Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day visit to Australia last week delivered substantial outcomes, especially in the defense and security sector.
Amid growing unease about relying on the United States to resist China, Australia and India are keen to see how they can gain strength from each other, much as Japan and Australia are increasingly working together. Examples of this appeared during Modi’s visit.
Australia and India are framing new minilateral coalitions to maximize their strategic options. Where the two will land is not entirely certain because of the limitations of their material power, but they stand a better chance if they work in unison with other Asian partners, such as Indonesia and New Zealand. Unsurprisingly, these were the other two countries that Modi visited last week.
The Australia-India bilateral relationship is one of the pillars of such an effort. A Joint Declaration on Defense signed during Modi’s visit is particularly notable in this regard because despite substantial growth there is still a lot of room for improvement. Thus, the push “to build interoperability and information sharing between defense forces” and to strengthen the complexity of defense exercises should be very welcome.
