India’s Defence Diplomacy as a Component of its Look East Policy

Brig (Retd) Vinod Anand, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

The dominant impulse of India’s Look East Policy (LEP) that was launched in 1992 was economic and cultural, the objective being to reintegrate India economically and culturally with our civilisational neighbours of South East (SE) Asia. In December 2012, the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit was held in New Delhi to signify two decades of India’s LEP. Growing trade ties have corresponded with the expansion of relationship in the areas of defence and security and thus the engagement which was primarily political and economic has acquired strategic content in the recent years. India and countries of South Asia share many threats and challenges especially in the areas of non-conventional security. India and SE Asian nations have been strengthening their defence and security relationship both at bilateral and multilateral levels to address such threats. Defence cooperation with ASEAN members is geared primarily towards exchanges of high-level visits, strategic dialogues, port calls, training exchanges, joint exercises and provision of defence equipment.

Prime Minster Dr Manmohan Singh during his visit to Myanmar in April 2012 observed that both India and Myanmar need to “expand our security cooperation that is vital not only to maintain peace along our land borders but also to protect maritime trade which we hope will open up through the sea route between Kolkata and Sittwe.”

India ramped up cooperation with Myanmar through high level visits by the Defence Minister Mr AK Antony in January, 2013 and last year through the visit of Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chief of the Air Staff, ACM Norman Browne from November 26 to 29. Myanmar army has been looking for hardware and India has been providing items such as transport aircraft, helicopters and other defence equipment. India is also focussed on expanding training and capacity building of the Myanmar armed forces. Further, Myanmar navy has been regularly taking part in India’s Milan series of naval exercises since 2006.

Malacca Straits is the pivotal transiting point through which most of the oil and gas transportation of India, Southeast and East Asian countries take place. Increasing incidence of piracy for ransom and smuggling in the high seas, which threatens uninterrupted transportation of oil and gas, has prompted these states to secure the sea lanes. Here cooperation with Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia to secure Malacca Straits and the neighbouring areas remains strategically important.

Malacca Straits are important to both India and Indonesia and the two countries signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement in 2001 and have had regular defence exchanges including the exchange of high level visits, ship visits, officers studying in Staff Colleges in either country and joint coordinated patrols in the mouth of the Malacca Straits. Indonesian Navy ships have consistently participated in the Milan series of exercise conducted near the Andaman and Nicobar islands by the Indian Navy.

Last October, Antony visited Indonesia to attend the first Ministerial level biennial defence dialogue between the two countries, where he observed ‘We have a vital stake in the evolution of balanced security and cooperation mechanisms through which we can build consensus and pursue dialogue. We seek to improve our partnership with all countries in the Indian Ocean Region on bilateral basis as well as through multilateral fora like Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) etc’. India has also been supporting the freedom of navigation and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) through South China Sea where some of the ASEAN countries are at the receiving end of China’s assertive policies.

Further, as part of deepening its engagement with the Southeast Asian countries through military to military relations, India has provided access to Singapore armed forces to use Indian training facilities like Air Force and Artillery firing ranges. Singapore has signed Defence Cooperative Agreement in 2003 and a “Bilateral Agreement for the Conduct of Joint Military Training and Exercises in India”. Naval exercises between both the Navies are being conducted annually since 1994; in 2011, the naval exercise between both the Navies were conducted in South China Sea and the shore phase of the exercise was conducted at the Changi Naval Base of Singapore.

During Mr Antony’s visit to Singapore in June this year, India and Singapore signed a fresh agreement to extend the use of training and exercise facilities in India by the Singapore Army for a further period of five years. A bilateral agreement for utilization of facilities in India by the Singapore Air Force and Army was signed in October 2007 and August 2008 respectively. Singapore is the only country to which India is offering such facilities.

The third country which remains important in the context of Malacca Straits and adjoining maritime area is Malaysia. India-Malaysia defence relations have been growing over the years after signing of MOU on Defence Cooperation (MIDCOM) in 1993. The ninth meeting of the MIDCOM was held in Kuala Lumpur in January 2012. India’s Chief of Air Staff visited Malaysia in February 2012 and Malaysia’s Chiefs of Army and Navy both visited India in April 2012. The IAF Training Team deployed in Malaysia trained Malaysian pilots on the SU-30 MKM aircraft for two-and-a-half years since February 2008. Malaysia has also been looking for training its Scorpene submarine crew and maintenance of the submarines. These are areas where both sides can cooperate as India is also acquiring such submarines.

Thailand is another important Indian Ocean littoral state with which India shares maritime boundary. Cooperation between the two countries is based on the Joint Working Group on security established in 2003 has been now upgraded to include defence exchanges. The first meeting of India-Thailand Defence Dialogue was held in New Delhi in December 2011 and a bilateral MOU on Defence cooperation was signed in January 2012. The current Defence cooperation comprises regular joint exercises, coordinated maritime patrols near the international maritime boundary to counter terrorism, piracy and smuggling; training of officers at each other’s’ Armed Forces Training institutions and participation as observers in military exercises. Defence Minister Mr AK Anthony visited Bangkok in June this year. The two Ministers reviewed regional security situation and expressed their support for collaborative regional mechanisms such as AEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) Plus for maintaining regional peace and security, freedom of navigation, keeping open sea lanes of communication, and cooperation in areas such as anti-piracy, disaster relief and rescue.

