Southeast Asia Archives

Clean Energy Transitions in Vietnam: Opportunities and Challenges

Even as Vietnam has Southeast Asia's largest installed solar and wind power capacity, coal will continue to be the country’s primary source of energy till 2030.

Shubham Rai
March 21, 2023
IDSA Comments

Quad’s Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative Needs Time to Deliver

The Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) Initiative aims to enhance regional maritime security via technology and training support.

India–United States Maritime Collaboration

Ensuring maritime security and freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean and the wider Indo-Pacific region is key security imperative and one of the key objectives of India’s engagement with the US and other partners.

Anurag Bisen
April 08, 2022
Backgrounder

Indian Foreign Secretary’s Visit to Myanmar

Given Myanmar’s geostrategic significance and the continuing insurgency threat, disturbances in Myanmar pose a direct and serious policy challenge to India. A calculated realistic approach weighing the evolving ground situation alone will deliver the objectives of India’s foreign policy.

Udai Bhanu Singh
January 24, 2022
IDSA Comments

China’s Inconsequential Bid to Sign Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone Treaty

Showing readiness to sign the SEANWFZ treaty seems to be a low-cost, high-return proposition for Beijing. It could be a calculated symbolic gesture having no bearing on the region’s precarious security situation.

India’s Defence Diplomacy with Southeast Asia: An Impetus to Act East

India’s Act East policy is delivering results its approach towards Southeast Asia. India’s improving stature in the region along with other key geopolitical players has heralded its arrival as a major regional power in the power matrix. In fact, India is in a unique position in the region in terms of defence and military engagement and must explore this potential further. India satisfies all the attributes needed for robust interaction in the military sphere.

Preventive Diplomacy and the Role of Civil Maritime Security Cooperation in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s international shipping lanes (ISL) are essential to the economic security of the Asia-Pacific region. Maintaining good order at sea serves to protect regional trade and can be achieved through collaboration between civil maritime security agencies (coast guards). Japan and China both have significant coast guard capabilities and diplomatic influence in the region that could be harnessed to promote civil maritime security cooperation with the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

South Pacific: Gaining Prominence in Indian Foreign Policy Calculations

This backgrounder explores three issues: the strategic significance of the South Pacific for India, the advantages that India enjoys over China in the region, and the status of India’s relationship with Papua New Guinea in the light of the recent visit by President Mukherjee.

Why are Southeast Asians lured to fight for the Islamic State?

If the experience of the Afghan–trained mujahids is anything to go by, the threat posed by returnees from Syria and Iraq has the potential to be far more lethal especially since the numbers involved are much higher.

Maritime Strategies of China and Southeast Asia

Maritime security in the Indo-Pacific (or the Indian Ocean–Pacific Ocean continuum) has acquired salience following the shift of the centre of gravity from the Atlantic. It has brought the focus onto the trade, resources and energy lifelines that run across it. The emerging power equations marked by an assertive China, a rising India, a resurgent Japan, together with a rebalancing United States make for a potentially turbulent region.