The shift of power to Asia in the 21st century with its imminent economic rise has amplified the security challenges that the continent faces within the larger rubric of international relations. Key concerns include major power rivalries, tensions over disputed territories, freedom of Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCs), security dilemmas connected to military modernization, the robustness of regional institutional mechanisms, intra-state conflicts and last but not the least, the perspectives of major actors like Russia, China and India on Asian regional order: whether they view it as purely competitive or cooperative-competitive. Historically, Asia has been an important geographical cusp in the pathway of civilizations. Arabia, the Ottoman Empire, the Mongols, the Chinese empires, India, Ceylon, etc, have played major roles in the fight for territory, resources and the spread of ideas and religion. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, etc., have been major religious influences, while mathematics, science, astronomy, the printing press, gun powder, the wheel, etc., draws their origin to Asia. Asian cultures and civilizations have been instrumental in the conceptualization and operationalization of the strategic cultures and military modernizations of other civilizations. The extreme forms of competition that precluded the colonial period, and the meeting of Asia and the West led loose new forces of military modernizations, especially naval technologies with faster ships, and the idea of sea dominance. The colonial period was critical for the formation of an Asian idea of difference as most of the countries were either colonized or suffered from deep seated anxieties due to their contact with the West, memories that continue to shape ideas and foreign policies to this day.
India emerged from colonialism with a solid sense of national identity. The leaders of the Indian freedom movement expressed attractive visions of the kind of state India should become. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a firm believer in the universal principle of global interconnectedness, and saw India as deeply rooted in this sense of universalism, both ideationally and physically. Jawaharlal Nehru, while supportive of Gandhian universalism, chose to carve a path of non-alignment, as a direct response to the systemic distribution of power at that time, the US and the USSR, though ideationally, he was drawn to Soviet socialism rather than American capitalism. Nehru aspired to carve a unique foreign policy for India, where as a proponent of non-alignment, India would establish its own foreign policy priorities and agendas, devoid of super-power structural rivalry. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, firmly advocated a strong Indian state duly based on defence of its own borders with a keen strategic sense of its neighbours, especially China.
India’s approach to foreign policy and international relations has, over the years, been propelled by ideas drawn from the leaders of the Indian freedom movement, their aspirations for India, as well as its own experiences and engagements with the world since its independence. While many strategic analysts, both in India and abroad, accuse India of lacking a strategic culture or strategic thinking, a deep foray into Indian foreign policy behavior reveals that India does have a strategic culture where it closely monitors the external environment and debates on the efficacy of the use of military power in addressing external threats. Over the years, some of the major developments in India’s economic and foreign policy have been the 1991 economic reforms that opened up the Indian economy to globalization, the 1998 nuclear tests, its space program, and its growing role in Asian multilateralism. Areas that have emerged as of priority to India are its strategic partnerships with major powers, cyber, space and energy security, terrorism, nuclear safety and security, the Indian Ocean region, the US ‘pivot’ and the rise of China. In this backdrop, it is critical to discuss and assess whether India has reached a stage of power acquisition that equips it with system ‘shaping capabilities and intentions’. This discussion should emerge from the fact that India has showed the potential to shape and mould the international system, and it aspires to a larger system shaping role in the future.
Based on this conceptual prop, the 17th Asian Security Conference will focus on the theme, “Asian Security: Comprehending the Indian Approach”. Given the overall focus on Asia with its increased prosperity, and the rise of major Asian powers in the context of decreasing resources, naval competition, American presence, and quest for prestige, the conference will deliberate on India’s strategic role and preferences in shaping Asian Security. The conference will focus not only on what India’s approach has been but also what should be India’s future proactive approach towards shaping Asian security.
The key thematic questions that will weave together the multiple interactive sessions of the conference are:-
- What role can India play in shaping the structural and normative parameters for Asian security?
- What are India’s strategic preferences and choices for Asia’s security future?
- How do the major powers of Asia and the United States view India’s role towards cementing Asian security?
