The look East policy has represented India’s attempt to connect with Asian neighbours, but the goal has been complicated by parallel attempts by China to redefine itself in the region, while the US is still weighing its options, writes Frederic Grare
Dynamics are shifting in the Asia Pacific region, and India continues to struggle to redefine its foreign policy in a changing regional order. The look East policy has represented India’s attempt to connect with its Asian neighbours, but the goal has been complicated by parallel attempts by China to redefine itself in the region while the United States is still in many ways weighing its options. India’s relationship with the United States continues to be crucial to its aims but also ambiguous.
In this context, what are the implications of India’s look East policy for its future relationship with the United StatesIJ The question has been particularly salient since 2011, when the Obama administration issued a series of announcements indicating that the United States would be expanding and intensifying its already significant role in the Asia Pacific, particularly in the southern part of the region. The “pivot,” or “rebalance,” as the policy came to be known, was intended to deepen US credibility in the region through a systematic effort to influence the development of norms and rules in the Asia Pacific as China emerges as an ever more influential regional power.1 On 17 November 2011, President Barack Obama invited India to be part of the effort as India “looks east and plays a larger role as an Asian power.”
The actual expectations of the US administration vis-Ã -vis India have never been totally defined. One would be mistaken, however, to believe that the look East policy has ever figured prominently in US strategy. It would be further incorrect to believe that Washington’s policy shift and the depth of its concern about China structurally changed its relationship with New Delhi or that the look East policy transformed India into an indispensable partner to the United States. Nor did New Delhi’s and Washington’s interests suddenly converge in such a way that the United States had no choice but to systematically take India’s interests into account in its strategic calculations in Asia. India’s look East policy has been understood in the United States as a limited but potentially useful instrument in the short term.
The attempt to align — at least rhetorically — the look East policy with the Rebalance to Asia was more an attempt to draw India closer to the United States than the inevitable outcome of the congruence between the two countries’ objectives and was understood as such by the Indian side. The convergence of interests was real, but the asymmetry of power between the two countries was such that the relationship was not really necessary for the United States while potentially risky for India. Indeed, even after the announcement of the Rebalance to Asia in 2011, differences between the two countries persisted, and the effort to integrate India’s concerns and policies into the US strategy only highlighted them.
Unlike during the Cold War, these differences are no longer based on ideological divergences. They primarily reflect the considerable asymmetry of power between the two countries, the constraints resulting from their respective geographic locations, and India’s fear of being instrumentalized by the United States. Indeed, deeper questions persist in both countries about the potential scope of the partnership. New Delhi wonders about the extent of the United States’ commitment to Indian security and does not intend to fight the United States’ wars, whereas Washington questions India’s capacity and willingness to balance China, which motivates its own investment in the relationship.
India’s capabilities and policy are not the only factors at play. The US policy is being questioned by Indian policy-makers and strategic experts alike. If the Rebalance to Asia attracted US attention to the look East policy, important policy components of the same rebalancing also raised questions about India’s true importance to the United States. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a highstandard free-trade agreement recently concluded between the United States and eleven other Pacific Rim countries, excluding India and China, is one such component. Uncertainties regarding the fate of US allies in Asia in the ongoing US domestic debate about the future of the relationship with China is another component of the dilemma faced by Indian decision-makers.
These two issues are closely related. Many Indian officials are concerned that by pushing the TPP agenda, the United States will contribute to slowing down the modernization of the Indian economy, accentuating India’s power differential with China. They also fear that the TPP will lead to the erosion of the ASEAN-led security architecture by further polarizing the region in a zero-sum game between China and the United States at the expense of some of India’s partners or allies. US military predominance in the Asia Pacific is a key element in the overall balance of power in the region, and the status quo in this regard is essential to India’s security. But, as explained in the previous chapter, despite its many flaws, ASEAN remains an important instrument of India’s protection against any hegemonic aspiration in the region, in particular from China.
ASEAN’s institutional weaknesses, such as its consensus-based decisionmaking process, make it particularly vulnerable in an environment increasingly characterized by the zero-sum-game nature of the US-China rivalry in Asia. China has long been playing on the weakness of some of ASEAN’s most vulnerable members to divide the organization and prevent the adoption of any consensual policies opposed to its own interests. But the TPP further divides ASEAN into two categories of states-those whose economy is strong enough to join the treaty and those whose economy is not-raising questions regarding the political future of the states remaining outside the treaty. The latter are de facto pushed closer to Beijing, though being part of the TPP does not guarantee against Beijing’s political influence. In the process, the role of political buffer between China and the United States traditionally played by ASEAN is further eroded, affecting India’s interests and its already weak confidence in the United States’ commitment to India’s security, weakening moreover the constituency in favor of a stronger US-India relationship.
