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KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY SENIOR MINISTER GOH CHOK TONG AT THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF THE INSTITUTE OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES (ISAS) ON THURSDAY, 27 JANUARY 2005, AT 8.00 PM AT ORCHARD HOTEL

RECONCEPTUALIZING EAST ASIA

I am honoured to be invited to speak on the occasion of the official launch of the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS). I feel a certain proprietary interest and would like to thank Mr Gopinath Pillai, Professor Tan Tai Yong and Members of the Governing Board for bringing the glimmer of an idea to see the light of day so quickly.

Of course ISAS is a new institution with a long road yet to travel. But this is an important first step in plugging a gap in Singapore's network of research institutions and knowledge of South Asia.

Why is it important for us to understand South Asia? The answer is obvious. India is on the move, playing an ever more important role in the global economy and deepening its interactions with ASEAN and Singapore. Pakistan is a key player in the global fight against terrorism and is also taking tentative steps to open up its economy. I do not want to dwell on the obvious. The facts are well known. What I would like to do today is to sketch some of the broader implications of the changes that are underway in India and South Asia to underline the compelling reasons for understanding South Asia better.

India on the Move

But first let me declare my interest. I confess to a soft spot for India. I made my first visit as Prime Minister to India in 1994 when I was invited by the late Prime Minister Narasimha Rao as Chief Guest of India’s Republic Day. It was three years after he had launched the economic reforms that set India on its present trajectory. The dominant international mood was then still one of scepticism. Many doubted whether India could really shake off decades of central planning, open itself up and compete in the world economy.

But I could feel the stirrings in many political and economic minds. I believed India had to shed its protectionist shield if it wanted sustainable, robust growth. I returned to Singapore determined to spark off a mild case of 'India fever'. Even then, I knew that it was difficult for a large, democratic country like India to change direction. Indeed, India’s economic reforms saw many twists and turns since 1991. But I never lost my faith. I continued to visit India frequently and encouraged Singaporeans to invest in India.

There will be many more two-steps forward and one-step backward to come. But I strongly believe India will make it. India cannot turn back. Moving forward is a political and strategic imperative that no Indian government can ignore. Today, not just Singapore but the entire world is infected with 'India fever'. This has deep strategic consequences.

Strategic Shifts and Consequences

For the last three decades or so, the instinctive strategic orientation of Southeast Asia was eastwards. This was natural. The most threatening and promising developments were in one way or another related to China: the Sino-Soviet conflict, President Richard Nixon's rapprochement with China and Deng Xiaoping's opening of China and its mordernisation. From the early 1970s, it was the grand strategic triangle of US‑China‑Soviet Union relations that shaped the international order. After the Cold War ended, it was US‑China‑Japan relations that underpinned regional stability.

Although never entirely absent, India was peripheral to this worldview. In 1962, India and China fought a short and bloody war, instilling a wariness that still lingers. In 1971, India signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. The US and China supported Pakistan. India took a different view of Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from the US, China and ASEAN.

Still, viewed from a global perspective, all these were secondary in the grand strategy of the Cold War. The US, India and China interacted and competed; but they were never each other's core preoccupations.

Those days are past. A 2000 RAND study predicted that China and India will be the two largest Asian economies in Purchasing Power Parity terms in about ten years’ time. Goldman Sachs predicted that the Chinese economy could overtake the US to become the world's largest economy by 2041 and that India could overtake Japan to become the third largest economy in the world in 30 years. Of course, this refers only to the size of the economies and not their per capita income.

As China and India grow, they will inevitably loom larger on each other's radar screens. Economic growth will give Beijing and New Delhi the resources to pursue wider strategic interests across the Asian continent. The US will remain dominant well into the 21st Century. American power provides an over‑arching strategic unity in which the interactions of Indian, Chinese and American interests will be an increasingly important factor.

Small countries like Singapore cannot influence grand strategic trends. All the more important therefore for us to understand them clearly and without sentimentality. This enables us to hitch a ride or get out of harm's way. As is well-known, even when elephants make love, the grass beneath them gets trampled.

India's rise compels us to look at our environment in new ways. It will be increasingly less tenable to regard South Asia and East Asia as distinct strategic theatres interacting only at the margins. Of course, US‑China‑Japan relations will still be important. But a new grand strategic triangle of US‑China‑India relations will be superimposed upon it, creating an environment of greater complexity.

Complexity does not mean conflict. From the 1950s to the 1970s, every possible alignment of the US, India and China seemed conceivable at one time or another: the US and India against China in the late 1950s and early 1960s; China and the US against India in the early 1970s and even China and India against the US in the early and mid‑1950s. But none of these alignments ever crystallised, underscoring how the ever-shifting common and divergent US‑India‑China interests were not and cannot be easily forced into any simplistic pattern.

India, China and the US understand the benefits of cooperation with each other. They all want good relations with each other. All are taking steps to improve ties with each other. At the same time, it would be naive to deny the ambivalence with which they still regard each other.

Pakistan‑India relations remain a complicating factor, made more dangerous by its nuclear dimension. Kashmir is the western analogue of Taiwan in the east: an issue that despite the best hopes and intentions of the capitals involved could well destabilise great power relations. Debate over the appropriate response to the threat of international terrorism is a thread that runs across South and East Asia, simultaneously complicating and aligning great power relationships.

I do not know how these complex interactions will pan out. But I do know that the very uncertainty makes it imperative that we understand the dynamics better.

Southeast Asia’s Place

History reminds us that Southeast Asia cannot avoid being involved. For almost half a century, the Straits Settlements - Penang, Malacca and Singapore - were ruled by the British from Calcutta. The British interest in Southeast Asia was to secure the maritime route between India and China. British expansion in Southeast Asia was shaped by their interests in India, opportunities in China and the great power rivalries of the day.

