New equations

Published : Feb 25, 2011 00:00 IST

V.V. KRISHNAN

V.V. KRISHNAN

India and Indonesia sign a vision statement covering a whole gamut of existing and potential bilateral cooperation and strategic concerns.

GLOBALISATION has sparked unprecedented awareness about international relations. So the search for labels for the changing dynamics of relations between any two countries or among member-states of any group is often seen as real diplomacy itself. It is in this ambience that India and Indonesia have come up with a statement of vision for their existing new strategic partnership.

The statement, issued after talks between Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on January 25, covers the coming decade. Not only that. The two leaders also announced the formation of an eminent persons group that would help shape an India-Indonesia vision statement 2025. The new strategic partnership was fashioned in November 2005. Yet, it is widely recognised that the two countries are still far from engaging each other as potentially key players in East Asia and beyond.

Yudhoyono, often known by his first name Susilo as in the Confucian and Malay-Javanese cultural practices, was this year's Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi on January 26. Significantly, therefore, the political symbolism of such a sense of fraternity permeates much of the latest vision statement. A counterpoint is that specific collaborative projects are rarely, if at all, cited in a vision statement, and this one is no different. Yet, there is also no need to be dismissive of this joint statement in the manner of the harsh criticism made against United States President Barack Obama that he should get his eyes examined by doctors, if he, as contended, was foolishly overwhelmed by his own visions of a nuclear-weapons-free world.

In general terms, the India-Indonesia vision statement covers the entire spectrum of existing and potential bilateral cooperation, ranging from agriculture and defence as also energy sectors to science and technology as also outer space. More importantly, the two sides announced the commencement of negotiations for a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement. In addition, 11 specific documents were inked. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was also signed by Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and his Indonesian counterpart Mari Elka Pangestu to form a Trade Ministers' forum, which would meet every two years. On a different but related front, an air services agreement was signed by Secretary (East) Latha Reddy and Indonesian Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi.

Politically significant were the extradition and mutual legal assistance treaties signed by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and his Indonesian counterpart Marty Natalegawa. Evidently, counter-terror agendas and concerns over transnational crimes, as shared by New Delhi and Jakarta, lent a sense of urgency in this regard. Another MoU, signed by Petroleum and Natural Gas Secretary S. Sundareshan and the Indonesian Foreign Minister, was relevant to the new focus on energy issues as a matter of strategic concern.

At the business-to-business level, an increasingly parallel dimension of bilateral diplomacy across the world, 18 MoUs were signed by Indian and Indonesian corporate executives. The planned projects cover different economic sectors such as infrastructure, including airport construction in Bali and at Yogyakarta in Indonesia, India-beneficial development of natural resources in Indonesia, besides information technology and the development of industrial complexes. Such a sweeping range of business-to-business engagement and of intergovernmental diplomatic activism is both the cause and consequence of recent trends in India's relations with Indonesia. The overarching inter-state framework for such bilateral interactions is said to be the shared identity of the two countries as democracies in an ambience of pluralistic and open societies. A point often made is that India is the world's largest liberal democracy and Indonesia is the most populous democracy with a decisive Muslim majority.

EAST ASIAN POLITICAL ORDER

In one sense, there is no need to discount the value of such political identities as the potential drivers of future-oriented interactions between the two countries. Yet, the bilateral trade is just $11.8 billion, not at all a figure that can, metaphorically, set the Indian Ocean on fire. Moreover, India and Indonesia have not so far figured out their respective places in the emerging East Asian political order. They are members of the East Asian Summit (EAS), a leaders-led strategic forum, which will formally admit the U.S. and Russia later this year, and participate in the discussions on global economy in the increasingly important Group of 20 (G20) and in the decreasingly important ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

As a jumbo-sized forum convened by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the ARF has so far failed to rise above its general reputation as a talk-shop. Yet, Indonesia, as the current Chair of ASEAN, will preside over this year's meetings of both the ARF and the EAS. Moreover, while the ARF might have a bleak record of substantive action with regard to any major international security issue, the forum still exudes some residual value. The ARF can, on its sidelines, continue to provide opportunities for exercises in trouble-shooting in the troubled ties among two or more member-countries.

To a considerable extent, the future of the India-Indonesia equation will be determined by their respective interactions with the U.S., China, Japan, Russia, Australia and South Korea. All these countries are in the G20.

The U.S. has increasingly revealed its real intentions in East Asia. Divested of the usual diplomatic gloss, Washington's basic strategy is to check the steady rise of China by resorting to a non-confrontational method. It is in this sensitive sphere that the U.S. hopes to, or at least wants to, engage and cooperate with fellow democracies such as Japan, Australia, India, Indonesia and South Korea.

