India’s relations with Australia have been governed by the Western pattern of relations vis-à-vis India. Australia is regarded as Western ‘outpost’ in Asia-Pacific and foreign policy of Australia has generally followed the pattern of the United States while forging its relations with countries of Asia-Pacific region. During the Cold War era, India’s close relations with Soviet Union had alienated the Western countries, including Australia. However, the tectonic changes that ensued in the aftermath of the disintegration of former Soviet Union and inaugurated an era of post-Cold War, many developing countries, including India, embarked on the path of economic reforms with an avowed objective of integrating their national economies with global economy.
The decade of the 1990s witnessed India’s improved relations with the United States, European Union, France, and Germany etc. This period also afforded ample opportunities for Australia as well to explore new vistas of economic cooperation with India. However, the momentum of friendly political and economic relations which had been gathered during the decade of the 1990s got virtually frozen in the wake of the Indian nuclear tests in May 1998.
The first sign of relaxation of tensions between the two countries came with the visit of the then Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, Tim Fischer, in February 1999. This was followed by the visit of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, in March 2000, the same month as US President Clinton’s widely publicized visit to India. During his visit, Downer announced the reinstatement of defence relations and the resumption of Australia’s aid program. Full normalization of relations was symbolized by the visit of Prime Minister Howard in July 2000.
An important milestone in the development of bilateral relations was achieved by the visit of the Indian Minister for External Affairs (and Defence) Jaswant Singh in June this year. It was a first bilateral visit not in conjunction with any other event. During his visit it was agreed that the two countries would initiate a strategic dialogue at a senior official level. The two countries expressed a willingness to work towards stability in the region.
During the same period, Indo-US relations had developed at an even faster pace. Even before President Clinton’s visit, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Karl Inderfurth had made it clear that US–India relations would not be hostage to US relations with any other country (i.e. Pakistan and China) and that India was viewed as a ‘key player in global affairs in the 21st century, and as a vital contributor to overall Asian regional peace and stability’.1
Subsequently, during his visit to India, President Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee resolved to ‘create a closer and qualitatively new relationship’ between the two countries and agreed to hold regular India–US ‘summit meetings, an annual foreign policy dialogue, continue the ongoing security dialogue and that the joint working group on counterterrorism would continue to meet regularly’.2
Under the new Bush administration Indo-US relations have developed at a pace that few could have foreseen. In his confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the then Secretary of State designate Colin Powell stated ‘…India has the potential to help keep the peace in the vast Indian Ocean area and its periphery. We need to work harder and more consistently to help them in this endeavor …’3
During a visit to Washington by the Indian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence, Jaswant Singh in April, his meeting with the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice was ‘interrupted’ by President Bush who then proceeded to have a 40 minute ostensibly unscheduled private dialogue with him.4 Apart from US allies, India was perhaps one of the very few countries to be informed of President Bush’s forthcoming speech on his proposals for a National Missile Defence Program (NMD) on 1 May. India’s swift, albeit carefully ambiguous response to the proposals was followed by a visit of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage soon after.5
The appointment of Dr Robert Blackwill, ‘a confidante of the President and his National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice’, 6 as US ambassador to India was an indicator of the importance that the Bush administration has placed on its relations with India. In a speech to the Confederation of Indian Industry, Blackwill emphasized this aspect of US foreign policy, saying ‘President Bush has a global approach to US–India relations, consistent with the rise of India as a world power…because no nation … can promote its values and advance its interests without the help of allies and friends.”7 The subsequent period saw several high-ranking US officials visiting India, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Treasury Secretary Ken Dam, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield.8
Australian Strategic Perspectives
Traditionally, Australia’s foreign policy focus has been on East Asia, a region stretching from Japan at one end and Thailand at the other. India has been relegated into a separate ‘box’ and relations with it treated as such. By doing so, some very obvious facts have been consistently overlooked by Australian analysts. Not only is India the largest power in the ocean named after it, it also has the largest navy and coast guard of any littoral state between the two most important commercial straits in the world—Hormuz and Malacca. In addition, not only are the Straits of Malacca and the Strait of Lombok acknowledged to be two of the most crucial strategic straits in the world, more than half the world’s maritime trade passes through them.