Securing Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) and Malacca Straits is also important for the South East countries like Vietnam that has intensified its defence relationship with India. For the ASEAN countries, it is geo-strategically prudent to forge a defence relationship of a greater or lesser degree with India and the US as some sort of balance of power arrangements possibly against a rising and assertive China that is hardly going to remain status quoist.

An MOU between Vietnam and India was signed in 2009 for defence cooperation though the defence exchanges between both nations pre date this period. India and Vietnam face a common challenge from China and both have been target of its muscular policies. Some of the engines of Vietnamese MiG-21 aircrafts have been overhauled in India. There are also mechanisms for sharing of strategic perceptions and naval cooperation between the two countries. Coordinated patrols by the Vietnamese sea–police and the Indian Coast Guard are conducted jointly in addition to training of Vietnamese air force pilots. Besides providing some defence equipment, India has also been helping Vietnam to set up a domestic defence industry.

Similarly, India has defence cooperation and exchanges with Cambodia, Laos, Brunei and Philippines. For instance, India is setting up an Air Force Academy in Laos. An Indian military delegation led by the Army Chief visited Laos in December 2011. Discussions revolved around on going defence cooperation initiatives between India and Laos. The Army Chief reaffirmed India’s commitment to the capacity building of the Lao People’s Army and discussed a range of defence cooperation initiatives with the Lao army leadership. The delegation visited the Kaysone Phomvihane Academy for National Defence, where a two-member training team from the Indian Army has been in place for the last 15 years.

Exchange of visits of defence officials, goodwill visits by Indian Naval Ships to Cambodia’s ports, gift of medical equipment & other stores and imparting of training courses to Royal Cambodian Air Force (RCAF) personnel in demining and peace keeping operations have been part of the defence exchanges. On the security front, India and Cambodia have signed an Agreement on Combating International Terrorism, Organized Crimes and Illicit Drug Trafficking in December, 2005. With Brunei, there has been some degree of defence cooperation with Indian naval ships participating in the first-ever Brunei International Fleet Review to mark the 50th anniversary of Royal Brunei Armed Forces.

So far as Philippines is concerned, an impetus to defence cooperation has been imparted in recent years. With defence cooperation between the two countries having been formally established through the 2006 Philippines-India Agreement Concerning Defence Cooperation, Indian Navy and Coast Guard ships regularly visit the Philippines. The participation of officers of the armed forces of both countries in various specialized training courses in each other’s countries has increased. There are also arrangements for sharing of intelligence and perceptions on certain other sensitive issues. To enhance the defence cooperation further, a Joint Defence Cooperation Committee was constituted which had its first meeting in Manila in January 2012.

At the multilateral level, India has also become a member of ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meet –Plus Eight (ADMM-Plus). The basic objective of creating this framework was to bring about co-operative security, especially in the areas of humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, maritime security, counter-terrorism and peace keeping operations. ADMM-Plus Eight has also proposed furthering of bilateral and multilateral dialogue and sharing of expertise among the military forces of member states. The arrangement also advanced proposals to counter particular threats and issues such as piracy and natural disaster through joint military exercises.

Both India and ASEAN members have been on an upward economic trajectory and as they grow, the security and strategic environment has also been becoming complex. While these nations have been in a beneficial economic relationship with India and China, they remain wary of China’s growing assertion and irredentist tendencies. India’s efforts in defence cooperation with ASEAN also aims at addressing its own strategic concerns both in the Indian Ocean littoral as well as in South China Sea. Both Ministry of Defence and Ministry of External Affairs need to coordinate their efforts in order to add meaningful substance to the evolving defence and security relationship with the ASEAN members as part of a composite endeavour to achieve success in the strategic objectives of its LEP. The MOD also needs to allot more vacancies to the defence officers of the SE Asian countries for training at our defence establishments. Frequency of joint military exercises also needs to be increased to improve levels of interoperability. There is also a case for reviewing our restrictive policies on export of defence hardware to South East Asian nations. 

Pox Indica

Kanwal Sibal

Member Advisory Board, VIF

A word of caution: Shashi Tharoor’s new book, “Pax Indica”, is not about India dominating the 21st century world; it is about the less imperial exercise of India helping to write the rules, defining the norms of the new networked world of tomorrow and having a voice in their application. But then rising India should attain such influence normally in time because of its large landmass, population, economy, technological base and armed forces.

The book covers India’s foreign policy widely: relations with Pakistan, other neighbours, China, the Arab world, various Asian countries, the US, Europe, Africa and Latin America. Given his UN passage, de rigueur chapters on Soft Power and Public Diplomacy and India and the UN find place.

