Scott, David. "India's 'Extended Neighborhood' Concept: Power Project for a Rising Power". India Review, Vol.8, No.2 (2009): 107-143.

Scott, David. "India's 'Extended Neighborhood' Concept: Power Project for a Rising Power". India Review, Vol.8, No.2 (2009): 107-143.

• Indian governments since the late 1990s have used the term 'extended neighborhood' to describe the idea that India should reach out and establish relationships with countries outside of South Asia, its 'immediate neighborhood'. The extended neighborhood roughly stretches from the Suez Canal to the South China Sea (107-108).
• The extended neighborhood policy is concentrated on enhancing ties in three sectors: energy, trade, and security and the military (113).
• The Congress government in power since 2004 argues that an expansion into the extended neighborhood is necessary because South Asia is too small a geopolitical space for India's expanding economy. The main push into the extended neighborhood has been attempting to increase trade and economic ties (108-110).
• One of the motivations behind expansion into the extended neighborhood has been India's energy shortage and need for new sources of oil. Connections with oil-producing countries are expected to secure Indian access to oil and natural gas supplies, especially in light of increased Chinese demand (111).
• Since Jaswant Singh was appointed Minister of External Affairs in 2000, India has announced that it sees its security interests as extended beyond South Asia into the extended neighborhood. India has tried to establish defense ties with these countries, which it sees as necessary to an imagined future role where it provides security in these regions (111-113).
• The Indian Navy is seen as playing a prominent role in this expanded security role, and has greatly increased the number of port visits in foreign countries since the turn of the 21st Century (113).
• India's rivalries with Pakistan and China have played out in the extended neighborhood policy and India has sought to use new relations in these countries to outmaneuver and compete with China and Pakistan (113).
• India sees strong Chinese relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal as strategic encirclement of India, and sees the extended neighborhood policy as a way to oppose Chinese influence in Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia and thus prevent being outmaneuvered by China (113-114).
• The southern reaches of India's extended neighborhood are the Indian Ocean, defined as the area bounded by the Straits of Malacca, the Persian Gulf, and the Equator. India sees itself as the primary security provider in this maritime region and the regional hegemon (114).
• India has organized joint naval exercises with outside powers like France, the USA, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa in the Indian Ocean, as well as with ASEAN nations. China and Pakistan were excluded from all these exercises. India has used these exercises to claim that it is the hegemonic military force in the Indian Ocean and the lynchpin of a multinational security environment (115).
• India has developed its blue water naval and air power capabilities to keep up with its claims to maintain security across the entire Indian Ocean. This has required the purchase of new long-distance aircraft and the acquisition of ocean-faring naval vessels (115-116).
• Although it previously defined the southern border of its extended neighborhood as the Equator, in the mid-2000s, India expanded its patrols to include Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, and potentially all the way down to the Antarctic (116-118).
• The Indian naval presence in East Africa is particularly strong because of strong commercial ties between those countries and India. India sees its naval presence there, and at chokepoints elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, as important to countering piracy and keeping commercially important sea lanes open (118-119).
• Pakistan, Australia and Indonesia have essentially recognized Indian naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean and stopped attempting to challenge the Indian Navy. The US has grown to recognize the Indian Navy as its primary partner in the region and cooperates with it (118).
• The eastern part of India's extended neighborhood is made up of the ASEAN countries. Engagement with this region started in the early 1990s with the 'Look East' policy and economic ties that have since expanded into energy agreements and military cooperation (119).
• The initial Look East policy was driven by economic incentives, which intensified as India began to do more trade with ASEAN than with other South Asian countries (119-120). India has paid particular attention to Brunei -- because of that country's oil supplies -- Vietnam, and Singapore (120-121).
• The trade turnover between India and the Southeast Asian countries is still dwarfed by trade between ASEAN and China, which is over five times total trade with India (120).
• India is involved in developing hydrocarbon resources in Myanmar, which has prompted the government to withhold criticism of the military government's human rights abuses, and Vietnam to secure reliable oil and natural gas for India (120-121).
• Indian investment in oil and gas fields in Vietnam have run into problems with China due to conflicting Chinese and Vietnamese claims in the South China Sea. India views this conflict as a threat to Indian energy security and blames China for the disruption (121).
• India has now expanded the Look East program to include a more active presence in Southeast Asia, particularly marked by a regular Indian naval presence. During the 21st Century, India has organized multinational naval exercises in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea (121-123). 
• India has conducted joint naval exercises with Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan. China has been purposefully excluded from these exercises to demonstrate that India had a presence in the region and did not need Chinese permission to operate there (124).
• Singapore and India have been conducting joint naval exercises since 1994, upgrading this relationship to a defense partnership in 2003 (123).
• Indonesia used to view India as a naval rival, but mutual concerns over Chinese naval activities in contested areas of the South China Sea have prompted Indonesia to begin naval cooperation with India (123).
• Vietnam agreed to military cooperation with India in 2000 and has since received naval support from India. Vietnam is the most valued of India's allies in the region and India believes that its relationship with Vietnam can help it balance against China (123).
• In very controversial moves, India sent a naval squadron into the South China Sea in 2000 and has continued to send detachments almost ever years and keep them in the area for months at a time. This is an attempt to claim the South China Sea as part of India's extended neighborhood (123-124).
• Under the Congress government in power since 2004, India has expanded the scope of its Look East policy to include Australia, New Zealand, and the East Asian countries. Most important to this have been trade connections in southern China, natural gas investments in the Russian Far East, and a strategic relationship with Japan, Russia, and the USA, all of which want to contain China (124-126).
