The relations concept of Indonesia-India; political, education, and defense perspective

Indonesia and India see the Indian Ocean as their strategic political, education, defense, and maritime security. Diplomatic relations between Indonesia and India have been established since 1951 and were upgraded to become a Strategic Partnership in the fields of politics, defense, and maritime security aimed at increasing Confidence Building Measures (CBM). This study aims to analyze the perspective of Indonesia's cooperation with India in the fields of politics, defense and maritime security. The development of Indonesia-India relations has included mutual influence between soft power and hard power. Soft power in Indonesian and Indian foreign policy began to shift to strategic thinking or hard power in entering the stages of the development of Indonesian and Indian Education. This development is in line with Indonesia's foreign policy, which embraces free and active politics. Free means not being bound by ideology or by a foreign country's politics or by a specific bloc of nations, or superpowers, while active means a realistic contribution to developing freedom of friendship and international cooperation by respecting the sovereignty of other countries. Commemorating 70 years of Indonesia-India relations is expected to be a momentum to strengthen strategic cooperation between the two countries is neighboring and have the same interests, covering the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and the Indo-Pacific as part of emerging strategic entities.

Domestic Dynamics on Foreign Policy: India's Withdrawal from Regional Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (RCEP) Negotiations

India’s decision to withdraw from Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has been one of the shocking event in the development of international trade. Not only obstructing many regionalist agenda between India and the whole of Asia-Pacific region, this decision is considered to be in the exact opposite of India’s attempts to direct its foreign policy towards its eastern neighbours, especially on the East and Southeast Asia, through India’s participations in several free trade agreements. This thesis will attempt to explain India’s withdrawal from RCEP negotiation by looking at domestic factors. It argues that domestic pressures are the main factors for India to withdraw from RCEP’s negotiation rounds. In this research, the author will use conceptual framework developed by Thomas Risse-Kappen to classify the influences of domestic actors on foreign policy of a country based on its political system and societal groups to understand more the influences of domestic actors to Indian foreign policy. This research also shows that apart from domestic stakeholders perceptions that the country’s membership in the RCEP doesn’t benefit their economic interests, huge pressures came especially from Hindu nationalist groups, especially from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), as the core mass support of the current government’s party under the premiership of Narendra Modi (Bharatiya Janata Party – BJP), has been one of the major domestic pressures to understand the roots on India’s withdrawal from RCEP’s negotiation rounds.

India’s Act-East Policy- A Critical Evidences

India and the USA are having an unprecedented warmness in their relationship presently. After all the hindrances and hiccups, the two largest Democracies are finally engaged optimally in economic and trade activities. Simultaneously, India is also developing fruitful relationship with East Asian countries and the present government has evolved the Indian foreign policy from “Look East “to “Act East”. However, this Act east policy need not to be seen in isolation and it has to be seen as a strategic alliance between India, USA, and east Asian countries to neutralize the strategically and economic advancement of China as the global economic superpower. This closeness is unprecedented, however it should not be subjected to the sovereignty of the Indian foreign policy and India should remain Non-aligned as it has reaped humongous benefits by being non-partisan.

Franco-Indian Maritime Cooperation: Implications for the Indo-Pacific

With the shift of the global power center from Europe to Asia, the Indo-Pacific, regarded as the “maritime underbelly” has become the center of geo-economics and geostrategic contestation. This significance of the Indo-Pacific maritime realm has drawn the attention of several regional and extra-regional powers since the past decade. In this changing geopolitical scenario, maritime security has acquired primacy in Indian foreign policy discourse. To counter the growing Chinese presence in its strategic backyard, New Delhi is increasingly looking for partners to advance the idea of ‘Free, Open, and Inclusive Indo-Pacific’ and also to establish itself as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean Region. France is also skeptical of assertive China as a threat to its regional interests. Since 1998, France is India’s all-weather strategic partner. With their shared Indo-Pacific strategy, there is a greater opportunity for them to cooperate in the Indo-Pacific region. Coupled with this bilateral opportunity, the idea of trilateral or minilateral is also gaining ground. Whatever may be the motivation, if realized such frameworks can have far-reaching ramifications. In this context, the paper seeks to analyze the implications of the Franco-Indian relationship in the Indo-Pacific region.