Abstract
As the weakest of the major powers in Asia, India is understandably the least consequential for the ordering of Southeast Asian security. Nevertheless, India’s importance for security politics of Southeast Asia is beginning to grow, if only slowly. The debate on India’s rise and its implications for Asian and global balance of power centres around the new expectations and residual scepticism about the sustainability of India’s recent impressive economic performance —of around 8 per cent annual growth rates during the first decade of the twenty-first century. If India can maintain this performance, India’s political and military weight in Southeast Asia will undoubtedly improve. The last few years have also seen the maturation of India’s “Look East” policy launched in the mid-1990s. The expectations on India’s rise have also begun to inject a new dynamism into India’s relations with the great powers of Asia —the United States, China, and Japan. As a result, India is no longer marginal to either the regional politics of Southeast Asia nor the great power system that shapes it. For the first time since the mid-1950s, when its economy turned inward and its foreign policy drew closer to the Soviet bloc, India is now becoming an important factor in the security calculus of Southeast Asia.
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