Podcast: Southeast Asia and India's Indo-Pacific Maritime Stakes

From the South China Sea to disaster risks, a closer look at future opportunities in India's evolving Southeast Asia engagement ten years into its Act East Policy.

INTRODUCTION

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, where we bring you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I'm your host, Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran. If you haven't already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don’t miss our posts.

Our guest today is Captain Sarabjeet Parmar, who retired last June from the Indian Navy after nearly four decades of service dating back to 1987. He has written and spoken widely on a range of topics including maritime security and doctrine in the Indo-Pacific region. He currently has various affiliations including as distinguished fellow at the United Service Institution of India as well as the Council for Strategic and Defense Research. We will start our conversation by talking about how to think about India's role in Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific given its status as the world's most populous country and one of the centers of Indo-Pacific thinking on geopolitics and geoeconomics. Make sure you watch, listen, or read the full episode as we go through a range of other subjects including US-China competition and various other issues including the South China Sea, Myanmar and much, much more.

---

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

INDIA’S STRATEGIC STAKES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA IN INDO-PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast, Sarabjeet, and let's start, if we can, on India's defense ties with Southeast Asia. We last saw each other at an Indo-Pacific conference in Indonesia early this year, and there have been a number of defense-related touch-points at play amid leader exchanges, including the deployment of Brahmos to the Philippines and the finalization of the defense credit line when the Vietnamese prime minister visited India. As a practitioner and as someone who has worn the uniform, I'm wondering how do you see these various developments on the defense side? Because you've had an opportunity to see this in a multi-decade period, and we also have a number of developments that keep popping up in the news, including Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim who was in India. And in terms of how to characterize this or quantify it, it would also be interesting to get your sense of whatever characterization you would like to place on it, whether it's a letter grade or between a a scale of one to ten. What score would you give New Delhi with respect to India’s Act East Policy in Southeast Asia, given the fact that this is entering into its tenth year, and we're seeing so many of these developments happening?

Captain Sarabjeet Parmar: Morning, Prashanth. It's great to connect online, and thank you so much for this opportunity to come onboard your platform. And that's a volley of questions. So let's start from the top then. Alright? So let's go back to around the Look East policy time of around early 1990s. And that's the time when India was coming out of sort of being accepted by the global community. You know, the Cold war was behind us. We were looking for new relations, which have now fructified into very strong strategic partnerships, especially with the US. And we were more aware that we need to engage various countries at various levels to come of our own and to be recognized as a maritime nation as well as a growing regional power. And also, at that point in time, the Asia-Pacific part. Indo-Pacific was not on the horizon at that point in time. And so the journey started off. And so we've come a long way since then. We have engaged ASEAN nations bilaterally. There are a number of exercise we do. I'll give you certain examples as we go by. And then we've engaged ASEAN navies as an entity on its own in the last exercise we did with the ASEAN maritime forces. 

And plus when you look at the relationships that have grown and you mentioned a few, so let me take on a few right now. Vietnam, for example. You know, there were a lot of commonalities between the defense equipment Vietnam had and India had because the source was the same coming from USSR and then, of course, Russia. And we have engaged Vietnam, and we even had a mobile training team positioned in Vietnam for training of crew and technical people on the Kamov aircraft, which is a common defense equipment. Then there were talks on submarines. We both had the SSKs of Russian origin, and therefore, there was sort of talk. I don't know if it rectified at that point in time. And last year, we gave a corvette to the Vietnamese navy. We've also had Vietnamese officers coming for training to India. I've been a directing staff at our Wellington staff college, so we have offices from forty nations who come. Some nations send three officers, some send one depending upon the understanding, But the presence is there. And then, of course, with Vietnam, we do also go sometime back into the past where there has been support between Vietnam and India. And then, of course, we had certain differences in between. But as I said, after the Cold War, a lot of that ice has been broken. And today, when we look at the $300 million credit line which you mentioned, it opens up an avenue for not only more interaction between the armed forces, but also, we export opportunities for Indian defense industry, which is coming of age. And if you read the latest statistics, I mean, we have developed twenty three hundred percent from a certain baseline. 