Finally, a sizeable proportion of Australia’s maritime trade towards the west passes through the Strait of Lombok and then through Malacca. However, it would appear that this focus is in the process of changing. The first official India–Australia Strategic Dialogue was held in New Delhi on 30 August 2001. The talks were ‘open, constructive and wide-ranging, and demonstrated shared perspectives and common interests on a number of important issues, including in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. The delegates agreed that both countries were factors for stability in these regions.”9 The agenda included regional security issues including ‘particular security situations’, and maritime security. A significant feature of these talks was that as well as foreign affairs officials, each delegation also included a senior armed forces officer.
India’s Presence in the Region
More than a thousand miles from its mainland, India has long had a naval, air and coastguard presence in the Andaman and Nicobar group of islands, the southmost of which is barely 90 nautical miles from the troubled Indonesian province of Aceh. Of the 600-island cluster, over 300 are inhabited and are suspected of being used as transit points by gun runners, smugglers (including drug smugglers) and poachers. The region is also notorious for acts of piracy.
Recognizing this, India has been coordinating its efforts to combat these threats not only with countries in the region but with countries as far away as Japan. A joint Indo-Japan Coast Guard Exercise took place for the first time in Indian waters in the period 5–9 November 2000, and a second joint exercise was conducted off the coast of Japan earlier this year.
In August 2001, India decided to set up its first tri-services command, the Far Eastern Strategic Command based at Port Blair in the Andamans. It is expected to become operational by the end of September.10 Military presence already includes air force helicopters, three naval Fast Attack Craft (FAC) and coast guard vessels (under the operational control of the navy). More Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) and landing craft are planned to be stationed in the future. Eventually, India is expected to have a full strength army component and an air base in the Andamans. This will give India not only strategic depth but also the potential to protect maritime traffic bound for Australia and the South China Sea.
This, combined with rapid developments in Indo-US strategic relations and the US’s declared policy of ensuring international security in cooperation with allies and friends provides Australia with an excellent opportunity to enhance security cooperation with India.
Recent Phase
In the aftermath of 9/11, Australia has shown increased interest in improving its economic and politico-strategic relations with India. Having concluded civil nuclear energy agreement with the United States in July 2005, which is kept in abeyance for the time being, India sought supporters at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) club to promote India’s case as well as stable sources of uranium supplies. Australia, being a member of the NSG and a rich source of uranium supply, has been of some significance for India. During 2006 and 2007, Australian government continued to assure India of its intention to sell uranium to India.
However, the newly elected Rudd government has ruled out the possibility of Australian export of uranium to India wile leaving open the option of supporting international uranium sales to India. In early January 2008, Foreign Minister of Australia Stephen Smith had announced that Australia would not sell uranium to India unless it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But a spokesman for Smith said on 16 January 2008 that the Australian Government had not yet made a decision on whether to block uranium sales to India by other countries — an option open to Australia and members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, which sets global export controls for nuclear materials.
New Australian Minister had risked Delhi’s ire by junking the Howard government’s decision in 2007 to push ahead with a uranium export agreement in light of India’s long-standing political stability and record as a responsible nuclear power. This plays out in the shadow of a critical deal between the US and India to share civilian nuclear technology. The so-called 1-2-3 agreement is mired in opposition in the Indian parliament, but analysts warned yesterday if the deal took off again, the Rudd Government’s reversal on uranium sales could have “quite serious” ramifications for Australia-India relations.
Both India and Australia have shown eagerness to build up on the bilateral MoU on defence cooperation signed during Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s visit to New Delhi in March 2006. Observers feel greater interaction between the Indian and Australian navies, along with regular meetings of the newly-constituted bilateral Maritime Security Operations Working Group, upgraded military exercises and high-level exchanges are on the cards. Significantly, the two countries are now also finalizing an arrangement to share counter-terrorism, maritime security and other “classified” information. But coming back to defence, both India and Australia share a common wariness about China and its rapidly-modernizing 2.5-million-strong People’s Liberation Army, coupled with the communist country’s desire to spread its arc of influence in the entire Asia-Pacific region.
At a time when many countries are courting India, there exists genuine potential for Australia and India to build a truly strategic relationship. Already India has emerged at lightning speed to become Australia’s fourth-largest export market, with growth of 30 percent a year. New Delhi is becoming a serious strategic player in the Asia-Pacific (or some might say Indo-Pacific) region: joining the East Asia Summit and committing its increasingly powerful navy to regional maritime security. People of Indian origin are changing Australia’s society and economy overwhelmingly for the better, as a major source of overseas students and desperately-needed skilled migrants.
