Tag Archive for: India

Sir Lawrence Freedman on the delusions that plague war planners

Wars are easy to start, hard to end and are often launched with political goals that are loftier than the planning and capabilities that are committed. In today’s episode, Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, talks about the “short war fallacy” and why strategists keep planning for quick victories when long and costly conflicts are demonstrably the norm.

Lawrence discusses Putin’s misjudged invasion of Ukraine, the way forward—and significant obstacles—for Kyiv, Moscow and Washington, other long conflicts around the globe including those in Africa and what Xi Jinping might be thinking about Taiwan.

He explains how mass remains a key factor in warfare, and the ways in which new technology and old realities converge to create layers in modern warfighting. He caps off with some thoughts on nuclear strategy and the recent flareup between India and Pakistan.

You can read Lawrence’s recent Foreign Affairs Article, “The Age of Forever Wars: Why Minister Strategy No Longer Delivers Victory”.

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And read his substack here.

What satellites reveal about the clash over Kashmir. With Nathan Ruser

ASPI’s geospatial analyst Nathan Ruser reveals what he’s found by studying satellite imagery of the recent India-Pakistan clashes over Kashmir, in a special episode of Stop the World. This includes use of images for disinformation in ways he hasn’t seen before in his years of poring over satellite pictures geolocation data.

Alongside the military clashes the Indian and Pakistani governments, and their respective supporters, have been battling in the information domain, a typical pattern that is becoming ever more competitive with new technology, especially generative artificial intelligence.

Nathan’s globally recognised skills as a geospatial analyst are put to full use in this episode that will be useful to anyone interested in South Asia, disinformation, deepfakes, AI and nuclear stability.

Special episode: Will India and Pakistan go nuclear? With Raji Rajagopalan

After Pakistan-based militants murdered more than two dozen Indian tourists in Pahalgam in Kashmir, India retaliated by striking nine sites it says housed “terrorist infrastructure”. Pakistan in turn says it shot down several Indian fighter planes.

In this special snap episode, ASPI Resident Senior Fellow Raji Pillai Rajagopalan gives us her insights on whether the two nuclear armed arch rivals will bring the crisis temperature down and avoid the ultimate nightmare—escalation that goes nuclear.

Mentioned in this episode: 

India and Pakistan must manage escalation after Pahalgam attack, by Raji Rajagopalan

X thread by Nathan Ruser

Stop the World is back with a pod on the Quad

Stop the World is back from its summer hiatus and, with so many major developments already, there’s much ground to cover in 2025.  

This week, ASPI’s Raji Pillai Rajagopalan speaks to Euan Graham and Griffith University’s Ian Hall about the Quad partnership between Australia, India, Japan and the United States. They discuss the significance of the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Washington DC just days into the new Trump Administration, and the security role of the grouping in the coming years, including how – and whether – the Quad partners are thinking about deterrence.  

Guests:  

Raji Pillai Rajagopalan  
Euan Graham  
Ian Hall  

Tag Archive for: India

India-Pakistan crisis: military operations intensify before ceasefire

The past 36 hours on the India-Pakistan front have been tumultuous. Where the confrontation is headed is unclear.

Although things seemed to be calming down early on Friday, May 9, intense developments followed. A series of attacks occurred on Friday and Saturday, though their sequence is difficult to disentangle. Then Donald Trump on Saturday announced a ceasefire that took effect at 5pm Indian time on that day.

Before it did, escalating attacks by both sides had targeted civilian and military sites. Pakistani aircraft and drone attacks had spread from Kashmir as far south as Gujarat. Most attacks have been closer to the border, by artillery and short-range drones. The most intense seem to have come in the Kashmir region in Jammu, though Indian officials named around 26 locations that had been targeted.

The ceasefire has reportedly been violated. As of this writing on Sunday morning, both sides appear to be re-establishing it. Whether this will lead to further talks on any substantive issue is unclear. Though the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested this might happen, India has ruled out more substantive talks, at least for the time being.