Of these countries, Japan and Australia are close military allies of the U.S. Tokyo's chequered relations with Beijing, a fact of life in East Asia since the end of the Second World War, have now acquired a sharper edge. This is an empirical reality, regardless of whether the new root causes can be traced to Beijing or Tokyo, or indeed both. Tokyo recently announced its plans to raise its defence profile in the specific current context of China's rapid military modernisation. Significantly, official Tokyo is seeking ways to reinforce its indispensable alliance with the U.S. Japan wants to do so only with the consent of its people, who have been for long resentful of their daily inconveniences, which are routinely traceable to the prolonged U.S. militarisation of densely populated pockets in Japan.

More relevant to the evident U.S. game plan in East Asia is the explicit mention of India, behind some ASEAN countries, South Korea and Australia, in an ascending order of importance, as the players with whom Japan would like to establish security links. All the countries mentioned here are at present friends of the U.S., and it stands to reason that Japan treats Indonesia, an ASEAN founder-member, as a U.S. friend.

Relevant to this subtext, albeit in a subtle way, is the tenor of discussion on a key point during the press briefing by the Pentagon spokesman on January 26. Speaking of the new American warplanes that Japan could now pursue, the spokesman began talking of China's latest test flight of a stealth fighter as an unrelated but somewhat related topic. While the spokesman might or might not have thought about the implicit message, which simply is that Japan's air power, under the U.S. wings, is relevant to America's plans to track and face the likely challenges from a Chinese stealth fighter. The U.S., of course, is known to possess such fifth-generation combat planes. But the spokesman, casting doubts on China's reported success of testing a stealth fighter, cautioned against premature pronouncements about China having achieved fifth-gen capability.

THE CHINA FACTOR

Addressing the emerging China factor in East Asia's security scenarios, the spokesman amplified Obama's latest intention of increasing the U.S. military footprint in the region. Obama dropped hints of that after his talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington in mid-January. The Pentagon spokesman presented the issue in the context of the new tensions on the Korean peninsula, an issue often linked by the U.S. to China's own interests and strategies in East Asia.

The Pentagon official said: Over the long-term lay-down of our [U.S.] forces in the Pacific, we are looking at ways to even bolster that, not necessarily in [South] Korea and Japan [where America has its troops already] but along the Pacific Rim, particularly in South-East Asia. While the U.S. spokesman did not mention the places in South-East Asia that Washington might have identified under its security prism, it is arguable that the Pentagon can be truly successful in this endeavour only with the active or passive support of Indonesia.

Jakarta, once treated by Washington as a relative non-player with regard to pan-East Asian military matters, now figures in the overall U.S. security calculus in the region. While the reasons for this about-turn are not relevant to Indonesia's ties with India, Jakarta's changing equation with Washington is something that New Delhi cannot be oblivious to. Arguably, India and Indonesia can seek an energetic new equation without necessarily having to link that to their respective interactions with the U.S. on different trajectories.

U.S.' STRATEGIC INTERESTS

A new reality may still impinge on this argument. With the U.S. entering the EAS later this year, Washington's broadly strategic interests with regard to India and Indonesia, among other member-states of this forum, cannot be brushed aside.

As EAS insiders point out, the U.S. has already let others know about its evolving policy of wanting to refashion the East Asian security landscape. Moreover, ASEAN, the prime mover in the creation of the EAS, took a decision to admit the U.S. and Russia without any significant consultations with China or Japan or India or South Korea, insiders say. The implicit message is that the U.S. has already begun to have its way by being able to influence the thinking of the ASEAN countries.

Indonesia is by far the most important ASEAN country with which America's relations have shown dramatic improvement in recent years. Vietnam is another country that the U.S. has sought to nurture as a potential friend and perhaps also as an ally at some stage in the future.

The Pentagon spokesman cited Australia not [for] permanent deployment of [U.S.] troops, but [for] having access to certain facilities. In emphasising the importance of South-East Asia as a new, or renewed, theatre of U.S. interest in the overall China context, he said we [already] have access [to] and a good relationship with Singapore.

If these comments, not as startling as the once-significant Pentagon Papers', have any meaning for the EAS members, the implicit message is that the U.S. is beginning to see East Asia as a new security theatre. India and Indonesia can, of course, hope to reorder their bilateral equation without the U.S. as a direct factor. It is perhaps significant, for now, that defence cooperation was not the prime focus of Yudhoyono's talks with Manmohan Singh.

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