India’s Role in Asia-Pacific Security and Trade, 2001–2025:From Strategic Periphery to Engaged Regional Stakeholder

Over the quarter-century spanning 2001 to 2025, India’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific region underwent a fundamental transformation—from cautious peripheral involvement to active, institutionally anchored participation in the region’s security architecture and trade networks. Driven by the imperatives of economic liberalisation, the strategic challenge posed by China’s ascending regional influence, and the United States’ deliberate cultivation of India as a balancing partner, New Delhi progressively deepened its bilateral and multilateral commitments across maritime Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the wider Indo-Pacific. This article traces the evolution of India’s role across four interlocking domains: maritime security and freedom of navigation; defence diplomacy and multilateral institutional engagement; bilateral and regional trade integration; and the articulation of a distinctively Indian Indo-Pacific vision. Drawing on established scholarship, policy documents, and official treaty frameworks, the article argues that India’s Asia-Pacific engagement, while substantively expanded, remains constrained by strategic ambivalence, domestic institutional limitations, and the structural tension between its non-alignment tradition and the requirements of effective security partnership.