Casualties do not appear to have been heavy. A senior official of the Jammu and Kashmir state was killed in his home in Jammu, but there is no reason to think he was specifically targeted.

There is some confusion about a series of attacks on Amritsar, a city in the Indian Punjab that is the centre of the Sikh religion. A very late-night Pakistani military briefing on Thursday suggested that several ballistic missile attacks had hit Amritsar, but no more has been heard of this.

The most serious Pakistani attack was by a Fateh-1 missile that seems either to have targeted an Indian air force base in Sirsa, near Delhi, or to have targeted Delhi and, as social media posts suggest, been intercepted at Sirsa. If it was fired at Sirsa, the reason for attacking just one Indian air base is unclear.

Though the sequence remains uncertain, India also launched a series of attacks on Pakistani air bases, including Rafiqui, Murid, Chaklala and Rahim Yar Khan. Most notably, another was Nur Khan air base, outside Islamabad. Hitting it may have been intended not to achieve an operational effect but to send a signal to the Pakistani high command. Combat aircraft are not thought to have been at this base. It is used mainly for transportation, including for government officials.

Two other air bases that India targeted are thought to be those of Pakistan’s China-built fighters. Since the fighting began, Pakistan has said it has shot down five Indian aircraft, including three Dassault Rafale fighters from France. US officials have told Reuters that a China-built Chengdu J-10 fighter shot down at least two Indian aircraft on the night of May 7, of which at least one was a Rafale. India has acknowledged no aircraft losses.

Much later on Friday, there were reports that India had attacked Pakistan’s Sargodha air base complex. Pakistan is thought to store nuclear weapons at Sargodha.

Because we don’t know which attacks followed which, we cannot say which, if any, was a retaliation for another. Second, we do not know how exactly they were carried out. Some presumably used missiles or drones, because there is no indication that combat aircraft on either side have crossed the border to make attacks. Even air-to-air firing could conceivably have occurred from one side of the border to the other.

Third, there is considerable confusion about some attacks, particularly on the Sirsa and Nur Khan air bases.

As well as pilots apparently keeping on their own sides of the border, there is no indication of involvement by ground forces except for firing across the border and the Line of Control in Kashmir. No involvement by naval forces is evident.

But the intensity of attacks in the day before the ceasefire was far greater than anybody had expected, especially as the situation seemed to have been winding down on Thursday.

Fighting was sufficiently serious to prompt a global reaction. The G7 countries put out a joint statement calling for de-escalation, and few hours later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the chief of staff of the Pakistan Army, General Asim Munir, and Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Before Rubio acted, the US had indicated that it would not intervene, with Vice President JD Vance saying that the India-Pakistan confrontation was ‘fundamentally none of our business.’

There are also reports that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has talked to the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers. China has also urged restraint on both sides.

Where the situation will move from here is unclear—especially whether the ceasefire will hold. Not just two countries are involved; there are also non-state terror groups on Pakistan’s side of the border.

But neither India nor Pakistan wants to antagonise Trump. That will encourage them to move cautiously.

India and Pakistan must manage escalation after Pahalgam attack

India has launched a retaliatory strike against the Pakistan-based groups responsible for a terrorist attack in Indian Kashmir two weeks ago.

The Indian government released a press statement announcing that the armed forces had launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of 7 May. The operation targeted terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. According to the Indian government, nine terrorist sites were hit.

The government also noted that it has engaged in a ‘focused, measured and non-escalatory’ manner to ensure that the strikes were controlled. The statement also outlined that India exercised ‘considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution’ and didn’t target any Pakistani military facilities.

After the strikes, India briefed the US, British, United Arab Emirates and Russian governments.

The strikes were retaliation for a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian Kashmir, in which 25 Indians and one Nepali civilian were killed. Previous major terrorist attacks in Kashmir in 2016 and 2019 targeted Indian security forces. The Pahalgam attack, however, specifically targeted civilians, resulting in widespread anger in India and leading the government to respond.

