Indonesia is trying to gain the leadership position in Southeast Asia through constructive and cooperative gestures and balanced bargaining between major powers.
India needs to engage Singapore more robustly so as to enable the forging of deeper and more broad-based friendships in the Southeast Asian region through Singapore’s good offices.
Clearly, there is immense scope for cooperation between India and Myanmar to deal in agro-based products, floriculture, engineering, timber and tobacco and expand business cooperation. Although there has been a significant increase in bilateral trade in recent years, full potential has yet to be realised.
In recent years India, along with China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has been following a policy of diplomatic engagement with Myanmar. India has also clarified its diplomatic stand that such a policy engagement will positively serve its national interests.
The appropriate option for the Hatoyama government would be to take incremental steps aimed at building greater confidence and trust amongst Asian nations across a number of policy fronts rather than indulge in advancing grand ideas which appear at the moment unachievable.
Japan is seeking to forge an East Asian Community inline with the European Union. But the optimism that East Asia will realize the goal of European Union (EU) type integration does not seem realistic since historical issues still impede normal diplomatic relations.
This paper throws light on challenges like lack of infrastructure, crisis of insurgency, the disjuncture between the elites and the social base in the North East regarding the “Look East” policy, and the states' incapacities during the implementation process of this policy.
South China Sea is a disputed maritime area. This is because of the multiple and often overlapping maritime claims on parts of the Sea by China, many ASEAN countries (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam) and Taiwan. Two incidents in the past one month have brought the issue once again to the forefront. In May, the Chinese permanent mission at the United Nations (UN) presented a note to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon claiming sovereignty over 80 per cent of South China Sea including the disputed islands of Paracel and Spratly.
The collapse of the ASEAN Summit in Pattaya (Thailand) on April 11 following anti-government protests tarnished Thailand’s image. It also brought the regional group’s age-old policy of non-interference in the domestic trivials of a member state under question. The incident impeded ASEAN’s strategy to define a common approach to current global financial crisis. The Pattaya incident also demonstrated the ineffectiveness of ASEAN as a regional organization.
The Second US-ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting in New York
The second US-ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting in New York hints at concerns about China’s assertiveness and acknowledges a role for US balancing.