently evolved to that of regional consensus making, ASEAN’s evolution was guided by geopolitical compulsions and economic preferences. The precursor was the formation of security alliances and thereafter regional security architecture to create loose cooperative security structures.

Regional security architecture was meant to promote trust among the countries, and address common concerns related to security.³ The expansion and fusion of the Asian and Pacific regions led to the formation of new terminology, as the region became known as the Asia-Pacific. The integration of contiguous regions was signalled through terms such as ‘Asia-Pacific’ in the early 1990s, and therefore, as a corollary to such thinking, new constructs such as the Indo-Pacific were coined to denote larger geopolitical interest areas. The vast Indo-Pacific region encompasses regional theatres such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania, and these regions need stable community building and regional dialogue processes. A few scholars, such as Chengxin Pan, have stated that owing to the growing anxieties of the US, Japan, Australia and India about China’s rise in Asia, the Indo-Pacific region is a contrived super-region, acting as a strategic hedge⁴ to counter Sino-centric regional order.⁵ It is neither a neutral nor a cooperative construct, instead, it is a loose flexible collective security arrangement. For select Indian strategic thinkers,⁶ it was the bedrock of India’s expanding relationship under the Act East Policy which now covered a huge swathe of territory, from the East China Sea to the South Pacific Ocean. For countries in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, it meant subscription to US-imposed order, and therefore there has been hesitation, but not a complete discarding of this concept.

The region of Southeast Asia has always been a microcosm of great power rivalry, as well as ideological conflict between communism and capitalism. The anti-imperialist struggle by the Asian nations have made them adverse to capitalism, but at the same time, the institutional and governance mechanisms were borrowed from the colonial masters in the post-independence phase. This has been true in the case of most of the independent nations in South and Southeast Asia. With most Asian countries becoming independent in the early 1940s to late 1950s, the alliance formation and the regional security organization have always defined national and regional priorities. This was witnessed with the formation of the Association for Southeast Asia (ASA) in 1961, which included countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.⁷ Following this association were two defence groupings, which were more defence-oriented alliances. This included the Five Power Defence Agreement (FPDA),⁸ and the continuing Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). SEATO (1954–1977)⁹ was a defence alliance supported by the US, which was joined by Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan. However, this organization was not effective in consolidating the American stance and supporting American activities during the Vietnam conflict. In 1971, nearly four years after the formation of ASEAN, the Five Power Defence Agreement (FPDA) came into force. One major reason was Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez (after the Suez crisis), which made the former Southeast Asian colonies, particularly Malaysia and Singapore, anxious about their security and stability. The new geopolitical dynamics encouraged Britain to terminate its security frontier located East of Suez, and this was reflected in the 1967 British Defence White Paper. Britain made it clear that it would not be involved in the security of the region beyond East of Suez, and this was further compelled by the circumstances which had dogged the regional security scenario in Southeast Asia, with the strengthening of the communist party movements in the region, including in Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Indonesia–Malaysia Konfrontasi (1963–1966) further added to the tensions between newly independent nations of Southeast Asia. Subsequently, right after the formation of ASEAN, the FPDA was seen as a transitory arrangement to facilitate the military and defence capability building of Malaysia and Singapore.

With the announcement of the gradual withdrawal of British forces in January 1968, British troop withdrawal from Malaysia and Singapore was to be completed by the year 1971. This announcement impacted Australia, which perceived an active British interest in European affairs, Britain’s enhancement of trade ties with its European neighbours, and changes in its domestic policy (in particular, immigration from Asian countries) as signs of Britain’s retreat from Asia. Australia thereafter focused on its interests in Malaysia–Singapore.

In April 1971, Australia, Britain and New Zealand signed the Five Power Defence Arrangement with Malaysia and Singapore.¹⁰ The subsequent years saw Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the third Indochina war, and the resolution of the Cambodian crisis. A new code of conduct for regionalism in the region derived from the emergence of ASEAN as an organization, which facilitated the emergence of ASEAN consensus (better known as the ‘ASEAN way’), economic cooperation, and community building that specifically stressed non-interventionist principles. The phased expansion of ASEAN membership and a staggered method for the inclusion of major powers as dialogue partners gave birth to new institutions, such as the East Asian summit, and increased acceptance of the concept of the Indo-Pacific. The inclusion of the US in the East Asian Summit consolidated this concept. However, at one point in time, the East Asian Region was also thought of as a possible alternative, but this would have brought China into the configuration. It would be pertinent to note the utility and evaluation of the regional constructs.