According to initial reports, the Pahalgam terror attack was carried out by the relatively unknown Kashmir Resistance Front, which India maintains is a proxy for the better-known Pakistan-backed terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. While it is unclear which group was responsible, the fact that it was a Pakistan-based group—with extensive support from Pakistan military—is undisputed.

This is not the first time that India and Pakistan have engaged in such clashes. In the past decade, India has suffered two major terrorist attacks resulting in retaliatory strikes against Pakistan. For a long time, India has struggled to develop an effective response to Pakistan’s use of cross-border terrorism as a state policy. Such attacks are clearly designed to keep India off-balance, but India’s response has also slowly become harsher.

Traditionally, India hasn’t responded with military force. The December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi led to a military mobilisation, but no clashes. In 2008, the Indian government ruled out any military response to the terrorist attack on Mumbai. But the September 2016 Uri terrorist attack, which targeted an Indian army infantry base and killed 18 Indian soldiers, led to a change in India’s response. This attack came in the wake of another major terror attack in January 2016 on the Indian air force base in Pathankot. After two major strikes, the Indian leadership was presented with a dilemma, and it responded with what was called a ‘surgical strike’—a commando attack—on Pakistani terror hideouts.

In 2019, India suffered another major terrorist attack in Pulwama, killing dozens of Central Reserve Police Force personnel. This showed Pakistan escalating the strikes, not only in scale; it was also an escalation in messaging, considering the bold, open claim by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based terrorist group, that it carried out the terror strikes. Worried that its 2016 surgical strikes didn’t have the necessary deterrence effect, India escalated, launching air strikes on a terrorist base in Balakot, Pakistan. This was the first time that Indian combat planes had attacked Pakistani territory since the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

This radical shift was the result of India’s conclusion that non-military measures were having no effect on Pakistan. India had previously responded to terrorist attacks with diplomatic punishment, including curtailing talks or limiting diplomatic interaction with Pakistan. In addition, New Delhi usually sought international diplomatic pressure to constrain Pakistan. Such policy measures failed to change Pakistan’s policy on state-sponsored terrorism. India’s lack of effective and forceful options led Pakistan to dangerously misread India’s possible responses.

Now that India has carried out retaliatory strikes on Pakistan, there is a strong likelihood that Pakistan will respond in some limited fashion to satisfy its domestic constituency. But it is highly unlikely that the two sides will intentionally escalate the current crisis to a prolonged series of clashes.

Though both states are nuclear-armed powers, nuclear weapons are unlikely to play any direct role in these clashes. Nevertheless, given their proximity to one another, one cannot rule out escalation dynamics. Pakistan will likely try to leverage this, invoking such scenarios to put international diplomatic pressure on India. This may have worked in previous conflicts, but as tensions heighten globally, foreign powers are unlikely to be as invested in talking the two sides down.

Australia-India defence cooperation should be about more than navies

In the sprint to deepen Australia-India defence cooperation, navy links have shot ahead of ties between the two countries’ air forces and armies. That’s largely a good thing: maritime security is at the heart of both countries’ interests. But too much imbalance will limit the relationship’s full potential.

Canberra and New Delhi made much progress in their defence relationship over the past 15 years. Much was made possible by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and successive Australian prime ministers. Their top-down direction helped spur bureaucracies on either side to transcend long-held habits and assumptions that precluded them from seeing each other’s full value.

However, the sheer pace of progress also meant parts of the relationship sprinted ahead in complexity and maturity, leaving others behind. This likely reflected pragmatism: defence organisations on both sides implemented ideas that were achievable and whose logic was well understood across governments. Maritime security cooperation, requiring a strong naval focus, was one of them.

It’s now time for both sides to take stock. Defence cooperation shouldn’t happen in siloes. The Indian army is more than just a counterpart to the Australian army. It is also the largest and most influential of India’s three services. Canberra is more likely to achieve its defence ambitions—even those relating to maritime security—if its objectives are well-socialised in the Indian army. Likewise, the Indian air force plays a greater maritime security role than is sometimes acknowledged in Australia.

