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A new marketplace of security ideas

— Photo: AFP

Appreciating “cooperative spirit”: Minister of State for Defence Pallam Raju (left) and Chinese Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian.

Will Greater East Asia, potentially the next big theatre in world politics, become “a unified security community”? The current signs are that the comfort level among the major powers of this region, while being somewhat encouraging for such an endeavour, is not a stable launch pad, though, for this purpose.

The region spans the territories of all 16 members of the East Asia Summit (EAS), including India, China, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The United States, too, straddles the region, without belonging to it in a geographical sense. And, some regional powers, especially Washington’s “friends and allies,” want it to remain “a resident Asian power,” thus echoing U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, as in his assertion at the seventh Asia Security Summit, organised in Singapore by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) from May 30 to June 1.

The U.S., however, hardly wins a popularity contest across this diverse geopolitical zone. Such a ground reality, too, was reflected in some measure at the latest annual Shangri-La Dialogue, the summit being so named after the hotel-venue. In the event, ‘Asia,’ as this region is politically known even though it does not include the continent’s western and central parts, has become, in the words of IISS Director John Chipman, a “vibrant security marketplace.” It “is not quite yet a unified security community,” he told the summit.

In this perspective of a marketplace of ideas, new alliances or partnerships, not necessarily firm military pacts, may yet emerge in Greater East Asia, with the U.S. and, perhaps, also China independently seeking trustworthy friends under each other’s banner. Unsurprisingly in this fluid political scene, there was no dominant consensus on any defining issue, even allowing that the summit of key government leaders and strategic affairs experts was not designed for any decision-making.

Led by the U.S., the West did try, at the summit itself, to secure an endorsement from Asian countries for a fierce criticism of the Myanmar junta that might make it tremble in its military boots. But nothing of that kind happened, with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Myanmar being a member, having already argued against any politicisation of external humanitarian aid for the victims of cyclone Nagris. As a result, the recent extension of the prolonged house-arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Laureate and Myanmar’s celebrated democracy campaigner, was not in prime focus at the summit at all. Nor was the issue of a western bid to bring about regime change in Myanmar. Western delegates, led by U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, advocated that India and China should nudge the Myanmar junta to democratise. There were, however, no answers to a pertinent question: what is it that India, as the world’s largest democracy, should do which the U.S., as the most powerful democracy, could not do in Myanmar. With the Myanmar issue not taking hold as the summit’s priority, the parallel “rise” of India and China remained an attractive proposition at this Shangri-La Dialogue.

Minister of State for Defence M.M. Pallam Raju did well to emphasise that India was not engaging itself in proxy politics against any other rising power. He was answering a question whether India’s positively improving ties with the U.S. might be seen by China in an altogether different light. At the same time, Mr. Raju whetted the appetite of India’s western friends by saying that New Delhi was still “working on ... some resistance” in the Indian political domain to the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative.

At the closed-door ministerial meetings, he suggested an annual review of progress in inter-state cooperation in fighting terrorism and in being prepared to meet natural disasters in the region. For the obvious difficulty of ensuring accountability by the state actors, the idea did not fly as an aspect of the Shangri-La Dialogue agenda. However, the ministers were receptive to Mr. Raju’s observation that the potentiality for conflict among the region’s rising powers could be doused by such dialogue.

Two inter-related aspects of the China-India paradigm of rising powers are in focus — U.S. patience over the civil nuclear deal with India, and Beijing’s appreciation of New Delhi’s position on the sensitive “issue of Tibet.”

First, Mr. Gates assured the India-sceptics in the West that the U.S. would be “patient” while the Indians “work through” their “domestic challenges” in endorsing the bilateral civil nuclear deal. And, Mr. Lieberman added Congressional weight, as it were, by saying that the U.S. Congress would “follow, quite quickly,” to endorse the deal on its receiving “enough support” across the Indian political spectrum.

Secondly, and no less significantly, Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told this correspondent that China had “received positive, active, support from the Indian government ... on ... the issue of Tibet.” Appreciating “very much” India’s “cooperative spirit,” China’s chief governmental delegate to the Shangri-La Dialogue expressed the view that “the Indian Government could do more in restricting the violent activities of Tibetan exiles or ‘independent forces’ in India.”

On another of Beijing’s critical bilateral relationships, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, setting the tone for this summit, said “none of the countries in the region [of Asia] wants to take sides between China and an adversary.” So, a constructive relationship between China and the U.S. would figure prominently in the “wish list” of Singapore and others in the context of the American presidential poll this year.

Unsurprisingly in this context, a trend of thought behind the diverse views at the summit is in line with a policy option for Washington, as recommended by an Independent Task Force on U.S.-China ties, under the auspices of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. Chaired and directed by Dennis Blair, Carla Hills, and Frank Jannuzi, the task force has suggested that Washington “pursue a deeper military partnership with India” and also “explore the possibilities for U.S.-China-India trilateral security dialogue.”

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