India 's "Eastward Policy" In The New Century

In the early1990s, with the Soviet Union falling apart, and India’s domestic economic crisisbreaking out, India’s domestic and foreign policies required significant adjustments. InSeptember1991, India’s government proposed the Look East Policy in foreign policy decisions,of which the “East” refers to the countries in the east of India. The main content of the policy isthat India will develop relations with the countries of Southeast Asia. On this basis, India willfurther its development in the Asia-Pacific region. Since entering the new century, Indiaaccelerated the pace of the Look East Policy and presented many new characteristics in the fieldof geographical scope and cooperation. Based on the improvement of comprehensive nationalstrength and the changes of international situation in the Asia-Pacific region, India’s Look EastPolicy entered a new stage. It’s purpose lies in developing relationship political, economic, andmilitary cooperation with the countries in the Asia-Pacific region and realizing the India’ssuperpower dreams. At present, there is no special study about the new stage of India’s LookEast Policy, and this article discusses this topic. This article analyzes the new stage of India’sLook East Policy from the following four aspects.The first part mainly introduces that Look East Policy has entered a new stage. The articlesummarizes how the Look East policy began and how it developed in1980s and highlights thenew features of the Look East Policy in this new stage. And then, this article analyzes the reasonswhy India’s Look East Policy entered the new stage. The reasons are summarized in four aspects:firstly, India’s state power has been improved, and India wanted to extend the interests of thestate. India had gotten great benefit from the first phase of Look East Policy, which boostedIndia’s domestic economy. The internal reason for India to continue this policy based on itsenhanced comprehensive national strength and the purpose of expanding economic and securityinterests. Secondly, the superpower dreams motivated India. India’s Look East Policy is inaccordance with the requirements of successive governments to implement Power Strategies,which also embodies the pursuit of the superpower dreams. Thirdly, India wanted tocounterbalance China’s influence. The "China threat theory" spreads in India. In the face ofChina’s rapid development in recent years, India guarded against and counterbalanced China.Fourthly, since the new century, Western Pacific region’s strategic position is rising in the newcentury, which attracted India to continue to carry out the Look East Policy. The second part describes the content of India’s Look East Policy. The new stage of LookEast Policy is the further development of the first stage. First of all, to strengthen cooperationwith ASEAN is the basis of Look East Policy. Entering the new century, India will not onlycontinue to develop economic cooperations with ASEAN countries, but also to focus on theoverall development of the political and military cooperations with ASEAN countries. Secondly,India began its career in East Asia and the South Pacific region, with developing cooperationrelations with other Asia-Pacific countries. Developing relations with United States is the mostimportant part of Look East Policy. India will promote the degrees of participation in theAsia-Pacific region through the United States. Russia is also an important partner of India. Inaddition, India continues to build new strategic partnerships in North-East Asia, such as Indiaand Japan, and Korea. In the South Pacific region, the bilateral relations between India andAustralia, and New Zealand are gradually heating up.In the third part, I analyzed the influence of India’s Look East Policy in the early newcentury. For India itself, Look East Policy not only promoted the development of domesticaffairs, but also successfully expanded the influence of India in the world. For ASEAN, the LookEast Policy has brought a lot of economic and security interests, which assists ASEAN to carryout the strategy of balancing great powers. From a geopolitical or economic perspective, theLook East Policy has a certain influence on China. The third part analyzes the influence of LookEast Policy. For countries like the United States and Japan, the Look East Policy also broughtthem impact to different degree.The fourth part assesses India’s Look East Policy. The policy has a broad developmentspace for further development, because United States returning to the Asia-Pacific strategyprovides an opportunity for India. In addition, there are still great space for India andAsia-Pacific countries to strengthen economic and security cooperation. However, India stillfaces many restrictive factors in the course of implementation. The factors mainly includes thatnational strength is not powerful enough, and ASEAN holds skeptical attitudes to India, andpowers inAsia Pacific keep dynamic balance.Finally, the article makes a brief prospect for the Look East Policy. Under complicatedinternational circumstances, with the development of economic liberalization and politicaldemocratization in India, India will continue to move forward with Look East Policy, but still there’s a long way to go!...