The inaugural East Asian Summit (EAS), touted as groundbreaking, commenced on December 14 in Kuala Lumpur comprising 16 nations— the 10 ASEAN countries, China, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand with Russian President Vladimir Putin making a special appearance. The EAS Declaration, like many issued before in the region, is wide-ranging: from political and security cooperation, infrastructure development, financial issues, further liberalisation of regional trade and investment, poverty eradication to fighting epidemics. Nonetheless, inter alia, three points need underscoring.
Exactly fifty years back in 1955 leaders from 29 countries spanning Asia and Africa met in the town of Bandung on West Java in Indonesia from April 18 to 25 to deliberate on a new strategy they should adopt vis-à-vis the rest of the world to make their voice heard and to make their presence felt at a time when the world was in grips of the most intensive ideological warfare between those who ardently advocated communism and those opposed it as fervently led respectively by the former Soviet Union and the United States.
In the emerging complex security situation in the Asia-Pacific region, Japanese security policies appear to be undergoing dramatic changes. The alliance with the US, especially the presence of American troops, is facing with some uncertainty after 9/11. The rise of China as a major economic and military power is seen to pose a serious challenge to Japan. Moreover, North Korea’s unabated attempts to develop WMD capabilities along with ballistic missiles threaten Japanese security directly. In response, Japan has initiated certain significant steps.
India’s policy with Southeast Asia, which took a distinctive shape since the early 1990s in the form of the Look East policy, has been a multipronged approach encompassing political, strategic and economic aspects. Apart from establishing institutional linkages with ASEAN and strengthening bilateral relations with its member states, especially in the field of defence, India has been an enthusiastic participant and supporter of multilateralism in Asia-Pacific.
The article critically looks at relevance of the US alliance system in the Asia-Pacific in the context of the changing nature of threats and challenges that the U.S. is confronted with in the light of American military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. The paper argues that the American policy in Asia, which so far has been premised on bilateral alliances and forward deployment, is likely to undergo fundamental changes because the principal partners, South Korea and Japan, may not be very useful either in counter-terrorism efforts or low-intensity wars.
The Spirit of Bandung
Exactly fifty years back in 1955 leaders from 29 countries spanning Asia and Africa met in the town of Bandung on West Java in Indonesia from April 18 to 25 to deliberate on a new strategy they should adopt vis-à-vis the rest of the world to make their voice heard and to make their presence felt at a time when the world was in grips of the most intensive ideological warfare between those who ardently advocated communism and those opposed it as fervently led respectively by the former Soviet Union and the United States.