Over time, that baseline will change and the percentages change. But it's an indication from where we have come. And fifty percent of our defense exports go to the US, which is a little surprising for many people. But we are looking at exporting defense equipment to other nations. And I think the advantage India has, and that goes especially for a lot of nations whose defense budgets are not that high, is that they do not require too much of high-tech technology. What they need is something for boosting their capacities and capabilities. And more importantly on the capability part is to maintain and sustain that equipment. And therefore, India provides that sort of equipment at not very expensive rates, but something that suits the requirement. It's something that we have understood and developed on our own coming through what the prime minister says on Atmanirbhar (self-reliant). And so therefore, Southeast Asia provides an excellent market for India's exports. And if you look at the figures that come from SIPRI, you know, Southeast Asia is perhaps one of the areas or part of the Indo-Pacific that imports a lot of defense equipment from outside. So that's an opportunity there. And therefore, that's one example with Vietnam. 

But let me give you an example of Philippines here. So now our relationship with Philippines on defense and security was perhaps not that higher magnitude as it was with other Southeast Asian or Indo-Pacific nations, but over time it has developed. And personally, I always felt that, you know, whenever we sail through the South China Sea, Philippines was sort of a void, which has changed. And that I think is a great news on that part. And, of course, I'd like to come to the sale of Brahmos missiles to the Philippines. And, of course – a little word on India's stance in South China Sea –  over time, India's remarks on South China Sea and the security situation have been somewhat guarded, and there's a reason for it. When you look at the statements deposited at the time of ratification of UNCLOS, there is alignment in India's and China's approach to certain aspects. One is innocent passage in territorial seas, on military activities in the EEZ. So India's approach has been very cautious. But last year, for the first time, we made a mention that, yes, the judgment of the arbitration between Philippines and China must be respected. So that's the first time that we sort of have taken a different view and made very clear what we are looking at that because that looks at stability. It does not necessarily encompass the alignment of the views as I've just mentioned. It it requires a modicum of enhancing stability, ensuring security and preserving peace. There's three pillars of India's approach to maritime security. It's been laid out in the Indian maritime security strategy document of 2015. I was fortunate to be a part of the team that revised it. So I do know the contents in detail. 

So I think the sale of defense equipment to Southeast Asia is in a way not complicating the situation there, but enhancing the capacity and capabilities of those nations and increasing the deterrent value of their hard power, which I think they do need to project. And just to give you an example, the three batteries of Brahmos missiles, which India exported or sold to the Philippines a couple of months back, they reached the Philippines. And I think the earlier this year it happened. And you can imagine those Brahmos missiles, given their speed and their range, actually provide a sort of a security blanket or a cover to a lot of the disputed islands that fall within the range of the Philippines. And given the nature of relations between China and Philippines – it's almost on a daily basis there seem to be collisions between their ships – and Chinese presence and the inability of Philippines to sustain its outposts is as a matter of concern, especially where sovereignty is concerned. So this is a starting point and I think the starting point has happened because of the increase in the Indian parts of the Brahmos missile. 

I do remember I think in the early 2010s, around 2012 or so – I don't remember exactly – but there was talk of Vietnamese interest in Brahmos missiles. But I think at that point in time a good part of the components were not Indian. And so therefore, there were other issues involved which are not available in the open domain, which sort of restricted us, didn't let the sale or the talk of Brahmos missiles to Vietnam go through. But today, we have many nations who are evincing an interest in Brahmos missiles. We have a lot of nations who are evincing an interest in the Tejas aircraft and our advanced light helicopter. So these are defense equipment that will increase capacity and capability. And do remember, enhancing capacity and capability is one of the seven pillars of the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI). So this adds on to the Act East policy, right, which is under the overall umbrella of the vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region). So when you take SAGAR as a vision or even a concept, you can place it in any maritime area. It could be South China Sea, it could be Indian Ocean region and when it was spoken about in 2015, that too in Mauritius by the prime minister. You know, it was an idea that you can have it in the North Atlantic. You put it anywhere. No region was mentioned. So it's part of India's outreach of SAGAR, looking at maritime security. 

