The economic dimension of national security
The SAARC component of trade and energy in the Indian
Ocean security architecture.
Madanjeet SINGH
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South
Asia’s economy is mainly empowered by agriculture. File
photo |
The suggestions made by two former Foreign Secretaries, Shyam Saran
and Shiv Shankar Menon, that India should initiate a discussion on a
collective security arrangement between the major powers whose bulk of
energy and trade flows through the Indian Ocean, is laudable. Menon made
the suggestion while speaking on “Maritime Imperatives of Indian Foreign
Policy” at an event organized by the National Maritime Foundation. This
security architecture evidently includes the land-based economies of the
BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, as well. According to
a 2003 Goldman-Sachs report, “BRIC countries would emerge as dominant
economies by 2050; India and China would dominate world markets in
services and manufacturing, while Brazil and Russia would dominate in
the supply of raw materials.”
It was not without significance that Menon and National Security
Adviser M.K. Narayanan accompanied Manmohan Singh on his first visit
abroad as second-term Prime Minister to attend the BRIC conference at
the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg on the Europe-Asia border. In
today’s globalized world, trade and commerce cannot be isolated from
national security, which in turn can be strengthened by national as well
as inter-state land-based transport infrastructure.
Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo who visited Tibet last month
wrote in a recent article that Tibet is part of a much larger Asian
drama that is “changing from being a barrier to a region linking China
and India together.” He added: “Economically, there was much to be
gained by improving road and rail links between Tibet and South Asia.
Indeed, the Chinese have suggested that Lhasa and Kolkata be linked by
rail.” Yeo explained that “the rapid growth of China-India trade in the
past 10 years and the emergence of China as India’s biggest trading
partner marked just ‘the beginning’ of new economic linkages between the
two Asian neighbours.” Common economic interests are driving the two
countries into closer political cooperation, both bilaterally and
internationally and how they “relate to each other in the coming decades
will affect everyone,” Yeo wrote.
Ineffective murder weapon
In his speech at the National Maritime Foundation, Menon stated that
though China was conducting extensive port development activity in
Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and actively supplying
weapons to these countries, there are no Chinese bases in the Indian
Ocean despite talk of the “string of pearls” which, he said, “was a
pretty ineffective murder weapon.” In the context of the collective
security architecture in which the inevitability of an India-China
conflict is excluded, South Asia must strengthen its economic clout by
jointly standing up vis-a-vis the Chinese inroads. Pakistan has already
approved an Indian proposal to launch a South Asian train service
linking India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. A number of road links are also
expected to incrementally increase commerce and trade among the SAARC
countries. South Asia is lagging far behind China’s traditionally
entrenched trade and commerce supremacy in South-East Asia. Many Chinese
businessmen operate as local nationals, too. The economic scene is
somewhat similar to what prevailed in post-Second World War when Europe
leaders such as Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet dared to stand up to the
American economic might.
The formation in 1951 of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
by six countries, and the launching of Europe’s single currency euro in
1999, resulted in a number of cooperative bodies set up by the countries
of the European Union. In 1957 they signed the Treaty of Rome, creating
the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy
Community (Euratom). Ten years later, the European Commission, the
Council of Ministers and the European Parliament were created. The 1992
Treaty of Maastricht promoted new forms of cooperation between
member-States in the areas of defence, justice and home affairs, and in
1995 the Schengen Convention introduced free movement for individuals
and commodities. Not surprisingly, the EU family has already grown to 27
members.
A common currency
As with European economic and regional cooperation, SAARC will
benefit from the centripetal force created by a common currency (called
‘Sasia’ in my book, The Sasia Story: UNESCO, 2005). It will, like the
euro, become the anchor of economic stability and accelerate trade and
commerce between the SAARC countries. As with the European Coal and
Steel Community, it will create areas of congruence such as a ‘peace
pipeline’ that will carry natural gas from Iran and Turkmenistan across
Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian subcontinent. Hence, land-based
trade and security of SAARC is as important a component of collective
security arrangement for the Indian Ocean architecture that the two
former Foreign Secretaries have rightly proposed.
(Madanjeet Singh is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and the Founder of
the South Asia Foundation.) The Hindu
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