Australia’s new relationship with India has push-pull poles—the pull of the Indian diaspora in Australia and the push that China applies to the Indo-Pacific.
The diaspora is the personal dimension that pulls India and Australia together. China is the geopolitical push that shapes the four-year old India-Australia comprehensive strategic relationship.
Between the push-pull poles stretches the great pool of shared prosperity in trade and investment, education, science and technology, and clean energy.
This push, pull and prosperity defined much in Canberra’s India talkfest in Parliament House last week: the back-to-back meetings of the Australia-India Foreign Ministers’ Framework Dialogue and the second Raisina Down Under dialogue, a multilateral conference that aims to address geostrategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Here was first track and second track dialogue running so close as to overlap.
At the press conference after the foreign ministers’ dialogue, Australia’s Penny Wong said it was the 19th time she’d met her Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. When they came together on the Raisina stage the next day, Wong counted meeting number 20. She observed that among the world’s foreign ministers, ‘Jai is the person with whom I have met most and that says something about our friendship, it says something about my regard for him, and the wisdom and insight he always brings to our discussions.’
Personal chemistry always helps diplomacy, but interests drive. Interests have driven Australia and India to converge in this renewed relationship, far removed from their distant and often negative dealings in the 20th century and the early years of this century.
Wong said her constant contact with Jaishankar reflected the importance of what is being created: ‘We share a region and we share a future. We see India as just so important in terms of securing the region we both want and the world we both want.’
Wong said the diaspora of 1 million Australians with Indian heritage is ‘the beating heart of the relationship’. Jaishankar agreed that the diaspora is a key to the India-Australia bond, just as it is in India’s dealings with the United States: ‘The model is the manner in which our US relationship transformed. I do think it’s a change that can be corelated with the growth of the diaspora in the US.’
Jaishankar said the rapport with Australia showed ‘a relationship whose potential was waiting to be realised’. Among the four Quad members (Australia, India, Japan and the United States), he said, the bilateral dynamic that has changed the most for India is with Australia. ‘The relationship is on a roll,’ Jaishankar said, and ‘the more we do, the more the possibilities open up.’
India’s upbeat language on Australia contrasted the discussion about what China’s push is doing to the region.
The sharpest account offered to the Raisina dialogue was from Andrew Shearer, director-general of Australia’s Office of National Intelligence. Shearer said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refers to him as the ‘bad news guy’, and he delivered such news. Geostrategic competition, Shearer said, would drive a ‘generational, structural contest in the Indo-Pacific’. Rivalry over critical technologies would be the ‘centre of gravity’ or ‘commanding heights’. Looking at China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Shearer offered a ‘very strong view that we have underestimated the strategic impact of this emerging axis’.
Jaishankar’s language on China was that of a minister looking to ‘find ways to discuss how to normalise the relationship’. Since the deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops on the Himalayan border in 2020, he said, the relationship had been ‘cut back’ and ‘very profoundly affected.’
On 21 October, India announced an agreement with China on ‘disengagement and resolution’ of border issues. A few days later, China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi sealed the deal with a handshake on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia, the first formal bilateral between the two leaders in five years.
In Canberra, Jaishankar observed that the deal with China is a ‘positive development’. The next challenge, he said, was de-escalation of forces, with more negotiation by foreign ministers and national security advisors. At the Raisina dialogue, Jaishankar put the border issue into its broadest context: ‘It’s really in a way quite a challenge, because you have the two most populous countries, both of whom are rising in a broadly parallel time frame.’
With an eye on Donald Trump resuming the presidency in January, the Canberra talks emphasised what Wong called ‘the great importance in the Quad’.
Jaishankar said India had seen steady progress in its relationship with the US over the last five presidencies, including the previous Trump presidency. The second version of the Quad had been under Trump in 2017, Jaishankar said, and that should help its prospects with the new administration. India is confident, and Jaishankar said that its ‘relationship with the United States will only grow’.
In dealing with the Indo-Pacific impacts of the first Trump presidency, Australia did much in tandem with Japan. Canberra will again work with Tokyo, but this time New Delhi will add a new dimension to the Trump wrangling and whispering.