• India seeks to continue expanding the borders of its extended neighborhood, now to the Pacific Ocean. Since the mid-2000s, India has been involved in the affairs of the Pacific Island states and has sent naval detachments to New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, and Fiji (126).
• India has sought to use its position as the birthplace of Buddhism as a form of soft power in Southeast Asia, particularly trying to demonstrate cultural links with the Southeast Asian countries in response to Chinese characterizations of India as an outsider in the region (137).
• The northern part of India's extended neighborhood is Central Asia, which had historical cultural connections to India that the current government seeks to stress and capitalize on. The region is important to India for economic and strategic reasons (126-127).
• Central Asia is a moderate consumer of Indian goods, but the trade connection is not especially important to either India or the Central Asian states (127).
• India has fervently denied that its presence in Central Asia is designed to challenge the Chinese or Pakistani presence in the region (127), but one of its goals in Central Asia is to encircle Pakistan and challenge Chinese influence in the region (128).
• China views the India presence in Central Asia as a geopolitical challenge to Chinese supremacy in the region, especially for control of markets and petrochemical resources. Thus far, China has won the contest, with its trade turnover with Central Asia far exceeding that of India. Competition for the purchase of major oil and natural gas fields have continued, however, with the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Company sometimes outbidding Chinese firms (128-129).
• India has the strongest connection with Tajikistan, which shares Indian concerns with Islamic extremism and the Taliban presence in Afghanistan. After initiating cooperation in the late 1990s, India used the Farxor airbase in Tajikistan to supply the Northern Alliance and has maintained the airbase ever since alongside other military cooperation (129).
• Uzbekistani relations with India also center around mutual concern about Islamic extremism. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has visited Uzbekistan and the countries have pursued limited economic and military cooperation (129-130).
• Indian relations with Turkmenistan are focused on exploiting that country's oil and natural gas supplies. India envisions Turkmenistan as the main part of a larger network of Asian countries supplying India will secure energy sources. India has been competing with China for access to oil and natural gas in this regard (130).
• The western edge of India's extended neighborhood is Iran and the Gulf states. This partnership is a way for India is encircle Pakistan, secure access to oil and natural gas supplies, and ultimately connect with more of the Middle East (130-132).
• India opened relations with Iran in the 1990s and sought to establish a security relationship to contain Pakistan, something Iran was glad to help with. It has established a naval presence at Chahbahar to help accomplish this (131).
• India has repeatedly tried to secure major shares in Iranian oil and gas fields, but has been consistently outbid by other countries, like China and Belarus. Thus far, it has not been able to secure the amount of Iranian oil and natural gas that it has wanted (131).
• India had essentially no presence in West Asia prior to 2004, when Manmohan Singh announced that the Middle East was part of India's extended neighborhood and inaugurated the 'Look West' policy in 2005 (131-132).
• The focus of Indian foreign policy in the region has primarily been the Persian Gulf, which is home to millions of Indian immigrants, is an important trade partner, has massive energy resources, and is linked to terrorism and Islamic extremism (132).
• India initiated economic cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2006 and has come into possession of oil fields in Qatar and Iraq. Its oil imports from the Gulf have steadily risen, particularly from Iraq, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia (132-133).
• Since 1998, India has regularly sent major naval detachments to the Persian Gulf. In the mid-2000s this has been accompanied by increased military cooperation with the Gulf states (133-134).
• Beginning in the early 2000s, the reach of India's extended neighborhood has expanded to include Djibouti, and then later reaching the Red Sea and the Mediterranean (134-135)
• In response to a growing Chinese presence in the area, India now seeks to maintain a presence near the strategic straits of the Bab al-Mandab and has conducted numerous naval exercises in the area. India joined the anti-piracy mission off of Somalia in 2008, participation had been postponed because of doubts about the Indian Navy's capabilities (134-135).
• India acquired stakes in a number of oil fields in Sudan and Egypt, and is building a pipeline from Khartoum to Port Sudan. These acquisitions have been accompanied by an Indian naval presence in the Red Sea (135).
• India has occasionally dispatched naval units to the eastern Mediterranean after passing through the Suez Canal. India responded to conflict in Lebanon in 2006 by sending a naval squadron to the Levantine coast to evacuate Indian nationals (135).
• The idea of the extended neighborhood has been shared by both the BJP and Congress, with both parties arguing that India should expand its influence beyond South Asia to take its 'rightful place' in world politics (136).
• The future of Indian involvement in its expanded neighborhood are unclear, as its messaging in its expanded neighborhood is similar to its behavior in South Asia, where it is usually viewed by its neighbors as a domineering bully. Indian capacity to actually project power at this level is also unclear (136).
• Competition will likely be most intense in the Indian Ocean, in which India seeks to become the maritime hegemon. Although it cannot displace the US presence there, the US seems increasingly willing to let India take responsibility in the Indian Ocean as it repositions towards the Pacific. China and India are both trying the reduce the other's power in the Indian Ocean, particularly due to Chinese influence in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka (136-137).
• Indian involvement in its extended neighborhood will likely continue to be concentrated in economic development and trade and driven by India's energy needs. Indian foreign policy will likely be directed primarily by these energy needs and geopolitical competition with China (138).
• India has tried to use its status as the world's largest democracy as a form of soft power, particularly seeking to act as a model for other states in its extended neighborhood. This identity has also been set up in opposition to China, a non-democracy that does not care whether nations it works with are democratic (137-138).
• The adoption of the extended neighborhood concept was driven by the geopolitical constraint of India within South Asia, primarily because of being outmaneuvered by China. Failing to get states in South Asia to respect it as a great power, India is trying to establish that hegemonic control elsewhere. This initiative has been most successful in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, but it is unclear if India can actually sustain a sphere of influence in these areas (138-139).