And we're also looking at enhancing capacities and capabilities. So it helps not only those nations to have a higher deterrent value or, you know, a feeling of satisfaction that they will be able to protect the sovereignty, but also helps India in developing its own industrial base much more. So there is progress there. It's not only in the maritime element. For example, we do bilateral exercises with all the maritime nations of Southeast Asia. Let's start with the three nations who I always say are, you know, on the line between Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region – Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia. We do coordinated patrols with them to address nontraditional security issues in the Bay of Bengal. But the only issue with these coordinated patrols or CORPATS is that they're restricted to either side of the international maritime boundary line. I think we need to cross that line, and therefore, we need to be able to do more effective coordinated patrols, which requires, I think, much more. I think there is a little trust deficit in this, and that needs to be built upon. And that's maybe a residue of what I'd mentioned when I started pointing out that we've come from a point where India was seen as a threat in the 1990s to now it's we have a strategic relationship with almost all nations of the Indo-Pacific and especially Southeast Asia. 

So we have these bilateral exercises. A lot of these nations attend the MILAN exercises which we conduct. We also have a trilateral between Singapore and Thailand. A lot of these nations come to India for training, as I said. In Singapore, especially, we’ve got a very strong relationship. I was commanding the air squadron in 2017 when we had the Malabar 2007-02 where we had six nations and around, I think, thirty-five, thirty-six ship submarines and, of course, associated aircraft at sea. And out of the six nations, there was, of course, the Quad, if I could talk about it now. And, of course, we had Singapore and United Kingdom also. Speaks volumes. And we've come a long way, and it's only after fourteen years from 2007 we managed to have an exercise equivalent to what we did in 2007. So there is involvement. There is cooperation. There is an understanding of respect of sovereignty. 

And just to give you an example, if you look at all the statements deposited by nations after they ratified UNCLOS, you will find that there is an alignment of thought processes on innocent passage, military activities, and the EEZ, which was there in 1982 during when the UNCLOS discussions were going on. But most of these nations got independence after World War Two and most of them had been colonized. So there is there is a certain skepticism at that point in time that sovereignty is supreme. So therefore they wanted to have a sort of a buffer to ensure that the sovereignty is protected. And down the line, that has followed. I always like to give this example that despite the differences on UNCLOS between India and the US, today, we are the best of friends. We are working together. Quad is one example, approach to the Indo-Pacific, free and open is another example. Inclusivity, which India insists upon is slowly working. And so therefore, relationship with Southeast Asia will only increase. And how India tends to look at things and what China's view of India's approach is a separate issue. That is a bilateral issue. And so while we will still be maybe reserved on our comments on the situation in South China Sea, but I think this defense relationship is meant to enhance the capacity and capability of Southeast Asian nations. And I'll pause there for the time being so that we can roll on other questions.

INDIA’S ROLE IN THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF POWER

ASEAN Wonk: That's fantastic specifics there on interactions, and that's one of the benefits that you have with that extensive experience to be able to view these relationships over a longer period of time. I'm wondering to that question that you mentioned earlier about India and China, there is that bilateral component. There also is the fact that Southeast Asian countries are looking at the overall regional balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, and India matters significantly in that balance of power. There are the sort of positive manifestations that you mentioned earlier. We're seeing that with the Quad, Brahmos, we talked about some of the earlier iterations with some Southeast Asian countries as well. 

There also are the headlines and surveys that come out that serve as a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to India and its evaluation of Southeast Asian countries. So I'll mention a couple. One is the Asia Foundation survey, which we cited in the ASEAN Wonk newsletter that came out recently, and it looked at Thailand and Thai popular perception. So this is a public sort of survey, and it found that when it comes to overall engagement between major powers, only six percent of Thais thought that India was very important for the country's future, relative to China which was at fifty six percent, the US was at thirty six percent. In fairness, a lot of the other countries were hovering at around, you know, twenty percent, right, like Europe and Japan; Australia was at eleven percent. But nonetheless, these do produce periodic headlines about how do we understand India's importance? And then the other one, which is quite widely cited is the ISEAS-Yusof-Ishak Institute in Singapore when they do their annual elite survey, where I think in the last one, India ranked ninth out of eleven dialogue partners. So the mean score was just over five out of ten, and some people noted this was below even Russia, even though India's significance, if you look at it strategically, as you pointed out, is higher than Russia if you look at the overall relationship. Now I'm always very skeptical when it comes to taking one data point or two data points in a very sophisticated series of relationships that, as you pointed out, have evolved over multiple decades, not a single year or two years or three years. But I'm wondering, how do we make sense of this kind of mixed bag, and particularly from your experience as a practitioner who's looking at this over several decades: how do we understand the mix of kind of opportunities and challenges? And it goes back to the question of, if we were to grade India on its defense ties with Southeast Asia, are we talking sort of in the A range, the B range, or is it, you know, a scale of one to ten? How would you kind of assess that given the fact that we want to pay attention to these datapoints, but we also want to make sure that the headlines are kept in perspective, and we're viewing things in terms of how they were before and how they're evolved over multiple decades rather than just a few months or just one data point or two datapoints?

