Strategic Change

By David Brewster

India’s trade and investment relationships in East Asia are growing dramatically. India is also developing security relationships throughout the region: primarily with the US, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore and Australia, but also with others. India is now welcomed by many countries in East Asia as an important economic and strategic balance to the growing power of China.

The growing presence of the Indian Navy in the South China Sea in partnership with Vietnam and Singapore is just one manifestation of India’s security ambitions in the region.

Although China now downplays Indian role in the Pacific, it may have little choice but to accept a growing Indian security presence, just as India may have to accept a growing Chinese security presence in the Indian Ocean….

The changes wrought by India’s rise and its engagement with East Asia will be profound and not always smooth — as India finds its voice and as powerful states in northeast Asia see a loss of influence in shaping the regional agenda.

Many strategic thinkers in the US, India and Australia are already talking about the idea of the “Indo-Pacific”. They increasingly see the Indian and Pacific Oceans as an interdependent — or even single — strategic and economic space stretching from Vladivostok to the shores of Somalia.

But the “Indo-Pacific” is still little more than a concept and there are questions as to how this can be put into practice.

From “India as an Asia Pacific Power”.