In the First World War, Indian and Australian servicemen fought together on the beaches of Gallipoli, in the deserts of Mesopotamia and the Middle East, and in the fields of France.

In the Second World War, our armed forces served alongside each other in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, North African, and Pacific theatres, most notably during the siege of Tobruk by Rommel’s Africa Corp, and the Burma campaign to defend India from falling to Japan.

This shared history, coupled with our shared democratic values and a strong interest in a secure Indo–Pacific region, provides us with a firm foundation upon which we can confidently pursue future engagement activities in support of our joint interests.

We both border the Indian Ocean and have a shared interest in the maintenance of freedom of navigation and trade. In fact, the world economy is fast becoming reliant upon Indian Ocean trade as its bulk cargo grows.

Australia recognises India’s critical role in supporting the security, stability and prosperity of the Indian Ocean region and the stability of a wider, rules‑based global order.

This is why Australia views India as a key strategic partner—and there is scope for us to cooperate further on broader global issues.

By 2030, the Indo–Pacific region is expected to account for 21 of the top 25 sea and air trade routes; around two thirds of global oil shipments and one third of the world’s bulk cargo movements. So improving security will be crucial to protecting our prosperity.

Australia strongly believes that ASEAN-centric multilateral frameworks have contributed to security and stability in the wider Indo–Pacific region by building degrees of trust and habits of cooperation.

Perhaps most significantly, our navies will conduct our first Bilateral Maritime Exercise—Exercise AUSINDEX—later this month. The Exercise will take place in the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet exercise area off the coast of Visakhapatnam.

The Exercise is a significant step forward in the bilateral defence relationship. It is a sign of growing naval cooperation between both nations. Australia will be sending an ANZAC-class frigate (HMAS Arunta); an oiler (HMAS Sirius) a Collins-class submarine (HMAS Sheean) and an AP3-C maritime surveillance aircraft. In total, Australia’s contribution will number around 400 personnel—with a similar contribution from India.

But the potential for greater cooperation between our Defence organisations is not confined to the naval sphere. We are also slowly seeking to build our bilateral Air Force relationship based on our use of common platforms such as the Hawk, C-17, C-130 and P8 maritime patrol aircraft.

At the Army Staff Talks in August 2014, both sides agreed in‑principle to explore opportunities for future exercises. While the distance between both nations is great in distance, I hope we can identify appropriate opportunities in the near future.

Like India, we live within a region that will continue to undergo tremendous change, and we must adapt. Economic growth is transforming the Indo–Pacific region, which is becoming the global strategic and economic centre of gravity.

Reports predict that by 2050, half of the world’s top 20 economies will be in the Indo–Pacific. Some also predict that India, China, Indonesia and Japan will be in the top five economies in the world with the US. India’s own economic growth will be a key driver of energy demand.

The US has underpinned regional peace and security over the last 70 years, and continues to do so. Australia strongly supports the US presence in the Indo–Pacific, and its rebalance of forces to our region.

While the region is seeing dynamic economic growth, the US will remain the pre-eminent global power to 2035.

The China–US relationship will be a particularly important dynamic in shaping the region, and this is a key consideration for Australian planning and policy-making. While some tension is inevitable, both China and the US have a clear interest in preserving regional stability and security, not least because of their close economic integration.

Such integration is not only increasing between major powers. The shift of strategic weight to the Indo–Pacific is driving economic, energy and trade interdependence across the region, as states’ economic wellbeing and prosperity increasingly depend on free and open trade.

Greater interdependence between states is encouraging, as it reduces the likelihood of destabilising actions or conflicts. But interdependence will not remove these risks altogether. As major and emerging powers seek to advance their own interests, they will cooperate in some areas, but compete in others.

Tensions in the Indo–Pacific persist, and in some cases are becoming more acute. Territorial disputes continue to risk regional stability and create uncertainty.

Apart from terrorism, our region also faces increasing security threats in and from cyberspace. These require vigilance and a concerted effort by our Defence organisation, across Government agencies, and with industry to protect our economy, our people and our security.

Our security is built upon unconstrained access to global commons—such as the high seas, cyberspace and space. Any disruption to these commons, physical or virtual, would have a fundamental impact on Australia and our partners in the region, including India.