More importantly, militaries perform best when their individual services work with and through each other to produce joint effects. The Australian Defence Force’s strong culture of joint operations—rather than functioning in single service siloes—is partly why it produces strong outcomes relative to its modest size. The value of adopting joint approaches to military affairs is partly why India is implementing historic defence reforms, including proposed tri-service commands.

Australia and India should build on the progress they have made so far and foster a balanced, cohesive approach to cooperate across all services and domains. They can start with four steps, as we identified in recent analysis for the Australia India Institute.

First, they should establish a regular bilateral air force exercise. Both air forces have already participated in each other’s multilateral exercises, which is a pragmatic start given the busyness of both air forces. But they can do more. Air force exercises don’t always require in-demand assets, such as fighter jets, to be fruitful.

For example, the two countries have strong interests in airfield defence. It is an important capability for Australia, which is improving its ability to operate from dispersed airfields, and for India, which must be capable of defending facilities far from New Delhi, such as those on Andaman and Nicobar Island.

The two air forces can also share useful lessons on how to integrate ground and air assets in support of military operations. This is occurring right now on India’s disputed land borders, and Australia accrued deep expertise on this in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Second, India could better balance its defence representation at its High Commission in Canberra by augmenting its defence adviser—a position exclusively filled by Indian Navy officers—with deputies from the air force and army. This is important because military officers, regardless of their inter-service experience, will tend to recognise opportunities for collaboration with their own service quicker than they will for others.

As an interim step, Indian air force and army officers who come to study at the Australian staff college could stay on after graduation as short term secondees at the Indian High Commission. They could drive new initiatives, armed with their experience of Australia’s defence system.

Third, Australia and India would benefit from broadening their view of existing military exercises from service-focused to domain-focused activities. For example, army Exercise Austrahind would be recast as the two countries’ premier combined land-domain exercise, not just an army activity. This would encourage planners to incorporate navy and air force elements, as well as space and cyber dimensions, as appropriate. Ultimately, land, air and maritime domain exercises could culminate in a regular tri-service exercise.

And fourth, both sides should create a forum to coherently determine what joint capabilities they seek to build across all services and domains. This might require the establishment of joint staff talks (on top of existing talks between their respective army, navy and air force headquarters). The forum could alternatively be included as a discrete pillar under the two countries’ regular defence policy talks, which typically address higher level policy matters.

If developments in the United States underscore anything, it’s that Australia must deepen its defence relationships in the region to help secure it. India is key to this effort. The two countries should be working to transform their discrete collection of valuable defence activities into a truly integrated defence partnership.

Trump’s tariffs challenge India’s economic balance

US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats have dominated headlines in India in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Trump announced that his reciprocal tariffs—matching other countries’ tariffs on American goods—will go into effect on 2 April, causing Indian exporters to panic at the prospect of being embroiled in Trump’s escalating trade war.

Trump’s unpredictability offers little solace. While he recently suspended tariffs on cars and automobile parts from Mexico and Canada for one month—ostensibly to give US automakers time to ramp up domestic production—any hope that India might receive similar exemptions is, at best, wishful thinking.

During his February visit to the United States, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did achieve an important goal: a nine-month negotiation process, set to conclude by autumn, on a new bilateral trade deal. But this timeline has no bearing on the reciprocal tariffs set to take effect next month. In his 4 March State of the Union address, Trump singled out India as a major tariff abuser and reiterated his commitment to imposing reciprocal duties.

The economic impact on India, which runs a trade surplus with the US, could be significant. India exported goods worth nearly $74 billion to the US in 2024, and estimates suggest that Trump’s new tariffs could cost the country up to $7 billion annually.

But the implications could be much more far-reaching. One analysis estimates that India effectively imposes a 9.5 percent tariff on US goods, while US levies on Indian imports are only 3 percent. If Trump follows through on his pledge of full tariff reciprocity, that imbalance will vanish—along with the cost advantages many Indian exporters currently enjoy. Indian products will become less competitive, leading to a decline in export revenues and job losses, especially in labour-intensive industries. Critical sectors—including chemicals, metals, jewellery, automobiles and auto parts, textiles, pharmaceuticals and food products—are expected to be hit the hardest.