And, as the Bali experience reminds us, a solution on climate change which excludes India is no solution at all — so if Australia aspires to consolidate a bridging role in an effective 2009 agreement in Copenhagen, it will need the best diplomatic access to and engagement with India it can have. The same applies to any multilateral issue where your Government wants to make a difference, including trade and nuclear non-proliferation.
There are ample opportunities for Australia to ensure that it becomes permanently serious about India, and to manage any ill-feeling that might arise in New Delhi from ruling out uranium sales. The following steps are suggested to further improve the pattern of India-Australia relations:
• Early reassurance, at the highest level, that Australia wants qualitatively improved ties with India. Any misperception that Australia might focus on China at India’s expense needs to be scotched. Australia has not had an Indian Prime Ministerial visit in 20 years. It’s time, though it could be useful for new Australian PM to visit New Delhi first. In any case, Australia needs patterns of ministerial contact with India to match those with China and Japan.
• Collaboration in regional fora: Labour should follow through on its stated support for Indian admission to APEC. Australia also should work with India to make the East Asia Summit an important and useful regional forum.
• Sustaining the momentum in the defence relationship: the RAN is building a good rapport with the Indian Navy. Australia should step up the tempo of its defence exercises with India, and these should be based on real operational scenarios and needs, exploiting the special qualities and experience of both countries’ armed forces. Australia needs a level of comfort with India on defence issues so that each side can ask frank questions of the other, including about India’s defence engagement in Southeast Asia.
• Working with New Delhi on global WMD proliferation based on recognition of India as part of the solution, not part of the problem: dialogue on this front has improved; this should be consolidated and reoriented towards co-operation and results. Putting differences on uranium sales to one side, it is time to encourage India into the global network of export control regimes aimed at stopping businesses from inadvertently (or otherwise) exporting materials, technology and know-how to WMD and missile programs. Australia is permanent chair of the Australia Group on chemical and biological weapons, and could take a lead in bringing India, with its huge chemical and biotech industries and sound national export control laws, into that forum. Australia should also sustain a dialogue with New Delhi and others on ways to bring India into the global nuclear order consistent with non-proliferation. Opportunities loom for Australia to play a multilateral bridging role on this issue in the lead-up to the 2010 Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Finally, if the US-India nuclear deal survives, Australia should let it be.
• Making the trade and investment relationship all it can be: the Government should follow through on Crean’s pre-election commitments to keep building the trade relationship, including to pursue an FTA with India. Bilateral trade could and should include a greater volume of Australian services, in assisting the transformation of the Indian economy. But it is in commodities exports and two-way investment that Australia has the potential to become an indispensable, and truly strategic, partner to India.
• Proper resourcing of Australia’s diplomacy with India: this has several facets. India is not just another country. The billion-plus scale of its population is echoed in its cultural and geographic diversity and the size and complexity of its mass media, political and business interests.
It is a big agenda, and much more could be said. But Australia should not try yet again to catch the India ball only to drop it. Both India and Australia are complimentary to each other in further matters of mutual interests in Asia-Pacific region in particular and world in general. Enhanced level of relationship and increased cooperation is mutually beneficial.
Notes
1. “The President’s Trip to South Asia: An Overview”, Washington File, 9 March 2000.
2. Washington File, 21 May 2000.
3. Washington File, 17 January 2001.
4. The Hindu, 15 April 2001.
5. For details see Ravi Tomar, ‘US Missile Defence Program: Responses from South Asia’, Research Note, no. 30, Department of the Parliamentary Library, 2000–01.
6. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina B. Rocca in a speech to the Indian American Friendship Council, Washington File, 18 July 2001.
7. Washington File, 4 September 2001.
8. Times of India, 7 September 2001.
9. News Release, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, released jointly with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, 30 August 2001.
10. Deccan Herald, 30 August 2001.
11. Daniel Filton, “Australia may not block uranium sales to India”, at
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/australia-may-not-block-uranium-sales-to-india/2008/01/16/1200419885308.html , accessed on 22 January 2008.
Source: Third Concept/February 2008/Vol.21/No.252/P.no.55/