Australia’s freedoms rely on a stable region that is founded on transparency, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and respect for international law and territorial integrity.

These are all in Australian strategic interests. They also equate with our values and who we are as a nation. We share these interests with the other nations in our region, including India, and if one nation is denied these rights, we are all affected.

We share history, democratic values, and an interest in the prosperity and security of the region—which underpins that future potential. We will both benefit from a more rules-based global order, which will drive our economic growth. Importantly, we see opportunities to work more closely in Defence to protect that order and encourage prosperity.

We see enormous potential in our bilateral defence relationship so we look forward to working with India towards that goal.

It’s time for Australians to come to grips with their more troubling security outlook and debate how best to strengthen their deterrence and defensive capabilities. That’s the core message in my essay Game Plan: The Case for a New Australian Grand Strategy, which was recently published by the Menzies Research Centre. Let me summarise a few of the key points for fellow readers of The Strategist.

What are some of the major changes in Australia’s security outlook? Let me touch on just six.

First, Australians need to appreciate that the Western allies no longer dominate the Western Pacific economy. The global balance of power is shifting markedly.

Second, we need to appreciate the unusual nature and massive scale of China’s military expansion. In particular, the People’s Liberation Army is not trying to match the US ship-for-ship, aircraft-for-aircraft or tank-for-tank. China’s asymmetric strategy rather places emphasis on building surveillance, missile, submarine, counter-satellite, cyber, and other capabilities that place the Western allies’ concentrated bases at risk, conventional force structures, and vulnerable logistic systems.

Beijing’s assertive international strategy is an even more fundamental change in Australia’s security environment. From a largely introverted posture 20 years ago, the regime in Beijing is now championing nationalist causes offshore, largely to reinforce its domestic legitimacy. That has driven the Chinese to launch aggressive cyber operations against Australia and its close allies, engage in dangerous confrontations with Japanese forces in the East China Sea, harass American ships and aircraft and dredge up new islands to reinforce its assertion of sovereignty over 80 percent of the South China Sea.

A fourth major change is that the US has morphed into a less confident and more hesitant ally. While Washington has announced a rebalancing of its forces to the Pacific, with some 60% of US naval and air assets planned for deployment to the theatre by 2020, the resources to implement the rebalance have been limited. US readiness levels have fallen and Washington has shown itself to be easily distracted by crises elsewhere.

In short, the strategic tides in the Indo–Pacific have been flowing against the US and its allies. Symptomatic of the shift is that during the last decade China’s defence spending quadrupled whereas US defence spending rose by a total of only 12%.

For Australia, the strategic implications of these developments are profound. During the Cold War, the centre of superpower competition, tension, and potential conflict was in Central Europe. Australians became used to being located in a strategic backwater. But now the situation is markedly different. Whether we like it or not, we now find ourselves close to the centre-stage of major power competition, international tensions and potential conflict.

Japan, India, and most countries in Southeast Asia broadly share Australia’s unease and in differing ways are taking steps to reinforce their security.

What should be the core themes of Australia’s grand strategy in this new era?

There’s clearly a need to accelerate the strengthening of Australia’s independent defence capabilities. At a minimum, this will mean boosting defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2022, as currently planned.

Given the heightened security concerns of most of our neighbours, there’s a strong case for further strengthening Australia’s security partnerships in the Indo–Pacific to reinforce regional resilience and confidence.

Several specific initiatives deserve consideration that have the potential to turbo-charge the Australia–US alliance.

First, Australia could reinforce American, Singaporean, and other regional efforts to enhance the maritime domain awareness of partner countries in the Indo-Pacific. Working with regional partners to develop a common operational picture of the maritime domain would strengthen local defences, reinforce practical cooperation and help to bolster regional confidence.

Second, the United States and most of Australia’s other security partners currently have difficulties accessing a comprehensive network of military exercise and range facilities in the Indo–Pacific. This is a growing problem for the United States as it looks to position the bulk of its naval and air forces to the theatre. Relocating extra forces forward is one thing, but maintaining them in this theatre in a high state of readiness is another challenge altogether.

Australia already possesses exercise and range facilities that are large, relatively uncluttered, and feature diverse air, sea, and land environments. Australia could readily establish an Indo–Pacific Exercise and Range Complex that could be made available to its close allies and security partners on agreed terms and conditions. This would make extended American force deployments to Australia and its surrounding region much easier, more effective, and less expensive.

