ASEAN in the time of G20

PM Narendra Modi‘s jaunt to Jakarta to attend the Asean Summit just before hosting the G20 summit speaks volumes of the importance of this engagement. The group, comprising 10 Southeast Asian countries, is key to ensuring the rules-based order for a free and open Indo-Pacific region that is geopolitically ‘hot area of influence’. The engagement with Asean is a recognition that challenges that dominate the global landscape cannot be addressed by one set of countries or another. This underscores the role that regional and plurilateral groups can play, working in partnership, to deliver on the promise of multilateralism in a manner that is fair, just and equitable for all countries.

India’s growing global engagement, particularly as a potential bridge between those in the tent and those outside, is part of this visit’s significance. As G20 president, India has spotlighted concerns raised by developing countries – not across the East-West axis or the North-South one, but as efforts towards collective action that will help address global and common challenges. This connect among the Asean is important as it provides Southeast Asian countries options for engagement and a say in shaping the future of the Indo-Pacific region. Much like Asean-Quad cooperation, which emerged through sustained engagement, Asean-India engagement (and, indeed, with other members of G20) strengthens the future of a free and open Indo-Pacific region that can stay safe from the extreme gravity of a single country or bloc (read: China).

India understands Asean’s centrality within this rubric. It also recognises that these countries will need support and cooperation to make the choices that adhere to international laws, and benefits them as well.