The Indo-Pacific in historical discourse

At any point in history, geopolitical imaginations and constructs have been superimposed on geographical features and outlines to create military commands, trading ports, commercial economic zones, and military theatres. This has served purposes of navigation, grading of threat, port identification, and military strategy. This does not undermine bloc politics and the balance of power, which, to a large extent, were based on these geopolitical nomenclatures, with clearly demarcated spheres of influence and projection of military might. In the 1920s, the concept of the Indo-Pacific was promoted by German strategic thinker Karl Haushofer.¹¹ The Indo-Pacific was known as a contiguous marine region for biologists. This region witnessed the movement of marine organisms, and an identical oceanic ecosystem across Indian and Pacific oceans. The zoologists have been researching animal and wild life gene sampling across this region, while botanists have documented marine flora and fauna. Geologists have been studying oceanic features, and anthropologists have presented distinct similarities between the physical features of the Pacific islanders and Asians. In all these studies, the Indo-Pacific was a reference point. A few anthropologists geographically mapped the migration patterns from Asia and other continents, including Africa, to the Pacific over long periods of time. This has helped in drawing links between civilizations across the Indo-Pacific region. However, in geopolitical discourse it had not garnered the expected attention. The Indo-Pacific construct gained political traction in the late 2000s, when it was felt that the Asia-Pacific needed to include India and the Indian Ocean to be more inclusive and create a cooperative sphere between democracies and like-minded nations. It is now widely resonating as the fulcrum of new geopolitical realities.¹² Since 2011, the usage of the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ has increased manifold, with references from the political and defence leaderships of Australia, the US, India and, to a limited extent, Japan.

Many geographic regions have flexible geopolitical boundaries. As a result of this, sub-regions such as the Greater Mekong sub-region, the Bay of Bengal community, and the emergence of selective membership organizations, such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), have defied all logic related to regionalism which has been more geographically based. BRICS as an à la carte institution depicted the structures based on economic priorities, geopolitical compulsions and as an alternative to Western regionalism concepts. As a result, geography and, more particularly, political geography, gained traction and evolved as a new area of study in global politics. The political geography has anchored itself in classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics. In the two cases of sub-regional institutions and à la carte multilateralism, latitude and longitude become irrelevant, and are replaced by the geopolitical ambitions of other emerging powers.¹³

Karl Haushofer, in his discourse about geographical and strategic constructs, referred to the Indopazifischen Raum (‘Indo-Pacific region/space’) as the fusion of the two regional constructs, and noted that:

the geographic impact of the dense Indo-Pacific concentration of humanity and cultural empire of India and China, which … are geographically sheltered behind the protective veil of the offshore island arcs’ of the western Pacific and Bay of Bengal, offshore island arcs through which they are now both actively and competitively deploying.¹⁴

Furthermore, the trade and cultural routes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans had been reflected in the archaeological studies and historical data. The new construct of the Indo-Pacific had relatively more Oceanic flavour in comparison to the Asia-Pacific, but also in rediscovering, forging and strengthening cultural and historical links between the mainland and island communities. The debate over the viability and utility of the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific has been widely debated but, for both India and Vietnam, the Indo-Pacific seemed more appropriate because it was inclusive of both the countries as equal stakeholders, and integrated the two into emerging geopolitical calculations.

In the international discourse concerning China, there are two issues which are widely debated: the strategic expansion of Chinese military, in terms of military bases like Djibouti, and their island reclamation activity in South China Sea; and China’s growth story, catalysed by economic diplomacy and integrated supply chains. However, in the international political economy, economic diplomacy has increasingly bee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. India, Vietnam and the Indo-Pacific security architecture
• 2. The Indo-Pacific construct and utility of ‘new’ derived regions
• 3. India’s Act East Policy and Vietnam
• 4. Political convergence in the context of the Indo-Pacific
• 5. Enhancing strategic understanding and developing defence cooperation
• 6. Ensuring peace, stability and security in the South China Sea
• 7. Developing trade and economic ties
• 8. India, Vietnam and ASEAN regionalism
• 9. The China factor in India–Vietnam relations
• 10. The US factor in Vietnam–India relations
• 11. Conclusion
• Index