Asia's Arc of Advantage - icrier

Naval ships from India, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and the United States steam in formation in the Bay of Bengal
during Exercise Malabar, September 2007. The formation included USS Kitty Hawk, USS Nimitz, INS Viraat, JS
Yuudachi, JS Ohnami, RSS Formidable, HMAS Adelaide, INS Ranvijay, INS Brahmaputra, INS Ranjit, USS Chicago
and USS Higgins.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Stephen W. Rowe*
To be sure, security co-operation with the ASEAN, largely absent in the early years of India’s
Look East policy, has now acquired a new importance over the last decade. 16 In the early 1990s,
when India opened up to the world, the Indian Navy reached out to its maritime neighbours in
Southeast Asia. In the 1980s, the region was concerned about India’s growing naval might and
its security partnership with the Soviet Union. The multilateral ‘Milan’ exercises launched in the
early 1990s sought to dispel the fears of the region, generate transparency for India’s naval plans
and lay the foundation for long-term maritime engagement with Southeast Asian nations. 17
At the end of 2004, the Indian Navy was quick to respond, on its own, to the tsunami disaster
and later joined the navies of the US, Japan and Australia to provide relief in Southeast Asia. In
2005, the Indian Aircraft carrier, INS Viraat, arrived for the first time in the ports of Southeast
Asia – Singapore, Jakarta in Indonesia and Klang in Malaysia. In the Spring/Summer of 2007,
the Indian Navy sailed all the way up to Vladivostok and conducted a series of bilateral and
multilateral exercises with a number of nations that included major powers like the US, Japan,
16 For a former Indian official’s perspective on the security dimensions of India’s Look East policy, see, Sudhir
Devare, India and Southeast Asia: Towards Security Convergence (Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian
Studies, 2006)
17 See, Udai Bhanu Singh, “India and Southeast Asia: Enhanced Defense and Strategic Ties”, in N.S. Sisodia and
Sreeradha Datta, Eds., Changing Security Dynamics in Southeast Asia (New Delhi: Magnum, 2008), pp.329-
45; see also David Brewster,
* available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malabar_07-2_exercise.jpg
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