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India’s new image crisis in East Asia

— PHOTO: AP

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a meeting in June in Singapore.

Now receding is the recently “rising” profile of India in Greater East Asia, which includes Australia and the South Pacific sub-region. This is largely traceable to the perception that India’s civilian nuclear energy deal with the United States may fall through.

However, New Delhi can still retrieve some of its lost “lustre.” Because its new image crisis in Greater East Asia goes beyond the perception of some governments and pundits about the nuclear deal. Even on the nuclear issue itself, high-profile powers in the region, such as China and Japan besides South Korea and Australia, are watching out for a possible end-game in the India-U.S. dialogue on this deal.

At stake is also the equally important factor concerning India’s “sluggish” economic engagement with key East Asian players. Right now, New Delhi is visible more as an earnest seeker of investments than as a bold trading partner.

Seen in this perspective, India’s now receding profile is not the result of just the new “difficulties” — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s own phrase — in the “operationalisation” of the civilian nuclear energy accord with the U.S.

The delay on a free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) is a regional concern, which adversely affects New Delhi’s credentials for serious foreign policy initiatives. The signing of an Asean-India FTA has not been listed, as of now, as a possible pride-of-place item on the agenda of their planned summit in Singapore in late November.

Yet if New Delhi can still clinch this FTA quickly, the political atmospherics of India’s engagement with the other major powers and emerging economies in the forum of East Asia Summit (EAS) will improve.

It is in this climate of economic and strategic opinion that Dr. Singh’s Government has now come to be assessed, despite its “defences” about how it could go in meeting the expectations of its Asia-Pacific interlocutors.

Unlike in the complex Indian political domain, the nuclear deal is not generally seen in the Greater East Asian circles as an index of New Delhi’s failure to safeguard its sovereignty over foreign policy issues. To many in this region, any sovereign country’s “enhanced” ties with the U.S. reflect a “gain,” especially if such links flow from tough negotiations as in the case of New Delhi and Washington on the nuclear matter.

The reason is simple. While the U.S., certainly seen as a global but wounded superpower, is not the darling of many countries in Greater East Asia, it is also not reckoned as a state to trifle with.

China is by far the most prominent regional player, especially because of its potential to rise as a global superpower. Unsurprisingly, many East Asian countries often tend to compare and contrast India with China. Beijing specialises in a “constructive and cooperative engagement” with the U.S. across the board, notwithstanding the fluctuations in their relationship over such diverse issues as the Dalai Lama, Taiwan or product safety.

As a player with political maturity, China seeks to remain above any such fray. A related question is whether New Delhi itself is trying to play second fiddle to Washington in its efforts to contain the further rise of China and whether the India-U.S. nuclear accord is a sign of this.

A ranking U.S. diplomat, Christopher Hill, regarded as an expert on Greater East Asia, is of the view that India might not be willing to be co-opted into any quadrilateral framework of democracies in the Asia-Pacific region. The powers mentioned in this regard are the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia, with Tokyo having proposed the idea.

Whether or not any new Asia-Pacific version of the Monroe Doctrine or an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are being peddled, key regional powers in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) have indicated their India-related positions.

Being the first among the NSG members from Greater East Asia to welcome the India-U.S. nuclear deal, Australia has indicated its readiness to review the possibility of selling uranium to New Delhi. Canberra had made this offer after hailing the India-U.S. deal as the “second best” option in a skewed world of non-proliferation. South Korea did not see any reason for expressing “reservations” over the India-U.S. deal. Yet Seoul may now feel vindicated by its decision against openly backing India’s case.

Japan, cautious from the beginning about this deal, is now of the view that it is for the U.S. and India to sort out the crisis. However, Tokyo feels the U.S. had invested a lot of strategic capital on this deal with India.

India’s Special Envoy Shyam Saran had indicated, while in Singapore sometime ago, that China had “envisaged bilateral cooperation” with India in the domain of “peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” This was perceived to be China’s updated stand in the immediate context of the India-U.S. nuclear deal being finalised. China’s caveat, as narrated by Mr. Saran, was that “such cooperation [with India] should not, in any way, undermine [the international] non-proliferation regime.”

New Delhi had then maintained that the India-U.S. deal “strengthens the international non-proliferation regime.” A follow-up question now is whether the NSG members will now see the India-U.S. deal in the non-proliferation context alone or as an aspect of global politics as well.

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