- Has India transcended its regional role as a South Asian power to the broader regional context of Asia?
- What are the key scenarios that emerge from the 17th Asian security conference that India will have to respond to in the next 10 to 15 years?
The conference will be divided into nine interactive sessions
Thematic Sessions
Session I: Asian Regional Order
Session II: India and Strategic Partnerships: Impact on Asian Security
Session III: Asian Economies and Resource Competition
Session IV: The Rise of China
Session V: Maritime Security in Asia
Session VI: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Cyber and Space Security in Asia
Session VII: Major Strategic Regions of Asia
Session VIII: Future trends and Scenarios emerging from the 17th Asian Security Conference
Concluding Valedictory Session
Theme Elaboration
Session I: Asian Regional Order
This session will critically analyze whether India possesses a systemic set of ideas, both practical and theoretical, that articulate its national interests. Most importantly, this session will identify the strategic vision/visions that India aspires to in projecting itself onto the Asian stage. This will involve factors like national identity, power, sovereignty, norm building, and multilateralism. Based on this, the session will discuss India’s approach to Asian regional order, whether India is an observer of that order or aspires to be a key actor in the management of the regional order. The session will deliberate on whether it is possible for India and other major powers of Asia to create a collective security framework which would assume responsibility for Asian security.
Key Questions to be addressed in this session are:-
- What are the major Indian strategic approaches to Asian regional order?
- Does India have the ambition and/or capacity to shape Asian regional order?
- What role has India played in building norms that could mitigate some of the security challenges that Asia faces?
Session II: India and Strategic Partnerships: Impact on Asian Security
One of the major foreign policy mechanisms that India has adopted over the years is to cement strategic partnerships with major countries to work towards international security. Countries with whom India has strategic partnerships include US, China, Russia, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, South Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, ASEAN, to name but a few. According to a report by the Foundation for National Security Research, New Delhi, India has a priority listing in strategic partnerships, scored in 90 points, with Russia coming on top, followed by US, France, UK, Germany and Japan.1 The key questions that these strategic partnerships raise are the following:-
- How does India define strategic partnerships?
- What are the key issues that India’s strategic partnerships deal with?
- Is there a priority listing with regard to countries and issues that informs India’s strategic partnerships?
- What impact do India’s strategic partnerships have on Asian security?
Session III: Asian Economies and Resource Competition
Asia has emerged as one of the most economically vibrant regions on the global economic stage. The economic rise of China, Japan, India, ASEAN, etc, is driving global economic growth. China, India and Japan are the world’s second, third and fourth largest economies predicted to grow further by 2050. The G-20 has emerged as one of the largest economic blocs with a capacity to fund economic development across the world. With the economic rise of Asian countries, there are simultaneous challenges. The momentum for Asian economic integration is rather slow with challenges remaining for the emergence of common visa regime, currency and trade policies. Security challenges like transnational crime (drugs and small arms), terrorism, resource competition, tensions in the high seas and territorial disputes could dampen robust economic cooperation. The key questions that emerge for India in this context are the following:-
- What role can Indian play to strengthen Asian economic integration?
- What are the key security challenges faced by India in its rise to economic prosperity?
- Are Asian economic institutions robust enough to sustain the momentum for Asian economic integration?
Session IV: The Rise of China
The rise of China has changed the geopolitics of Asia. It has created both opportunities and challenges. China’s economic growth is driving economic and infrastructural developments in Asia. Simultaneously, its military modernization, growing assertiveness over disputed territories, competition over resources, etc, is posing a security challenge to countries in Asia. On the one hand, India aspires to deeper engagement with China, both politically and economically. On the other hand, China’s assertiveness over its border dispute with India and territorial claim on one of the Indian states in the Northeast is posing a major security challenge. This session will deliberate on these issues and aim to find answers to the following key questions.
- What are the major priorities in the China-India strategic partnership?
- Can China and India establish a cooperative security mechanism in Asia?