These uncertainties, which feed the lack of trust between the two countries, explain India’s continued insistence on the concept of “strategic autonomy.” It reflects not a sense of over-confidence in India’s own capacity to defend itself but a desire to limit India’s dependency on the United States’ goodwill and to mitigate the collateral risks emanating from too close a proximity to Washington. There is therefore much more at stake in the development of the relationship than the supposed strategic convergence between India and the US.
In this context, the look East policy is an attempt to neutralize China by inserting India into a web of relationships while hyphenating its own strategic interests to those of the United States without ever losing its autonomy. The main difficulty resides, however, in the definition of these common strategic interests. While China may-rightly or wrongly-be perceived as a common threat by both countries, the definitions of what constitutes a threat and, more importantly, the means to contain it still differ considerably.
India’s look East policy from the US perspective
The importance of the look East policy for the United States can be understood only as part of the broader US strategy towards India. Officially, India figures prominently in the US defense architecture in the Asia Pacific region. The dramatic shift in relations that occurred in 2000 under President Bill Clinton was never questioned by any of his successors. On the contrary, the relationship deepened under George W. Bush, and Barack Obama went as far as calling it “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century” during his November 2010 visit to India, adding that the United States “not only welcomes India as a rising global power [but] fervently supports it and [will work] to help make it become a reality.”
The US-India strategic partnership was reaffirmed in the Obama administration’s Rebalance to Asia policy, and, in January 2012 the Department of Defense’s strategic guidance clearly stated that the United States was “investing in a long-term partnership with India to support its ability to serve as a regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region.” Time and again, US officials have publicly reasserted India’s importance to the stability of Asia. These assertions, however, go hand in hand with a fair degree of skepticism regarding India’s capacities and intentions. Irrespective of public goodwill, many US officials still see India as an underperformer that may not be able to deliver much in the way of a strategic partnership.
The usefulness of the look East policy as part of the overall US strategy in Asia generates the same kind of questions in the US strategic debates. The US government has, on several occasions, expressed its strong support for the look East policy, though more as an encouragement than as an assertion of faith in its value (at least for the United States itself ). Indeed, if the United States sees a convergence of objectives between its own Rebalance to Asia and India’s look East policy, it has the utmost difficulty in translating these convergences even partially into a common policy. From that perspective, Hillary Clinton’s June 2012 comments inviting India “not just to look east but to engage and act east” can be understood as much as an expression of frustration as one of encouragement.
This tension between the rhetoric and the reality of the look East policy as seen from the perspective of the United States, as well as the question of its importance to the US strategy in Asia, is exemplified by a recent report by the California-based RAND Corporation. look East, Cross Black Waters: India’s Interests in Southeast Asia asserts that “as the United States shifts its security posture eastward in an ‘Asian rebalancing,’ a key piece of the reconfigured puzzle will be that of India.” According to the report, the United States’ and India’s goals in Asia-maintaining regional stability and preventing outside powers from dominating the region; securing the maritime lanes of communication; ensuring connectivity for land, sea, and air transportation; and ensuring the peaceful settlement of territorial disputes-are largely congruent. Both states seek: a stable, predictable and rule-bound political system in which international conflicts are settled through diplomatic channels rather than the threat or use of military force; freedom of navigation in all crucial maritime transit points including (but not limited to) the Strait of Malacca; prevention of China from turning its position of regional influence into one of regional domination; prevention of common threats to the international community, including terrorism, maritime piracy, and nuclear proliferation; resolution of territorial disputes-particularly the competing South China Sea claims of China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia-by peaceful methods rather than intimidation or military action.
Moreover, the look East policy is likely to have an impact on the US rebalancing because of India’s military presence in Southeast Asia through its bases in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Yet the authors of the report recognize the existence of a policy problem identified as the “significant divergence over the time frame and degree of cooperation favored by the United States and India,” or, put simply, how to translate the congruence of goals and objectives into concrete actionIJ They seem, however, to have difficulties formulating new policies likely to solve or mitigate this problem. They conclude that “US planners should have relatively modest expectations for near-term bilateral cooperation or burden sharing with India.” As a result, they advocate active “strategic patience” and consider that only “long-term strategic benefits justify a policy engagement at India’s preferred pace grounded in a detailed understanding of India’s own interest and style of international interactions.” According to the report, actual expectations should therefore remain limited.
Indeed, the main value of look East, Cross Black Waters does not lie in its recommendations, which essentially reflect existing official US rhetoric and policies, but in the fact that it highlights the tension between India’s high potential and the difficulty of translating this potential into actual and meaningful policies. Contrary to the general argument of the report, there is more to the problem than just capability and pace of development issues, although these two dimensions are undoubtedly real and important.
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Random House