BIMSTEC: India’s unlikely regional security platform in the Bay of Bengal
BIMSTEC: INDIA'S UNLIKELY SECURITY PLATFORM IN THE BAY OF BENGAL
WRITTEN BY TOBIAS SCHOLZ
14 November 2023
China and India, Asia’s two largest rising powers, increasingly compete for influence in the broader Indo-Pacific region. Regional organisations have become an essential component in both countries’ strategies to leverage their own geopolitical and geoeconomic advantage. Due to China’s growing assertiveness in the region, India is particularly keen to build closer ties with its neighbours. When it comes to advancing regional influence, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) ranks high on India’s priority list. Members of the regional organisation are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The forum gained new popularity after the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) became increasingly irrelevant after India-Pakistan relations significantly declined in 2016. Against this backdrop, BIMSTEC appears to be the right platform at the right time for India, which seeks to use regional partnerships to hedge against China. And yet, BIMSTEC appears too diverse and continues to have too many internal divisions to become a geopolitical actor in the Bay of Bengal and the greater Indo-Pacific any time soon.
Originally founded in 1997 as an economic connectivity initiative linking South and Southeast Asia, BIMSTEC first surfaced as a result of India’s Look East policy of the 1990s. At that time, countries across East and Southeast Asia were showing remarkable growth rates and ASEAN’s incremental emergence as a regional actor incentivised India to think about new regional connectivity projects. While BIMSTEC was initially not designed to be a security actor, some bilateral security relations between individual members have significantly improved lately. Most significantly, Bangladesh and India settled a longstanding boundary conflict in 2014. With fewer unsolved border disagreements among members, BIMSTEC’s annual leaders’ retreats have increasingly featured inter- and transnational security issues on the agenda.
Old and new hurdles for more security cooperation
Among the different security sectors, cooperation on counter-terrorism ranks as the most prominent item on BIMSTEC’s security agenda. The platform has a policy track on Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) led by BIMSTEC’s national security chiefs and features six sub-groups with regular discussions. The process discusses counter-terrorism together with issues like terror financing and illegal migration, thereby conflating issues that should be kept separate. The pairing of migratory movements with issues like terrorism has a counter-productive effect on BIMSTEC’s goals. For example, the regional platform was unable to mediate over Myanmar’s displacement of the Rohingya people, which worsened Myanmar’s relations with Bangladesh and India. The extent of forced migration in the region makes it difficult for BIMSTEC to govern migration successfully and BIMSTEC has not yet produced a single institutional mechanism to better govern illegal migration in the region.
The recent enhancement of security dialogues and mechanisms will continue to look inward by building trust, resilience, and capacity among BIMSTEC partners.
Recently, BIMSTEC partners concurred that differentiating between separate policy goals within the security cooperation vertical is more promising for a united agenda. Containing terrorist activities has become one such goal. In 2021, the group agreed on a Convention on Cooperation in Combating International Terrorism, Transnational Organized Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking, that introduced new rules for information sharing, mutual law enforcement support, and coordination to establish shared expectations towards national border management regimes. After committing to its convention, BIMSTEC’s next and perhaps more difficult step will be institutionalising cooperation to structurally overcome the still-existing mistrust between individual member states. As the largest BIMSTEC partner and lead country of the platform’s security sector, India’s political ability to unite member states behind a progressive compromise will define the outcome of the BIMSTEC’s counter-terrorism mission to a great extent.
New convergence on cyber and human security
A promising area of future institutional integration is in cybersecurity, as it speaks to both the increasing security alignments and converging developmental needs. In July 2022, India’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Rajesh Pant hosted cybersecurity experts from all BIMSTEC countries for capacity building. This was an important step to potentially institutionalise cooperation further. Possible outcomes from the ongoing deliberations may include a BIMSTEC Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), new intelligence sharing mechanisms on Advanced Persistent Threat actors (APTs), and a counter-ransomware initiative. The focal points of India’s cybersecurity agenda within BIMSTEC illustrate that the country seeks to replicate advances recently made in the Quad, where CERT-to-CERT cooperation and the fight against ransomware have become key areas of alignment.
While BIMSTEC slowly but incrementally establishes its cybersecurity partnerships, the platform is not in a place to become a geopolitical actor, yet it could still become a valuable partner for other players in the region. As India is interested in closer cybersecurity relations with ASEAN, advocating for a joint capacity-building project that links India’s training efforts in BIMSTEC with ASEAN’s Cybersecurity Skilling Programme may be one plausible result of the current developments. This could help BIMSTEC to institutionally and procedurally learn from the Indo-Pacific’s most significant regional organisation. An alignment with ASEAN would further enhance BIMSTEC’s legitimacy and prepare the way for coordinated intelligence sharing and warning mechanisms against cyber-attacks. By considering previously introduced policy areas, BIMSTEC’s regional partnerships will significantly leverage its position.
As a central strategic region within the Indo-Pacific, BIMSTEC’s success as a regional connectivity platform will depend on its ability to secure the Bay of Bengal. Among the most prolific problems are piracy and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. However, BIMSTEC has so far not shown any indications towards becoming a regional security provider in the maritime domain. Conducting joint naval exercises could present a starting point for much greater maritime convergence and trust-building within BIMSTEC. India’s experiences within the Quad as well as Thailand’s involvement in ASEAN’s emerging naval activities could serve as examples for prospective BIMSTEC exercises.
The unique human security challenges of the Bay of Bengal further suggest that BIMSTEC has the potential to become a more important security actor without necessarily being considered a geopolitical factor in the Indo-Pacific. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami is the most damaging disaster that the region has witnessed in modern times, demonstrating the region’s high risk of experiencing natural disasters and, consequentially, the need for a regional approach to disaster risk management. While BIMSTEC disaster risk management cooperation has evolved since 2017 with the establishment of disaster risk exercises, members have yet to utilise the advantages that naval capabilities could bring to support preparedness and disaster response. Considering the growing risks emanating from climate change, BIMSTEC could learn to better protect its coastal population and gain indispensable legitimacy as a regional security provider. The role of maritime exercises, which I mentioned in the past section, could therefore be elevated to further include disaster response, relief, and rescue missions.
Defying global trends, for now
BIMSTEC continues to be driven by goals of regional connectivity, prosperity, and stability. Within this scope, platform members increasingly find growing convergence on key security issues. While India remains the most influential agenda setter and pursues policies to prevent China’s influence in its neighbourhood, BIMSTEC will not turn into a geopolitical coalition in the foreseeable future. Countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka are highly dependent on China and generally fear being on the receiving end of any adverse effects from Asia’s new great power rivalry. However, smaller BIMSTEC partners realise that India’s growing capabilities offer critical support, particularly in areas like capacity building and intelligence sharing. For example, at this year’s G20 Summit in New Delhi, India’s co-sponsorship of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) exhibited the country’s burgeoning savviness in developing geoeconomic projects that counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
BIMSTEC member states increasingly witness new security challenges as a result of great power contestation in the Indo-Pacific. The recent enhancement of security dialogues and mechanisms will continue to look inward by building trust, resilience, and capacity among BIMSTEC partners. The success of India’s aspiration to become an Ordnungsmacht in the Indo-Pacific will continue to depend on whether it can underpin its geoeconomic platforms with credible security assurances.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Tobias Scholz is a doctoral candidate at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore and a non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi). His dissertation investigates continuity and change in India’s foreign and security policy and India’s global role. His research interests include geopolitical challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, Germany-India and EU-India relations, as well as international cybersecurity governance. Image credit: Wikimedia/Twitter-MEAIndia.