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Defence cooperation will be a key part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming visit to Australia, including a refresh of a framework that guides security collaboration and a new roadmap for joint work on maritime security, Australian deputy prime minister Richard Marles said on Monday.
Marles, who is also defence minister, told a small group of Indian reporters after participating in the second India-Australia defence ministers’ dialogue with his counterpart Rajnath Singh that Australia perceives India as its “principal partner” in the Indian Ocean region because of a shared strategic alignment underpinned by “complete trust”.
Defence cooperation between the two countries, both members of the Quad grouping, has grown significantly in recent years, including the launch of a 2+2 dialogue of defence and foreign ministers, the signing of a logistics support agreement for reciprocal access to military bases in 2020, and holding of increasingly complex exercises.
A joint statement said both sides welcomed progress towards strengthening the Joint Declaration on Defence and Security Cooperation, concluded in 2009, and discussed finalisation of a Joint Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap. They further agreed to enhance collaborative maritime domain awareness activities, and to explore opportunities to “enhance undersea domain awareness”.
Marles noted that he and Singh had met ahead of Modi’s visit to Australia for an annual summit with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and said: “We know that defence will be a key part of the discussion that our PMs undertake, because in their previous summits, defence has been very central.”
He added: “We are really pleased that we are near the finalisation of a renewal and strengthening of the Joint Declaration on Defence and Security Cooperation, and there has been significant progress on the Joint Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap, and both of those are really important in the context of the upcoming prime ministerial summit.”
While Modi’s visit is yet to be formally announced by both sides, he is expected to travel to Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia in the early part of July, people familiar with the matter said.
The complexity of joint exercises by the two sides has increased, with the Indian Army joining Australia’s Exercise Talisman Sabre for the first time last year, the Indian frigate INS Nilgiri participating in the Australian Navy’s multinational Exercise Kakadu earlier this year, and a detachment of Indian Air Force Rafale combat jets set to join Exercise Pitch Black next month.
“We are living in a world [with] enormous challenges, where there is great uncertainty [and] in all of that, I cannot overstate how much, from an Australian point of view, we value our defence relationship with India,” Marles said. “We are doing more with India, in terms of maritime security collaboration in the Indian Ocean, than any other country.”
In the context of enhancing undersea domain awareness, Marles said the two sides are exploring cooperation in underwater activity against a backdrop of “more grey zone activity” targeting seabed infrastructure across the world. The rules-based order in the maritime domain “needs to apply on the seabed”, in addition to the surface in terms of seaborne trade and freedom of navigation.
“That heightens the need for us to be cooperating, and that requires advances in innovative technologies. We’re keen to be working with India on all of that,” Marles said.
Responding to a question from HT about Japan’s defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi’s proposal on Sunday for India to host a Quad defence ministers’ meeting, Marles said there was already considerable coordination between the defence ministers of India, Australia, Japan and the US.
“Firstly, we’ve just seen a very successful meeting of foreign ministers of the Quad here in India last week. As part of that, they announced the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Collaboration, which, in turn, was a really significant step forward in terms of the activities of the Quad,” he said.
“When it comes to defence, we do speak to each other a lot. Literally, in the last 48 hours, I have met face to face with [US defence] secretary [Pete] Hegseth, minister Koizumi, and minister Singh. So we are all talking with each other all the time, and it would be right to say that, from an Australian perspective, we look at our defence relationship with…the US, Japan and India [being] at a high water mark,” he added.
Marles also said Australia’s work within the AUKUS security partnership with the UK and the US to acquire nuclear-powered submarines is aimed at deterring “any adversary that might seek to coerce Australia” and contributing to the collective security of the Northeast Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“It is about putting in place a balanced deterrence which maintains the peace…We see ourselves working very closely with India, in respect of how we operate all of our maritime assets,” he said.
Rezaul H Laskar is the Foreign Affairs Editor at Hindustan Times. His interests include movies and music.
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