Does AUKUS make things awkward for India?
The latest security arrangement in the Indo-Pacific throws up some unavoidable questions for Indian policymakers.
The Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership, announced in a joint press briefing between the White House, London and Canberra on 15 September, has been accorded a fairly jovial reception by Indian commentators.
In a prompt piece for Foreign Policy, which is curiously titled ‘India Welcomes AUKUS Pact as China Deterrent’ (India has made no official statement yet), top foreign policy scholar, C. Raja Mohan, argued that from an Indian perspective, “the new coalition signals a strong political resolve in Washington to confront the growing security challenges from Beijing.”
In a similar vein, Indrani Bagchi, diplomatic editor at Times of India, noted that the deal will make New Delhi happy because it is a “huge message to China” and “will add to the global efforts to balance China in this region.” According to her, AUKUS will also “augment capabilities of the Quad.”
WION’s Palki Sharma Upadhyay also made laudatory arguments in her show Gravitas. Renowned strategic commentator, Brahma Chellaney, compared the pact with the 2005 US-India nuclear deal.
This celebratory line of thought does bear some truth.
AUKUS is, without any doubt, a massive leap of faith for the three-ocean Anglosphere triad looking to push back on China in its own ‘backyard’ – the Indo-Pacific. It is a decisive strategic move that carries high deterrence and counterbalancing value in the face of rapidly expanding Chinese military spending and tactical presence in the region.
If not anything, Australian nuclear submarines will certainly raise the threshold of war in the Indo-Pacific theatre for military strategists in Beijing – as also argued by Professor of Strategic and Defence Studies at the Australian National University, John Blaxland. In that sense, AUKUS only bolsters the collective security architecture in the region.
This is good news for an India that is keen on building greater strategic depth in the Indo-Pacific while keeping the Chinese at bay. Even better, Australia – the regional anchor for AUKUS – itself has emerged as a frontline strategic partner for New Delhi, both bilaterally and within minilaterals like the Quad.
So, a Canberra that is more confident about interrogating Chinese expansionism through enhanced maritime capabilities should only be a booster shot to India’s Indo-Pacific dreams (what exactly are these dreams, is an altogether different matter).
Yet, the Indian government has maintained a “studied silence” on the pact so far. The most obvious reason seems to be France’s response to the agreement – one of extreme, and perhaps historic, displeasure.
Paris is incensed at not just Canberra for pulling the plug on their own A$90 billion bilateral submarine deal, but also at Washington for not keeping it in the loop. On 17 September, France announced that it was recalling its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations. I don’t recall the last time Paris did that.
This throws up a dilemma for New Delhi. Over the last one decade, India has meticulously crafted a nice little friendship of its own with the French – a vibrant and ever-evolving camaraderie that very much extends to the Indo-Pacific (the AUKUS’ primary catchment area). To make matters more awkward, India is also involved in a trilateral with both France and Australia – which met for the first time in London on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting just four months ago.
This delicate overlap of alliances puts New Delhi between a hammer and an anvil. If it heartily welcomes the AUKUS, France would be miffed; and if it outrightly rejects or questions the deal, the Anglosphere partners might take it to heart. So, the optimal option is saying or doing nothing at all. This is pretty much a standard response for India. Middle powers navigating a world dominated by competing big powers often use silence as a tool of diplomatic expression.
But beyond the French conundrum, AUKUS raises some broader, perhaps more fundamental, questions on India’s position in the Indo-Pacific.
The first, and maybe the most obvious amongst these, is – what happens to the Quad now?
Indian media is already asking whether the AUKUS “sidelines” the Quad. The dominant view is it doesn’t. In fact, many have argued that the pact only complements the four-nation Indo-Pacific grouping. Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow at Brookings, has echoed this view. The Australian High Commissioner to India, Barry O’Farrell, too has assured that the AUKUS won’t affect the Quad in any way, and is only based on strategic challenges shared by Canberra and New Delhi.
Whether the AUKUS really ensures a ‘favourable balance of power in Asia’ or ends up dialing up the heat to the detriment of smaller regional powers remains to be seen. But, it does pose a certain degree of discursive challenge to the Quad.
While the AUKUS doesn’t immediately invalidate the four-nation grouping in the short term, it could establish an all-pervading security framework that overshadows the Quad and its utility in the longer term.
Today, the Indo-Pacific is as much a battlefield of competing ideas as a theatre of strategic warfare. In that sense, the Quad, for now, is more of an open-ended idea than a coherent or exclusive entity with well-defined objectives. It is an idea that other like-minded nations vying for space in the Indo-Pacific are free to buy into, contingent on the whims of the four-member “core group”.
The AUKUS, on the other hand, is both an idea and a concrete alliance with specific objectives. It has a clearly-defined mandate – unlike the Quad, which continues to pitch itself on abstractions such as a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and beat around the bush on what it really wants.
What’s more, the AUKUS is not just any other alliance; it is made up of two highly-experienced and reliable maritime powers (US, UK) with strong projection capabilities across the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. Three out of the four Quad members (India, Japan, Australia), on the other hand, are only halfway maritime powers with limited cross-continental power projection capabilities and shaky commitment levels to regional security alliances.
This brings us to some of the most persistent questions that the Quad members have faced since its inception – what really is the Quad? Is it a strategic alliance? Is it a political grouping? Why is it even called a ‘Quadrilateral Security Alliance’ if it isn’t about security?
Truth is no one really knows the answer, not even the Quad members. Yet, AUKUS’ entry renders these fundamental questions even more glaring. The pact presents something of a tangible pathway for strategic consolidation – both discursive and functional – within the dense Indo-Pacific patchwork. The Quad barely does that.
