The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently visited the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to attend the meeting of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asain Nations) of which it is an observer along with other observer including China.
The gathering of the “ASEAN+” as I like to call it assumed much more importance than the other jargon filled yawn inducing meetings of this rather successful East Asian trade group. The primary reasons being the current disputes various ASEAN members are having with China over maritime borders claims and the China’s disputes over some islands with Japan. The aggrieved with which China has maritime border disputes include Vietnam and the Philippines. Vietnam shares a tense history with China in the past over similar disputes whereas the Philippines is clearly wary of the rising Asian juggernaut whose economic and military power have rapidly risen over the past decade and a half. The Philippines and Vietnam also share close relations with China’s geopolitical adversary, the US, which makes this issue even more prickly.
The US perceives China as a soon to be (if not already) rival power that will soon compete against US interests in regions that have been traditional US or western strongholds especially in East Asia and Africa. The ability to dominate East Asian waters assumes critical importance to a world power primarily due to the fact that a substantial amount of world trade passes through these waters. Therefore the ability to dominate such waters would assume critical importance in case of war where a simple blockade would cut off the enemy from essential supplies.
There have been reports in the media recently over the fact there might be significant amounts of recoverable fossil fuel in the South China Sea making it an attractive location for oil companies for offshore drilling. Whether the fossil fuel really exists is a moot point. The ability to dominate the world’s busiest trade routes would provide a much better dividend than a few million barrels of oil could provide any day.
The ongoing dispute over a chain of nearly uninhabited islands in the South China Sea between South Korea, China and Japan are clear indicators of these facts. South Korea and Japan are key American allies with heavy American military presence in both countries. China sees disputes between itself and these two American allies as an American attempt to continue its dominance in East Asia via its proxies.
China, aware of its emerging stature in the world throughout the last decade and half and also its inevitable geopolitical confrontation with America has been doing its bit to prepare itself for all this. The increased focus of China’s armed forces to develop a powerful navy is an obvious byproduct of this process. It has been preparing a large fleet of nuclear powered submarines, frigates, destroyers since the early 2000s. It recently acquired an old Ukranian aircraft carrier which it now has retrofitted and added to its ever increasing naval fleet. China is one of the few countries in the world that possesses the “nuclear triad” viz. the ability to deliver a nuclear attack via land, sea or air.
All these “developments” point to a very troubling and tense geopolitical atmosphere in East Asia and beyond. Globalization has made war the most dreaded and least preferred method of solving a problem. But even if these countries do not go to war, a tense relationship could have significant impacts, not only on themselves but also on all ASEAN members and their non ASEAN neighbours with which they share commercial ties.
A tense relationship would mean the hurting of interests of one member country in another as witnessed by the anti Japanese demonstrations in China over the last few months and similar (if not more subdued) anti Chinese demonstrations in Japan. Sales of Japanese companies like Honda which are otherwise extremely popular in China have nose dived after the island disputes started. Even Japanese factories have been attacked in China, sometimes even with tacit state encouragement.
This was just an example. A string of multilaterally tense relationships in the region do not fare well for the people of these countries considering the fact that a large number of the ASEAN economies are highly interdependent as a result of globalization with supply chains spread across different countries to leverage the benefits accruing from a low tariff environment which in turn leverages cheap labour available in some member countries like Philippines and Vietnam.
Similarly, non ASEAN states which trade heavily with ASEAN states could suffer. Internal conflicts of the ASEAN could in turn affect trade with other countries like India, Russia and even China who trade substantially with member countries. Export dependent economies like Taiwan, could suffer even more than others.
I shudder to think how the world markets would react (with obvious and tremendous negativity) to even a sniff of conflict in the region. The first casualty of a conflict would be global trade as trade routes in the region would suffer having a cascading effect on almost all major world economies. A global financial panic would probably ensue, eroding trillions of dollars of value for a substantial number of investors in all major stock markets. Commodity prices would increase as fear of war would bring on hoarding of essential commodities by nations anxious of further price rises. This would not bode well for the world at large which is barely getting out of the global financial crisis of 2007-08.
If the US, due to any reason would decide to enter such a conflict, we would surely see a much bigger and global war. That is something which is not at all in world interests.
But the solution to this is very simple (and complex at the same time!). Be Reasonable.
It would be of paramount importance for ASEAN leaders to maintain cool heads. Guns do not need to be involved in solving disputes. There are scant problems that cannot be solved with diplomacy and goodwill. The issues of the South China Sea, its oil and the islands can be solved by serious negotiations by all sides concerned. Neutral members from ASEAN or even outside interlocutors from countries like India, Russia or the EU might broker an agreement to the satisfaction of all sides. As for geopolitical posturing by rival powers, it is frankly inevitable. But there are subtler ways in which to project power than pointing guns at others. America and China can learn something from Japan and India in this case. Japan and India are probably the biggest exporters of “soft power” in the world. Its about time, America and China learned the craft of making that export. Or else, they threaten the world down the path of global conflict or internal decay on the lines of the Soviet Union.
As for India’s role, there are few countries in the world that have the (rather extreme) cool heads of Indian leaders when it comes to any kind of disputes. This cool heads can be leveraged to mediate between disputing sides. Our neutrality on most global issues is mostly frowned upon but comes as an asset when trying to stop a conflict between others. India might be a lot of things but it is certainly not biased on global issues and does not punch above it weight in the global arena. Its time to use such a tense multilateral situation to solidify the former impression and rectify the latter. It would be in our nation’s long term interests and by extension to that of the world as well.
Mitul Choksi
Ahmedabad, India
November 24, 2012
