{"id":28148,"date":"2016-08-12T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T20:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=28148"},"modified":"2016-08-11T16:22:28","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T06:22:28","slug":"improving-zero-australia-india-attempt-strategic-convergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/improving-zero-australia-india-attempt-strategic-convergence\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving on zero: Australia and India attempt strategic convergence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-28149 size-full\" title=\"Image courtesy of Flickr user Larry Johnson\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/5621259188_e74d63cb05_z.jpg\" alt=\"Image courtesy of Flickr user Larry Johnson\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/5621259188_e74d63cb05_z.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/5621259188_e74d63cb05_z-205x136.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/5621259188_e74d63cb05_z-332x221.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the 20th century, Australia\u2019s strategic relationship with India was so frigid it was in negative territory for decades. In the 21st century, Australia and India have begun to attempt strategic convergence. That rapid shift from negative to positive means the big change in Australia\u2019s strategic perceptions this century has been about India.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, the same thought about China\u2019s strategic rise throbs consistently from the 2000 Defence White Paper (\u2018the most critical issue for the security of the Asia Pacific\u2019) through the 2009, 2013 and 2016 White Papers. The worry just keeps intensifying.<\/p>\n<p>Today ASPI publishes my Strategy paper on the big shift in Oz thinking about what it can do with an Asian giant: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/publications\/improving-on-zero-australia-and-india-attempt-strategic-convergence\" target=\"_blank\">Improving on zero: Australia and India attempt strategic convergence<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>India no longer sees Australia as merely a strategic stooge of the US. And Australia is starting to accord India the importance India always saw as its right. Those are big changes in attitude and policy\u2014and in the two countries\u2019 understanding of each other\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Strategy:<\/strong> The Australia\u2013India strategic relationship was in zero territory\u2014often in negative mode\u2014for much of the 20th\u00a0century; indeed, effectively since India\u2019s independence. In the 21st\u00a0century, though, Australia and India can reach for greater strategic convergence, building on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>growing bilateral cooperation;<\/li>\n<li>Australia\u2019s alliance and India\u2019s quasi-alliance with the US;<\/li>\n<li>a shared vision of the Indo-Pacific, in which Australia gives explicit acknowledgement to India\u2019s importance while India starts to understand Australia\u2019s obsession with Southeast Asia; and,<\/li>\n<li>responses to China\u2019s power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>People:<\/strong> Australia in the 21st\u00a0century can have a set of relationships with India based on people as much as on economic and strategic need. Ahead of strategy or trade, migration is changing Australian and Indian conceptions of each other. Australia has a burgeoning Indian diaspora\u2014India now ranks fourth in the list of the top 10 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abs.gov.au\/ausstats\/abs@.nsf\/mf\/3412.0\" target=\"_blank\">countries of birth<\/a> of Australia\u2019s population.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Economics and trade:<\/strong> As China slows economically, Australia turns to India. The negotiation of an Australia\u2013India free trade deal\u2014a <a href=\"http:\/\/dfat.gov.au\/trade\/agreements\/aifta\/pages\/australia-india-comprehensive-economic-cooperation-agreement.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement<\/a>\u2014aims to match the bilateral agreements Australia reached with China, Japan and South Korea. In the 21st\u00a0century, India\u2013Australia two-way trade in goods and services has doubled in annual value to $15\u00a0billion\u2014still small beer when compared to the figure of $150\u00a0billion for our trade with China, but with great potential for growth.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Improving on zero:<\/strong> The previous negative relationship was based on a lot of hard history (White Australia, the Cold War, alliance versus non-alignment and India\u2019s nuclear weapons status).<\/p>\n<p>New Delhi may not yet give Canberra much credit for independent thought or action. But being rusted on to the US no longer causes India to dismiss Australia as essentially irrelevant in the geopolitical and defence discussion.<\/p>\n<p>India seeks greater bilateral defence cooperation with Australia as an Indian Ocean actor with some useful assets. See this, partly, as India slowly responding to Australia\u2019s long-held aspirations to improve naval cooperation.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, it reflects an Indian aspiration that must be translated into military capability. India needs to muscle up if it hopes to fulfil its core beliefs about its central role in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>India is now reaching towards a quasi-alliance with the US, having already created the forms of a strategic partnership. True, it\u2019s still very quasi and not worthy of the term \u2018alliance\u2019. Yet in the slow-moving realms of strategic realignments, the US\u2013India partnership has been built in quick time. What the US and India have done together in the 21st\u00a0century is a huge shift from the harsh words and sharp distrust of the 20th\u00a0century.<\/p>\n<p>Broadening the lens from bilateral to multilateral adds to the sense of change. The multilateral focus brings in the strongest US allies in the region\u2014Japan and Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Japan and Australia long traded at a strategic discount in New Delhi precisely because of their US alliances; now those alliance memberships add a little lustre. The negative has gone positive. India\u2019s non-aligned colours fade as New Delhi\u2019s realist core beats ever more openly<\/p>\n<p>Myriad examples, big and small, illustrate how difficult things were. That past counsels caution about the speed or extent of the strategic convergence that can be achieved. Still, this time it\u2019s different\u2014our astigmatism and the antagonisms should not derail the opportunity, and the need, to see each other clearly and do much more together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the 20th century, Australia\u2019s strategic relationship with India was so frigid it was in negative territory for decades. In the 21st century, Australia and India have begun to attempt strategic convergence. That rapid shift &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":28149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,1056,69,277],"class_list":["post-28148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-bilateral-relations","tag-india","tag-strategic-partnership"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Improving on zero: Australia and India attempt strategic convergence | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/improving-zero-australia-india-attempt-strategic-convergence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Improving on zero: Australia and India attempt strategic convergence | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the 20th century, Australia\u2019s strategic relationship with India was so frigid it was in negative territory for decades. 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