India’s participation in a collective security arrangement with the U.S and its allies, especially Japan and Australia, is no longer an inconceivable proposition, a former Indian naval officer says.
Prakash Gopal, who is now a lecturer at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, said in a recent university report that there is “a greater appetite in New Delhi to engage with questions that would have been off-limits earlier.”
These include discussions over India’s diplomatic and military options in the event of a Taiwan conflict, and permitting Quad partners access to air and naval facilities at Port Blair on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which sits strategically at the mouth of the Malacca Strait.
The report, published by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, is titled “India and collective defense in the Indo-Pacific: Possibilities, prospects and challenges.”
This renewed interest is because Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vision for China “is incompatible with India’s perception of the region, and of its position in it,” he told Nikkei Asia, noting that the Chinese leader’s efforts to alter the regional strategic balance in Beijing’s favor is a direct threat to New Delhi’s growing economic interests and ambitions to be a regional power.
Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed in a clash along the Himalayan border region in 2020. Since the skirmish, thousands of soldiers have been deployed on both sides of the de facto border, the Line of Actual Control.
“India’s hopes for rapprochement with China along the land border have progressively diminished, and with Xi’s continued leadership, India seems to be digging in for a prolonged period of contestation with China,” Gopal said.
India “will seek to constrain Chinese ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, and towards that end, be willing to work with the United States, Japan and Australia to preserve the existing regional order,” he added.
The four-way grouping known as the Quad has so far stuck to non-security cooperation, such as vaccine distribution. Last month, the Quad began coordinating on the ground to collectively deliver assistance to victims of the Papua New Guinea landslide.
India has historically shunned collective defense arrangements and Gopal acknowledges in the report that it is unlikely New Delhi will ever seek to be part of a formal defense arrangement.
But, he added, “India’s willingness and ability to contribute to new forms of collective deterrence, if not defense, appears to be growing.”
On Taiwan, Gopal noted in the report that in August 2023, three former chiefs of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force held closed-door discussions with Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry.
“Interestingly, they were accompanied by former Indian military officers with experience in scenario simulation and war-gaming for Indian professional military education establishments,” he said in the report.
As the only Quad country to share a land border with China, India will be cautious to take part in a Taiwan-related conflict, which may provoke Chinese retribution across the Himalayan border, and potentially result in a considerable loss of Indian territory.
At the same time, the recent border clashes have taught India’s political and military leadership that appeasement does not work against China, Gopal argued.
The key to future security cooperation with Quad partners comes down to flexible thinking, he suggested. Instead of a binary “in or out” framework of traditional military alliances, there could be a “spectrum of options” that India might consider adopting in response to different regional contingencies, Gopal said.
On Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell welcomed India’s recent engagement in the Quad.
“In many respects they are the leading nation in the Quad, frankly,” he said at a seminar at the Stimson Center in Washington. After being initially reluctant, “they are now fully embracing the potential” of the Quad, he said in the report.
Campbell will accompany U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan to India next week to discuss areas of coordination.
Meanwhile, at the end of May, the new Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong presented his credentials after an 18-month vacancy.
There is also speculation that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could meet Xi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kazakhstan in July.
But Campbell said that China and India have structural issues that will be difficult to resolve.
“One of the things we’ve seen under Xi Jinping, [is that] anything that bridges or touches territorial matters, I think it’s very hard for the Chinese to show any flexibility or any desire to find common ground.”