Captain Sarabjeet Parmar: That's a good point. In fact, the survey report of April 2024, which you mentioned on the State of Southeast Asia: it's a bit of a wakeup call, number one. But then, if you look at it, if the bilateral engagements are so strong, then this sort of is a pointer to India to say that, look, when you compare with other countries, perhaps this is where you will rank if the nation has to make a choice. And if strategic relevance – if I remember the figure, it is 5.04. We sort of placed India in the bottom three with New Zealand and Canada, and I don't know how good a feel good factor that will be, but considering that Canada is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned, and, of course, New Zealand is on the other side of Australia as we look at it from India.  

So it's a sort of a wakeup call that if you are going to look at getting into competition without getting into a sort of conflict with other nations, China ranks very high. So, you know, that's sort of a call that says: alright, if China is considered a problem nation in the South China Sea, what merits it to rank so high? So I'll just give you an example. In India's financial year of 2022-2023, China crossed the US as India's largest trading partner with a trade deficit of $80 billion dollars, where US was number one before that, and we had an advantage of the trade deficit was in our favor. So now you are faced with a nation with that sort of economic heft, and BRI was one example I'd like to say about how things are panning out. Sri Lanka is one example and there are other nations into that debt trap. But the fact is that, if China delivers — and here we're talking about deliverables — if China delivers at a certain rate which is the lowest, then any nation would obviously want to go for it. The quality issues are separate. There are a lot of nations who are now complaining that the defense equipment which they procured from China has run into problems and Pakistan is one of them. Although they are all with their allies, friends with China. So how do you beat that? So on a one to one, if relations are good and I just get back to the figure of a $300 million credit line given to Vietnam too. What all can Vietnam take which will be worth $300 million, which will enhance its defense standing, which will enhance its capacity and capability? What is it that they will want from us? That's one. And number two is how sustainable is it? Which means that our own defense industry has to sort of keep pace with the requirements which are coming. 

Numbers always matter. When you look at the defense industry, they're always looking at numbers because the more numbers, the more sales, the more profit. So it's a question that can we, say, compare ourselves with China? At today's point, I would say no, but we will in some time, hopefully, enter the top ten nations who export defense equipment. So that's one example. So economic health is important. But the other thing is that if we are looked upon as of little strategic value given the figures that the report states, then is there something wrong in our approach? You know, we stand with strategic autonomy. We don't believe in alliances. We believe in strategic relationship. But strategic relationships can do only that much to a certain point. To cross that line, you need then an alliance. There are certain—  there are lots of things that alliances will give you which strategic relationships cannot. But that's the way we look at it as researchers and analysts. So is there a modicum of changing the manner of strategic relations, imbibe aspects that alliances provide without using the word alliance?

I think that's an approach that India should look at and which means that maybe taking a stronger stance, you know, getting back to the South China Sea, perhaps being more vocal about certain situations. What the nations are facing in the South China Sea is what we face on the land border with China. There is no difference. The only thing is land and water and then of course the elements are different but the nature of facing China remains the same. And only those nations who have a common border with China will perhaps understand it. And China's entry into the Indian Ocean region is a risk that has to happen. If you believe in freedom of navigation, you cannot just block Malacca Strait and say China not permitted. Goes against the customary and accepted international laws, and that's something that at least India would not like to do because it stands by its recognition of international laws and conventions. So perhaps there's a need to relook at these policies. Perhaps we need to engage better. Deliverables are important. We have faulted at some point in time of not delivering at the right time or not delivering at all. So that is, I think, something that we have overcome in the past, but it needs to be enhanced and improved. And although these studies do indicate certain things and how to increase the grading, well, you did ask me a question on a scale of one to ten. I would say in bilateral relationships, on a one to one relationship, I think we're doing very good, eight to nine. Because it's not only defense, it's economics, there is trade, there is culture. There are so many issues. People to people relations is another issue. And if you look at the volume of Indian tourists who are now going to Vietnam; a lot of global tourists go to Vietnam now and it's opened up. It's an indication of relations to come— we need to keep the foot on the pedal, need to keep improving, innovating, opening new areas of investment, even if it means that your bilateral relations with perhaps another nation, let's say with China, takes a little hit. I mean, how lower can it fall than it is right now? So we need to relook from time to time, our Act East Policy. 

