From Rhetoric to Architecture: Institutionalising Narratives in India-ASEAN Relations

The India-ASEAN narrative has evolved from a position of optimism in 2017 as the dialogue partnership turned 25, to a narrative of resurgence in 2022, and finally, the narrative of strategic repositioning and imperative reclamation as of today. What started as an executionary mechanism to India’s Look East Policy has now given rise to a regional partnership that has withstood geopolitical tremors and a systemic dismantling of the global order.

Illustration by The Geostrata

As regional strategic narratives become increasingly polarised in terms of alliances, stances, and areas of focus, they also reflect a potential sway by virtue of externally projected axes of power. The institutionalisation of narratives in the region, for the preservation of the idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific, has become increasingly critical. 

INDIA'S FOCUS ON ASEAN CENTRALITY

With the advent of the Modi Government in India came the Act East Policy that enabled a more focused stance with respect to the Association of South East Asian Nations. India’s engagement with ASEAN foresaw a tremendous shift that was cognizant of the emergence of the Indo-Pacific, as opposed to the Asia-Pacific region in international diplospeak.

ASEAN participation in India’s national events has become frequent, and free trade agreements between the two entities have been signed on a myriad of themes, with the most remarkable being the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) signed in 2009; the ASEAN-India Trade in Services Agreement (AITISA), and the ASEAN-India Investment Agreement (AIIA), signed in 2014. ASEAN and India have come to be embedded in the very fibre of each other’s geopolitical fabric.

Regardless of this, the performance and implementation of narrative-building exercises that reinforce mutual strategic significance, not merely towards each other but to the global community, remain negligible. As superpowers rise, the West has assumed a self-proclaimed pedestal, and the rest remain marginalised. 

SHAPING GLOBAL NARRATIVES THROUGH REGIONAL INSTITUTIONALISM  

Before shifting thematic focus to developmental constructs, the India-ASEAN collaborative narrative must not only be reshaped but also strengthened through due institutionalisation. The US Indo-Pacific strategy affirms ASEAN centrality. However, for Washington, this has merely taken the form of a diplomatic gesture. From the perspective of the European Union (EU), India and ASEAN sit at the helm of building a multipolar and rules-based Indo-Pacific. Regardless, these are simply minced words.

The collaboration must be repositioned to assume a prism of global leadership, trade competitiveness, and strategic viability. Projects like the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Mekong-Ganga corridor, while presenting the potential to act as alternatives to BRI corridors, must re-establish, by projecting themselves as projects of economic connectivity, the Indo-Pacific’s autonomy. 

Western policy circles bear the notion that ASEAN centrality is often more rhetorical than it has proven to be operational, especially with fragmentation over the South China Sea disputes and great-power rivalries.

With connectivity projects being delayed, limited flows of Foreign Direct Investment, and uneven trade integration, the expectations of India’s ability to reinforce ASEAN centrality stand at an all-time high. India-ASEAN cooperation strengthens middle-power dynamics, dilutes zero-sum geopolitics, and bolsters India’s credibility as an inclusive regional actor as it shares the burden of balancing relations with China without directly pulling ASEAN into a confrontation. 

INTEGRATING NARRATIVES INTO STRATEGIC FRAMEWORKS

Most of what the regional partnership embodies is shaped by the dominance of narratives. This calls for an imperative of coordinated policy responses. India and ASEAN must bring into effect an India-ASEAN Mapping for Barriers, Integration and Cooperation (IAMBIC), a model that caters to narratives across economic diversification, strategic alignment, and policy and crisis responses.  The first step to undertake herein must be to synchronise India’s Act East Policy with ASEAN’s Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.

In terms of trade and economic integration, AOIP emphasises free trade and integration. With India’s withdrawal from the RCEP in 2019, ASEAN states began to view the move as a weakening of India’s economic commitment. A perspective that was rather superficial if analysed in depth. Nonetheless, with the formerly mentioned IMT highway and the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project, India has time and time again re-established its economic commitment to the Indo-Pacific, regardless of secondary bilateral points of friction with third parties.

With the AOIP explicitly tying Indo-Pacific to Sustainable Development Goals, especially with a focus on green growth and climate resilience and India’s increasing focus on climate partnerships, renewable energy and support for the ASEAN-India Green Fund with an initial contribution of USD 5 million from India, India’s solar cooperation under the International Solar Alliance parallel to AOIP’s sustainability agenda must be capitalised upon. In Maritime Security and Freedom of Navigation lies another point of convergence.

The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific calls for maritime cooperation and a rules-based order, while also demanding adherence to the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Seas.

Similarly, India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative, while also carrying undertones implicit through QUAD engagements that the ASEAN states handle cautiously, overlaps with AOIP’s focus on maritime domain awareness, search and rescue, and advancement of the blue economy. Alignment here exists in the form of India-ASEAN maritime exercises, the first of which was held in May 2023 in Singaporean waters, and can be institutionalised through coordinated coast guard exercises and systems on maritime domain awareness. 

DIPLOMACY THROUGH MULTILATERAL DIALOGUE

While coordination platforms like the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum can help bridge these differences, such platforms remain effective only to the extent that they are emphasised in contemporary diplospeak. There are three major bottlenecks in this regard. Firstly, while India and ASEAN echo their commitment to centrality and inclusivity, these commitments and statements remain discursive rather than being translated into operational frameworks.

Second, initiatives such as the Trilateral Highway and India-ASEAN maritime exercises so far have not always been traced back and tied to EAS and the Regional Forum’s mandates. This has thereby led to frayed links between rhetoric building and practice. Lastly, the reference to ASEAN centrality bears the risk of being permanently marked as a symbol unless the narrative is translated into deliverables that are eventually addressed by the establishment of multilateral platforms such as the East Asia Summit.

There must be an increased focus on synchronising diplospeak with deeds. India’s flagship initiatives must be referenced exclusively in ASEAN and Indian statements as contributions to AOIP’s areas of priority. The ASEAN Regional Forum publishes an Annual Security Outlook, which can be used to codify India-ASEAN points of convergence and strategic alignment.

Establish working groups under multilateral forums that represent the ASEAN-focused narratives, instead of establishing them using permutations and combinations of regional alliances. Essentially, the focus must be shifted from countries to convergences, from alliance to alignment, and the dialogue creation to doing. 

CONCLUSION

India-ASEAN centrality must not merely be a statement of diplomatic courtesy but the regional and collaborative strength that sends ripples across the oceans. The translation of dialogue mechanisms into catalysts of systemic processes of recommendation, adoption, and implementation is the need of the hour.

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BY DIA ATAL

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com