ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the systemic drivers motivating India’s foreign policy in East Asia. The Indian ‘rediscovery’ of East Asia in the post-Cold War era is a result of two sets of significant systemic factors: first, India’s own long-held ambitions to emerge as a great power and, second and most important, the structural changes that occurred in international politics with the end of the Cold War, giving India the much needed multidimensional space to re-engage East Asia. With the weakening of the structural constraints after the end of the Cold War, India focused its energies on re-engaging East Asia by pursuing a new foreign policy. India’s new foreign policy toward East Asia, that displayed the systemic implications of the end of the Cold War, involved the following five core components: ‘congage’ China; robust political engagement, maximal economic integration and interdependence, strong security linkages, and active promotion and participation in regional and multilateral initiatives.