The future will not be a mere repetition of the past. But the colonial history of the region reminds us how easily Southeast Asia can become the object of power relations rather than an independent actor. The strategic centre of gravity has always been more in the west and the east than in Southeast Asia per se.

The reality is that Southeast Asia is less a naturally-defined region than a geopolitical construct. It was defined first by the Second World War - during which the Headquarters of Southeast Asia Command was in Colombo, Sri Lanka - and then by the Cold War. How will Southeast Asia be defined after the end of the Cold War?

The growth of India and China raises profound questions. Will ASEAN coalesce and integrate to meet the competitive challenge? Will ASEAN be sucked into the orbit of one giant or another? Or will the region be torn apart by powerful forces pulling in different directions? Elements of each scenario can be discerned in current regional dynamics.

We are not powerless to shape our own future, provided among other things, we reconceptualise the region we live in and our place in it. Geography is not just physical locations and features. It goes beyond this to reflect deep political trends and economic driving forces. East Asia once meant only Northeast Asia: China, Japan, the Koreas and Mongolia. In the 1980s, East Asia began to encompass Southeast Asia.

How do we now fold a growing South Asia and East Asia into one equation? Already new experiments in regional organisations and processes such as the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), the Indian Ocean Rim Initiative (IORI), the Bay of Bengal Community (BOBCOM), and the Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), are challenging traditional notions of geography.

As a stand‑alone institute, what ISAS can achieve is limited. ISAS must therefore forge links with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and the East Asian Institute (EAI) in Singapore and other research institutions, think‑tanks and individual experts outside Singapore. ISAS should aim to catalyse a broader dialogue, the object of which is to reach a deeper understanding of the ways in which the situation in one part of Asia increasingly affects developments in other parts of Asia.

This is not just an academic question. Reconceptualising East Asia holistically is of strategic importance. One of the chief 21st Century global trends is regionalism. The Americas are coalescing with the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as its core. An expanding Europe is engaged in an unprecedented experiment of pooling sovereignties. East Asia too is responding in a looser, less institutionalised, but nonetheless compelling manner as patterns of trade, investment, production decisions and a web of FTAs slowly but inevitably bring the region together.

As this process evolves, fundamental questions are being thrown up. What will be the future of the ASEAN+3 process? How will an East Asia Summit be organised? Will it include India? And perhaps Australia and New Zealand? How will the US and APEC dovetail into the overall jigsaw of an East Asian community? How will the Americas and Europe relate to East Asia?

East Asian Regionalism

The basic macro‑strategic issue that ASEAN must squarely confront is the nature of East Asian regionalism. Will East Asian regionalism be inward‑looking, narrowly premised on traditional geographical notions? Or will East Asian regionalism be forward‑looking, adapting to and co-opting new developments, not the least of which is India's rise?

I believe it would be short-sighted and self-defeating for ASEAN to choose a direction that cuts itself off from a dynamic India. India is now a vital link in global production chains. Its economic and political interactions with ASEAN are multiplying and deepening. India is a full Dialogue Partner of ASEAN. India and Pakistan are members of the ASEAN Regional Forum. India has proposed an FTA with ASEAN. In time, India's military and strategic links with Southeast Asian countries must grow further.

I believe that ASEAN's future is best secured by a policy of encouraging deeper engagement of all major powers. Only such engagement will maximise the space for the countries of Southeast Asia to develop and prosper. Only then can we be masters of our own destiny.

India and its Neighbours

An understanding of the broad trends must naturally be premised on knowledge of particular countries. I have spoken mainly about India whose strategic weight - present and potential - is a reality that cannot be ignored. Of course, South Asia is more than just India. Still, if South Asia cannot be understood apart from India, neither can India be fully comprehended apart from its neighbours. Last year, I visited several South Asian countries including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to gain a better first-hand understanding of developments.

Pakistan merits special attention. So much of South Asia's 20^th Century history has been bound up in the complicated and all too often bloody relationship between India and Pakistan. It was and remains the focus of US‑China‑India interactions in South Asia. I was impressed by President Pervez Musharraf's determination to meet the interrelated challenges of fighting the radicals, reforming his economy and reaching a new modus vivendi with India. It is an immense task. Post 9/11, Pakistan's future will be of great significance for Southeast Asia. I wish him well. India‑Pakistan relations are the key to South Asia's future. For better or for worse, their destinies are intertwined.

The very word 'India' comes from the river Indus which flows in Pakistan. This is easily explained because Pakistan was part of India until partitioned by the British in 1947. Pakistan was created as a homeland for India's Muslims. Yet there are at least as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan. These paradoxes may not always be comfortable, but they are part of the variegated reality that is South Asia. Similar deep paradoxes bind India with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and its other neighbours.

The Idea of India

The great Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore described India as a "state of mind". Nehru called India "a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision". And yet since 1947 India is indisputably a precisely delineated territory. I think what Nehru and Tagore meant was that India is plastic: constantly in the process of being made and remade in response to the exigencies and imperatives of the times.

There is a cautionary point here. South Asia's historical and cultural links with Singapore and Southeast Asia are real and should not be denied. But neither should we rely too much on history and culture as we seek to comprehend the present. It will be presumptuous to think that we are entitled to a special understanding of India at a time when many thoughtful Indians are themselves debating what it means to be Indian in the 21st Century and are trying to relate their past to their future.

Our historical and cultural links did not prevent ASEAN and India from becoming politically estranged during the Cold War. Let us therefore take nothing for granted. As India, Singapore and other countries in South Asia move forward in a journey of mutual exploration, let us approach each other with open minds, humility and mutual respect. This in essence is what the ISAS is about.

Thank you.

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