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In November 2002, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held its first summit with India in Cambodia. This article examines whether the ASEAN-India Summit could be considered as a successful outcome of India's engagement strategy with Southeast Asia through its "Look East" policy. The diplomatic overtures and actions by India to cultivate the Southeast Asian region were clearly visible when Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee visited the Southeast Asian region several times in 2001. The article argues that India's "Look East" policy has been mainly reinvigorated by China's interests in ASEAN's riparian states along the Mekong River, namely, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. With the inclusion of Myanmar in ASEAN in 1997, India has come to share a common land border with an ASEAN member state and this has increased India's potential influence in the region.
Introduction: Post-Cold War Globalization
The end of the Cold War, the globalization of national economies, and the Asian financial crisis were some of the key factors that have established an ecologically conducive environment for India to enhance its linkages with the Southeast Asian region. The demise of the Soviet Union, India's main trading partner, and India's economic crisis of 1991 and subsequent economic reforms created a momentum for India to strengthen its trading links with Southeast Asia. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said that "the Cold War moulds have been broken and this has enabled us to strengthen our links without ideological barrier".1 India's engagement with Southeast Asia has spanned two millennia, based on trade, migration, language, culture, and religion.2 India has also been observing with concern that China's influence in Southeast Asia has grown. China's growing role in Southeast Asia contrasts with India's inability to strengthen its economic relations with the countries of South Asia despite the creation of the South Asia Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC).3 China's strategic links with Pakistan also irks India because of China's indirect interference in South Asia.
This article will differ from previous works on India and ASEAN by focusing on India's relations with the later entrants of the regional grouping, namely, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam (CMLV). These newer ASEAN states are strategically very important to India because of their proximity not only to India but also to...