The impressive breadth of coverage should enhance an ordinary reader’s understanding of India’s foreign policy, but not in any depth, as several aspects are skimpily treated. Tharoor says the book is a work of reflection, not scholarship. Many specialists will find several of his reflections jarring.

The author’s “extended analytical essay” leaves many vital issues unanalysed, whether the India-US nuclear deal, the nuclear liability law, the Maoist take-over in Nepal, the coup in the Maldives, China’s threat to India, the salience of the border issue in forging relations with China, the strategic aspects of maritime security in the Indian Ocean, etc.

While he does analyse with perspicacity the wellsprings of Pakistan’s endemic hostility towards India, he also endorses liberally the usual facile arguments in favour of engaging that country. Curiously, he scoffs at Track 2 diplomacy with Pakistan, but resorts to the same hope-inspired verbiage to advocate an approach of “accommodativeness, sensitivity and pragmatic generosity”. He seriously believes India has an effective option of dragging Pakistan to the UN to force compliance with Security Council resolutions on terrorism if bilateral dialogue fails!

As part of our neighbourhood policies, he recommends, despite ground realities, connecting China’s military infrastructure up to the Indian border with infrastructure on our side. He believes, in a surge of unwarranted optimism, that a single SAARC currency is no longer a completely unrealistic prospect.

Tharoor’s view that we have a genuine strategic partnership and economic complementarities with China is highly debatable. The assertion that both have a common interest in keeping sea lanes open overlooks our strategic concerns about China’s increased Indian Ocean presence as well as the South China Sea imbroglio. Contrary to the author’s belief, our presence at the Aini base in Tajikstan is not linked to China.

The importance of India’s relations with the Arab world cannot be overstated, but the claim that “our geopolitical aspirations are entirely compatible” overlooks the issues of Iran, the looming Shia-Sunni conflict and the role of some Gulf countries in Libya and Syria. That Iran has been a “kindred spirit of India” on Pakistan is as questionable as the author’s view that Turkey, a NATO member and lurching towards Islamism, should become a BRICS member is novel.

The book disproportionately emphasizes the importance of BIMSTEC (that groups Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand), East-Timor and the lyrically described Indian Ocean Rim Association for regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC). In contrast, the author is dismissive of the EU, calling it irrelevant to India’s strategic interests. Russia gets less than three and a half pages of superficial treatment in the chapter on “Familiar Lands and Uncharted Territories”. The overview of Africa and Latin America is informative, but India’s sentiments towards Africa are expressed in needlessly grandiloquent terms.

An author who thinks that “Hollywood and MTV have done more to promote the idea of America as a desirable and admirable society than any US governmental endeavour” will evidently believe that India’s climb to world leadership will be through “soft power”, which he thinks India already has in plenty in its democracy, pluralism, Bollywood and the triumph of “Slumdog Millionaire”. How can India be the “land of the better story” with unresolved problems of abysmal poverty and poor governance? He quotes Nehru elsewhere to, unwittingly, disprove his own thesis: “So long as we have not solved most of our own problems, our voice cannot carry the weight that it normally will and should”.

The chapter on the US mixes sharp insights and questionable assumptions. To say there is no real clash between India and the US on “geopolitical fundamentals” exaggerates the degree of convergence. That India is going to be as important to American security as Europe once was is debatable. He seems to prefer US dominance to multi-polarity. He wants India to be in the US-led camp of liberal democracies besieged by Islamist terrorism and Chinese authoritarianism, forgetting the US role in propping up Islamism and China in the first place. His analysis of the issues involved in expanding the Security Council is excellent.

The author rightly lists MEA’s well known shortcomings in numbers, training, specialization etc, but calling it the “Ministry of Eternal Affairs” is an outdated jibe The issue of mid-level lateral entry to make up for deficiencies needs more informed debate, especially with Tharoor’s withering opinion of our intellectuals and international relations researchers. Why should successful specialists in areas where the Ministry is weak discard their own careers to enter government service at levels where their rise would be precarious because of age and other handicaps as outsiders?

In wanting India to “be true to its soul in the multilateral arena”, the author wants it to make common cause with the West on issues of democracy and human rights and discard its image as “the leading trade unionist of Third Worldism’. He obviously believes that western credentials on these issues are irreproachable enough to morally compel India to join ranks against specific countries.

With his marked distaste for nonalignment, Tharoor rues that our “old obsession with strategic autonomy remains”. He thinks partnerships with “major allies” (since when?) like the US should take precedence over our specific needs- for Iranian energy supplies, for example. India has “more in common with the countries of the North than the global South”, he says, contradicting his own panegyrics in his 428 page book to BIMST-EC, IOR-ARC, East Timor, Africa and others.

Tharoor presents in stylish prose the fashionable views of “globalized” Indians. To take the book seriously actually requires refutation of many of the author’s viewpoints.