Third, the major changes under way in the Indo–Pacific are already forcing Australian and US defence planners to re-think many assumptions about future operations in this theatre. In consequence, there would be benefit in forming a small, high-quality Australia–US Strategic Planning Group.

Fourth, there is scope for Australia to exploit its strong track record for quality intelligence products, its geo-strategic location, its high quality workforce, and its technological sophistication by investing strongly to become the intelligence hub for close allies in the Indo–Pacific.

Fifth, Australia already hosts a number of facilities that support US and allied space programs. There’s scope for Australia to do more in this field to strengthen allied command resilience and operational capabilities in the Indo–Pacific.

Finally  the Pentagon is facing dilemmas as it contemplates basing modes in the Western Pacific for the coming half century. US basing in the region is currently over-concentrated and operationally constraining.

Canberra could assist greatly. Lowy Institute polling reveals that more than 80% of Australians support the alliance with the US, and well over 60% support the idea of US forces being permanently based in the country. What’s more, this friendly sentiment is mutual. US service personnel consistently rate Australia as one of the most desirable overseas locations to visit.

There now appears to be scope to negotiate extended deployments of US forces at joint Australia–US facilities. This could ease pressure on American basing in the Indo–Pacific, provide a much firmer, more dispersed, and more resilient allied operating presence and reinforce allied deterrence in the theatre.

The bottom line is that it’s time for Australians to consider how best to ensure the country’s security in a far more challenging Indo–Pacific region.

Let the debate begin!

The term ‘Indo-Pacific’ is gaining currency. It appeared in this year’s Defence White Paper as an alternative to ‘Asia–Pacific’, and although the formulation varies slightly, it has been picked up by both sides of Australian politics (here and here for example). US Vice President Joe Biden used a similar idea a few weeks ago. Although he called it the Asia–Pacific, he said the region stretches ‘…from India to the Pacific nations of the Americas’. Among Australian commentators, Rory Medcalf is a staunch supporter, and the Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Ray Griggs used the term in a speech at an ASPI conference last week.

But the Indo-Pacific is more a list of our interests than a strategy. And this isn’t just semantics. We want a smaller, not larger strategic framework, because the space in which Australia frames its interests will shape our strategic objectives. And the smaller our list of core strategic objectives, the more resources we have available to pursue each of them.

The 2013 White Paper announced that:

A new Indo-Pacific strategic arc is beginning to emerge, connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia. … The 2009 Defence White Paper made clear Australia’s enduring interest in the stability of what it called the wider Asia-Pacific region. The Indo-Pacific is a logical extension of this concept, and adjusts Australia’s priority strategic focus to the arc extending from India though Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia, including the sea lines of communication on which the region depends.

Read more

The rapid expansion of trade, investment and production linkages in the area spanning the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, coupled with the shift of economic power from the trans-Atlantic to Asia, has given rise to a push to have the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region recognised as a single geo-strategic arc. But while the concept has gained currency, there has been insufficient attention paid to the geopolitical and geoeconomic drivers behind its emergence in particular national contexts.

In India, for instance, there are three distinct ways of approaching the Indo-Pacific concept. The first accepts the notion of the Indo-Pacific and sees it as a way to bring about a change in the direction of Indian foreign policy. Analysts like Bramha Chellaney, who want India to abandon its traditional non-aligned stance or who see China as a strategic threat, promote a vision of the Indo-Pacific in which India, together with the democracies of the region—the United States, Australia and Japan—take the lead in shaping the economic and security architecture of the region.

The second approach, however, rejects the Indo-Pacific idea on the basis that it’s potentially detrimental to India’s foreign policy goals. Commentators like D. Gnanagurunathan express scepticism about Indo-Pacific regionalism. They argue that adopting the ‘Indo-Pacific’ terminology is unnecessary and could mean that India would be aligned too closely with American interests. In their view, the maintenance of India’s autonomy to decide which countries to engage with is integral to its foreign policy interests. They argue that India’s strategic objectives are best met through engagement with countries in the region through forums such as the East Asia Summit and ASEAN, rather than new military partnerships. Read more