Guys, let's look at the case by case study of all the countries that we have listed here:
THAILAND
Someone here mentioned Thailand would be firmly in our camp. I doubt this would be of any use. They are culturally similar to us but they are a pacifist nation. China trades massive with them and they would never do anything to upset them. Also as for having a base in south Thailand, don't you guys think we are having enough of Islamic Jihad in J&K already that you want our soldiers to sweat it out there as well? Jihad menace is maximum in south Thailand.
VIETNAM
Full votes for this one. Vietnamese are the only people who can stand their ground in the region. They're the most "Dabangg" of all. We need to ramp up our military production to at least 5 times current level in coming decade and arm them with as many weapons as possible. It should be something like they want it; we supply them. Vietnamese get deadly weapons like BrahMos, we get good revenues and it builds more closer ties. Win-win for both of us.
JAPAN
Looking at what changes Japanese are coming up with (offering patrol navy aircraft and all), I think they are starting to open their eyes and come out of US lackey-ism. I have big hopes from the current more pragmatic Japanese PM. Let's hope this relationship gets stronger militarily. Who knew it would take more than half a dozen Japanese PMs (8 in total) from that US puppet Junichiro Koizumi onwards, to get our relations to this level?
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NEPAL
We seriously and I mean seriously need to get our act here together. This was the biggest botch up we ever did in our modern history. Treating Nepal like a lackey without actually making them naturally come to us as disciples. During king Birendra's rule, it was all hunky dory but after that, this stupid government axed the nation's foreign affairs foot badly by fooling around with the "
we are pure oh god democracy free thinking, US puppy boys" idiocy that took king Gyanendra to Chinese side. Chinese got the apple and ate it too. They supported Maoists, supported Gyanendra and still make tidy profit out of their intangible sector of "goodwill".
We must than our stars that Nepal is a conservative Hindu/Buddhist country for it not to have become a complete Chinese zombieland when Nepali Army Chief Gen. Chhatraman Singh Gurung became the indirect cause of that lunatic Prachanda's fall.
Our focus must be to exterminate Communism from that country and yet enable better ties with Nepal ASAP.
BURMA
With Thein Sein in the foward seat and junta's wariness of Chinese bullying that is gradually dawning on them, I think we are going on the right track although we could take this a wee bit faster. Not as fast as Vietnam but at least half the speed. Let's face it; Burmese border us, were a part of our country as late as last century and mightily share same culture. Add to the fact that they are filthy rich in natural gas which we need for our NE economy to prosper and even rest of the country.
Direct gas pipelines from Burmese zones straight into NE would mean that there would be zero terrorism or separatism here as thousands of tourism related manufacturing and hospitality industries would open up. To supply coastal Orissa and Paschimbanga, we could use BoB under-ocean pipelines to feed directly into our distribution system, reducing massive costs in having to access land transport for peninsular part of our country.
Burmese could gradually start moving towards multi-polar world with us giving them the light to rest of the world. Rather than being loaded with everything Chinese in their military, they could have fine alternatives to strategic weapons from us. A fine mix of Russian, Chinese and our weapons would make them less reliant on Chinese and make Chinese less dominating on them.
It might take quite some time to bring them totally on our side but a friendly neutral Burma would still be a great success. Burma has helped us arrest and kill many terrorist lunatics from our side of India with their own soldiers risking lives (Even if it was on Junta's orders). This is to be honored and we must reward them for this cooperation. Nothing lesser could better strengthen our growing partnership.
INDONESIA
This is tough but not impossible. Remember the SCS squabble? Indonesia also has blocks that are its but those are claimed by our big Red friend to the east. Though Indonesians have some amount of weapons trade with them, they are still not very trusting towards Chinese. We must fill that void. Having strong ties with them would only augment our presence on ASEAN. Indonesia is a rising economy along with Vietnamese in southeast and a significant participant in ASEAN Summit. They have oil wealth as well as a whole load of other resources which we will need in future. Trade can be the first step here to expand ties rather than military which we can move into later.
But we must make a serious and conscious effort to do this.
MALAYSIA
Important commercial partner, a prosperous economy and a distrust of the Reds again. Though unpredictable, but still cordial and friendly. Commercial ties is what we must focus on here. With the MKI-MKM program, we already have made inroads into military side and it is going on pretty well. Their interest in BrahMos further increases the scope of military relationships.
We seriously need to ramp up BrahMos production if we have to actually get our potential friends closer to us. Half of them are interested in this missile big time alone.
RUSSIA
They are too big and way too powerful to be in anyone's camp. We were once in theirs, remember?
. But yeah, on serious note, we need to built better communication channels to communicate any misgivings and ramp up our own production capabilities of weapons so that there are no issues involving sourness or chances of scams.
In fact, Russians are the only ones who have the longest stand on our side. In a multi-polar world, I don't think they'd like to play second fiddle. They were the "Second Pole" of the modern world and without any doubt would continue to be for quite a long time even later.