There is the cabinet committee on external affairs that in 2023 did a study of India's Neighborhood First policy. A number of recommendations are there. And if we see the state of India's neighborhood, it's just about okay. We've got Sri Lanka. We're supporting them. It acknowledges the effort put in by India, especially the credit line given after the debt issue with China. We have Bangladesh, which is in a pickle right now, and, of course, it's always good to have a friendly nation, friendly government in power, but, well, things happen. So how does India look at Bangladesh? And to give you a parallel, the example with relations with Malaysia. Relations with Malaysia around a decade over, all right, not so good. But now they've improved. And so when you have a friendly government in power, that's the time that you need to actually make progress. And if you're faced with, say, a government which is not too okay with you, then you need to build new relationships, build new bridges. I can give the example of Maldives. So we gave Maldives the area to maneuver because, of course, the election manifesto had a sort of an anti India element to it, but we give them space to maneuver. And anybody who engages with India knows that, they’re quite a good country to engage with. You know, we don't go back on many of our promises or we do deliver, we do help. We’re there. And again, as I said, it's a question of stability, security, and peace. 

On again bilateral one to one, very good. But if India's standing in comparison with other nations is solo, then you are in a competition and you need to improve your standing and that's what foreign relations is all about. So there is work for us to do and there is scope for a lot of engagements and we go through the IPOI or we go through the Quad related or even if we go through the various ASEAN platforms, you know, the East Asia Summit or any others. Trilaterals. I'm a great fan of trilaterals. Perhaps trilaterals or minilaterals is the issue. So trilaterals is another way in which perhaps India's standing can be increased. And as I said, if I put on a bilateral scale of eight to nine, then in competition standards, if you go by the SEA report of April 2024, I'd peg it around two and three, but we can push it up to seven and eight, but it will take time.

FUTURE SOUTH CHINA SEA AND MARITIME FLASHPOINT SCENARIOS

ASEAN Wonk: That's a great point that you made, especially about viewing these relationships and engagements more comprehensively. Because even if I compare my own personal experience, going to Vietnam and the number of Indians you see on flights ten years ago relative to now, I think you can feel the change, the connectivity changes that are happening in the region. So viewing kind of defense-related developments as kind of isolated from the broader relationship is probably missing a lot of that picture as well. So it's a very integrated region and a very diverse and sophisticated one. So I appreciate the point that you made there. You sort of talked a little bit about gazing into the future with respect to some of these mechanisms include including mini laterals. And you also mentioned the South China Sea. And I'm wondering if we could pursue that a little bit. If we see sort of, you know, gazing a little bit into the future, you you mentioned this as well in your comments that India has been a little bit wary in terms of its rhetoric on the South China Sea historically. But we have seen of late India being a little bit more forthright. One development that happened quite recently a few months ago was when India's foreign minister Jaishankar made some comments during the Philippines stop of his wider visit to Southeast Asia that also included Malaysia and Singapore.

But I also want to sort of get to the other components you mentioned as well, the events and developments that are happening on the water beyond just the rhetoric. So if we're looking at things strategically and looking ahead, how do we think about India's role in the South China Sea, not just in terms of what it's doing with individual countries, but as you correctly pointed out, how does this interact with its minilateral pursuit, its Neighborhood First policy? Because in the balance of power logic, we are dealing with this notion that as we're seeing linkages between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, we do have China playing a lot more of a role in the Indian Ocean. And that also means that India is playing a larger role in the South China Sea as well. India has stakes there not just on defense, but also with respect to Vietnam, if you look at energy, for example. So there are various linkages that we're looking at in terms of China playing more of a role in the Indian Ocean, India playing more of a role in the South China Sea. Can I ask how you would view sort of different scenarios with respect to India's future engagement in the South China Sea within this kind of complex web of engagements that you talked about?

Captain Sarabjeet Parmar: So when you look at the South China Sea, essentially…

CONTINUED TRANSCRIPT AND FULL VIDEO PODCAST EPISODE FOR PAYING SUBSCRIBERS