- How is China’s assertiveness over its territorial disputes impacting not only China-India relationship but the growing security dilemma in Asia?
Session V: Maritime Security in Asia
When one talks about maritime security in Asia, the Indian Ocean comes to the fore given the rise of the Asian economies, their demand for raw imports, and the export of the finished products. Moreover, given the American military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Indian Ocean has taken centre stage for Western military supplies. Increasing importance of choke points such as the Straits of Hormuz, the Malacca Straits, the Bab-el-Mandep in the Persian Gulf, etc., calls for a larger Indian role as a regional security provider. Maritime security in this regard would mean ensuring freedom of the SLOCs: a global public good, managing naval competition, and fighting piracy near the coast of Somalia.
The key questions that this session will deal with are:-
- What are the key parameters of the Indian maritime doctrine vis-à-vis Asian security?
- Does India possess the maritime capability to deal with security challenges in the Indian Ocean in order to function as a regional security provider?
- Are the oceans and seas of Asia compounded by strategic naval competition between China, India and the US?
- Is there a regional architecture in place to deal with naval competition?
Session VI: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Cyber and Space Security in Asia
One of the foremost quests by Asian powers is to establish and strengthen Asian security mechanisms in order to deal with nuclear, cyber and space issues. The perils of nuclear terrorism, safety of nuclear weapon sites, cyber-terrorism and cyber-hacking and a militarized space have grave implications for Asia with five nuclear weapons states (China, India, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea) and two with overt/covert nuclear weapons capability (Iran and Israel). This posits the nuclear security threshold and the much repeated stability/instability paradox. China, Japan, Russia and India are key actors in space. Space is and will emerge as one the most vital global commons. With cyber emerging as the critical means of communication, thereby compressing space and time, and with it, creating security challenges like cyber terrorism and hacking, Asia is vulnerable as one of the biggest users of cyber space.
The key questions that this session will deal with are:-
- What is the emerging nuclear environment in Asia? Is the Asian nuclear order changing?
- What effective role has India played in the nuclear non-proliferation regime?
- Does India have a concrete well-crafted cyber policy with regard to Asian security?
- What are the points of convergence/divergence in India’s space policy with other Asian countries? Is there a common Asian space code?
Session VII: Major Strategic Regions of Asia
Geo-politics, as ever before, has proved hard to be precisely defined. Yet, as the term has been revisited and refined over the years, geo-politics has much to do with the relation of politics (power) to geography. Geo-politics assumes the primacy of states, existing military-economic competition, and ways to cement interest based cooperation. To operationalize this, strategy is the key factor, thereby bringing in the element of ‘geo-strategy’ implying the strategic significance of a particular region to a state’s strategic interests. Moreover, it is pertinent to underlie the tendencies of cooperation/competition that reverberate between China and India in the various Asian strategic regions.
In light of this, this session will deal with the following critical questions:-
- What are the critical components of India’s geo-strategic approach to the major strategic regions of Asia?
- Is there a priority of strategic regions in India’s conceptualization of geo-strategy?
- What are the components and challenges of the Indian approach to major strategic regions of Asia? How can India refine its strategy towards Asian geopolitics?
Session VIII: Future trends and Scenarios emerging from the 17th Asian Security Conference
Based on the papers presented in the 17th ASC, as well as the main speeches, the last session will identify the key trends from each session, and then focus on three or four main drivers that could impact Asian security and India’s approach in the next few years (2015-2030). It will creatively formulate three or four plausible scenarios and present the findings in this last session.
Valedictory Session
1. Satish Kumar, et. al., “India’s Strategic Partners: A Comparative Assessment”, Foundation for National Security Research, New Delhi, November 2011 at
http://fnsr.org/files/Indias_Strategic.pdf(Accessed on June 16, 2014).
2. Department of Defense, “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”, January 2012 at http://www.defense.gov/news/defense_strategic_guidance.pdf (Accessed on June 20, 2014).
