"New Delhi Must Capitalize On ASEAN’s Eagerness To Engage" - By CWP Alum Manjari Chatterjee Miller

Two of the most important geopolitical developments in recent years have been the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) and the focus of Quad countries — Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — on the Indo-Pacific as a theater for strategic competition with China. Yet, a very important actor in the Indo-Pacific is often overlooked, both in terms of its cooperation with Quad countries and in terms of its role in the region.

This actor is the institutional grouping called the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), comprising ten countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Recently, the Biden-Harris administration released its National Security Strategy, which, despite acknowledging ASEAN as a central player in a free and open Indo-Pacific, devoted hardly any space to a discussion on either U.S.-ASEAN or ASEAN-Quad cooperation.

Article by Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Author. Originally published at Hindustan Times. November 8, 2022 4:01 pm (EST)

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021, shortlisted for the 2022 Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a monthly columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.

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