INDIA LOOKS ON AS THE EAST INTEGRATES
Zorawar Daulet Singh
Asia Times, May 7, 2009
NEW DELHI - The agreement by the finance ministers of China, Japan, South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN+3) last week to create a US$120 billion regional reserve pool "to address short-term liquidity difficulties in the region and to supplement the existing international financial arrangements" must surely be another milestone in East Asian geoeconomics.
This, however, is not an unsurprising development but part of a trend to integration that has characterized the political economy of the region. India remains disconnected from this geoeconomic space. For too long, the country's look-East policy has been based on rhetorical aspirations rather than on immersing India into the commercial networks that have entwined the nations of East Asia.
The popular images that animate any discussion on East Asia, such as those concerning the North Korean nuclear question, the naval dimension and sea-lane security, and disputes in the South China Sea, tend to emphasize the latent, potential and ongoing conflicts in the region while crowding out any meaningful conversation on the question of economic interdependence. This is partly a result in India of a security bias within the security establishment whereby it tends to project India's perspectives on China onto other actors in the region. For the major part, however, this is because India's own economic linkages with the East are relatively perfunctory.
The popular images that animate any discussion on East Asia, such as those concerning the North Korean nuclear question, the naval dimension and sea-lane security, and disputes in the South China Sea, tend to emphasize the latent, potential and ongoing conflicts in the region while crowding out any meaningful conversation on the question of economic interdependence. This is partly a result in India of a security bias within the security establishment whereby it tends to project India's perspectives on China onto other actors in the region. For the major part, however, this is because India's own economic linkages with the East are relatively perfunctory.
It is worth highlighting the underlying dynamic that enables interdependence to operate. While some analysts have opined that the economic impulse in the region has a life of its own, and security considerations have been subordinated by geoeconomics, such a perspective does not address the reality that East Asian actors have made a conscious political choice to stimulate commerce.
(...) [artículo aquí]
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