In that sense, AUKUS could eventually emerge as a more effective, confident and well-defined coalition than the Quad, with a “core group” that knows what it wants for the Indo-Pacific and has a clear plan of action. Add to this the critical membership overlap, which leads us to some uncomfortable questions:
Did the US and Australia choose to weave a second strategic coalition in the Indo-Pacific precisely because they were unsatisfied (frustrated?) by the loose four-nation alliance? Does this mean Washington and Canberra will now devote more time and diplomatic capital to the shining new AUKUS than to the good old Quad? Will they eventually abandon the Quad?
To be clear, the Quad and the AUKUS are designed to achieve different objectives and can easily co-exist in parallel for now. But, this shouldn’t be taken for granted. The former could quickly fade into oblivion if it continues to dilly dally on what it wants and how it wants to do things. Now that there’s a new security alliance in town, the Quad needs a stronger pitch for its own good.
The second question is – will the AUKUS disrupt India’s emphasis on ASEAN centrality?
The AUKUS, ultimately, is an alliance of extra-regional powers. Sure, Australia may be seen as a regional power, but remains outside the core ASEAN region and is the weakest of the three in terms of the ability to hedge. This essentially means that three nations that are outside Southeast Asia proper would now be setting the dominant security discourse in Southeast Asia – a direct hit on ASEAN’s political-strategic autonomy (or ‘centrality’).
For ASEAN, which has been loudly emphasising on its ‘centrality’ since many years now, the pact could muddy the waters. For the longest time, the organisation has tried to dodge a messy game of big power politics in the region, carefully hedging its cards between China and the West while also reposing faith in middle powers like India and Japan to maintain an equal balance of power. That’s one of the reasons why the Quad, with its non-emphasis on security and soft assertions, found acceptance amongst most ASEAN powers, despite not having any Southeast Asian member.
But, a powerful and politically-loaded security alliance like the AUKUS is different. It dials up the heat in an already-crowded Indo-Pacific. Alarm bells are already going off in some ASEAN countries. On 17 September, the Indonesian foreign minister expressed deep concern “over the continuing arms race and power projection in the region.” The very next day, the Malaysian foreign minister told Australian PM, Scott Morrison, that AUKUS would be a “catalyst for a nuclear arms race in the Indo-Pacific region.”
This presents another dilemma for New Delhi. One of the central tenets of India’s Indo-Pacific pitch is its respect for ASEAN centrality. While India isn’t an AUKUS member, it is a close strategic ally of the US and Australia in the regional context. So how can India continue to emphasise on ASEAN centrality while working intimately with extra-regional powers that are disrupting ASEAN centrality? What does this do to India’s image as a constructive middle power in Southeast Asia? How would that, then, affect India’s Act East Policy?
These are questions that Indian policymakers will have to confront down the road.
The third, and final, question is – what does the AUKUS do to India’s relationship with France?
The most obvious answer here is that the pact will only strengthen ties between New Delhi and Paris. Sour with the American and Australian snubs, France will now want to create its own strategic clique in the Indo-Pacific, on its own terms. As a resident power in the Indian Ocean temporarily abandoned by the major Anglosphere powers, that is the most logical way forward for the French. And India, goes without saying, is a natural partner here for Paris, given the existing partnership between them.
But where does this leave India – also a partner of US and Australia in the Indo-Pacific? Hanging awkwardly in the middle? What happens to the India-France-Australia trilateral?
If France does decide to institutionalise its Indo-Pacific presence through a parallel coalition, India might be faced with a difficult choice of deciding which camp to rally with. It is very likely that France will decouple its special relationship with New Delhi from its partnerships with the US and Australia. But, the bitterness between the French, the Australians and the Americans could fracture the Indo-Pacific landscape.
That’s not good news for an aspirational regional power like India that is struggling to find a stable space in the region. The fact that France had embraced the Quad despite not being a member (it was common to see senior French officials sharing the stage with their Quad counterparts), made it easier for India to play the role of an effective middle power in the Indo-Pacific by maintaining a multi-front relationship with all major Western powers in the region. That won’t be the case for a while now.
For anti-China hawks in India, who tend to see things in black and white, India loses nothing by ditching the French as they see Paris as a two-faced Beijing-appeasing entity. See, for instance, this bizarre rant against France (and Europe) by WION’s Palki Sharma Upadhyay. Yet, the world is more complex than just love and hate, yin and yang. India knows that to stay relevant in a complex geopolitical landscape, it needs to be in sync with all like-minded parties and not make enemies out a friend’s enemies. And a cold war between Europe and the Anglosphere powers really doesn’t help.
But, there is a silver lining here. India could position itself as a moderator between the Europeans and the Anglosphere clique in the Indo-Pacific context. It has warm relations with both camps, after all. In fact, by firming itself in the midway position, India could emerge as a uniquely effective stabilising force. Not just that, it could possibly function as a liaison between smaller regional powers and bigger extra-regional powers.
In all, by subscribing to the AUKUS from the outside, India would be submitting to the larger security umbrella in the Indo-Pacific provided by the US, UK and now Australia. This then means India would need to compromise on its own strategic autonomy in the region and stay put in its current position – a limited aspirational power with too many friends and too little to deliver.
Of course, on paper, AUKUS helps India by hindering Chinese expansionism. But this may go the other way – the pact might trigger an aggressive Chinese response, which would then put India in choppy waters. In any case, the Quad isn’t willing to militarily challenge Beijing. So if China does decide to blow the war horn, what other collective platform would New Delhi have to mount a response?
Or is India content with outsourcing its strategic needs to larger, more powerful proxies? Only time will tell.
Featured image: The crew of the Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Rankin enters Pearl Harbor for a brief stop during RIMPAC 2018. | US Indo-Pacific Command, Flickr.