The impact of reciprocal tariffs also depends on their structure—specifically, which products they target and how broadly they are applied. Will tariffs be imposed on entire categories of goods, such as fruit, or specific items, such as apples, which India does not export to the US? If the tariffs apply to broad categories or single out major Indian exports such as mangoes and oranges, they could significantly restrict India’s access to the US market.

This would put India in a difficult position: negotiate an exemption or urgently seek alternative markets. While Indian officials have rushed to Washington, hoping to gauge the Trump administration’s intentions before the reciprocal tariffs kick in, it appears they have found little clarity.

Trump’s 25 percent tariff on automobile parts would undoubtedly hurt India, a major producer. But Indian exporters are no more vulnerable than their counterparts in Mexico and China. If US tariffs are applied to all countries, they will drive up costs for everyone.

The greater risk for India lies in the potential long-term impact on the US automotive industry, which relies heavily on imported parts. If Trump’s tariffs lead to a massive resurgence of domestic manufacturing and a sharp decline in imports, Indian suppliers will inevitably suffer. But such a shift would take time, and given existing wage disparities, US-made parts will likely remain more expensive than Indian imports.

With projections suggesting that lower exports could cause India’s annual GDP growth to slow significantly, Modi’s government has scrambled to placate the Trump administration with pre-emptive concessions. The 2025–26 Union budget cuts tariffs on US-made bourbon, wines and electric vehicles. Even Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a frequent point of contention for Trump, will now cost less in India.

Will that be enough to placate Trump? If the US matches India’s 10 percent tariff on US pharmaceutical imports, it could eliminate Indian manufacturers’ current cost advantage. This is no small concern, given that pharmaceutical exports to the US account for about 31 percent of India’s total exports. That reflects India’s significance as a producer of the generic drugs sold in US pharmacies. If Trump’s tariffs drive up consumer prices, would US companies start producing generic drugs domestically, potentially undermining India’s most lucrative export sector?

Then there are the unknown unknowns. Will the Trump administration impose even higher tariffs on other countries that compete with India for the US market? And if Indian exporters lose access to the US market, could they find alternative buyers?

Trump has already touted his success in dealing with India. During a recent White House briefing, he declared, ‘India charges us massive tariffs, you can’t even sell anything into India. It’s almost restrictive’. But he claimed that India had ‘agreed to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody is finally exposing them for what they have done’.

Modi’s government has been quick to downplay the perception that it yielded to US pressure. But Trump’s remarks are bound to trigger intense soul-searching among Indian policymakers. India has long used tariffs to protect its domestic industries, particularly agriculture, automobiles and electronics. Reducing tariffs could expose these industries to fierce import competition, threatening local businesses and jobs.

India’s deep-seated preference for protectionist policies, rooted in its colonial past, will not be easily abandoned. Given that tariffs also serve as a vital source of government revenue, a sudden reduction could disrupt fiscal stability, especially when India must juggle competing economic priorities, such as infrastructure investment and funding essential welfare programs.

Some concessions, of course, will be unavoidable. In the coming months, India will have little choice but to explore strategic tariff reductions in select sectors while negotiating broader trade benefits and improved access to the US market.

Admittedly, preserving India’s economic sovereignty while making meaningful concessions to maintain strong trade ties with the US will require a delicate balancing act. With the October deadline for a bilateral trade deal looming, the stakes of striking the right balance could not be higher.

India has arrived

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the first official foreign visit of the commission in her second term would be to India. On the same day, Marco Rubio held his first bilateral meeting as US Secretary of State with India’s minister of external affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Washington last week confirmed his country’s rising international profile. The visit ended with the promise of what Modi called a United States-India ‘mega partnership’. As part of that partnership, he has committed to double trade with the US by 2030, increase oil and gas imports and expand US military sales to India.

India is the world’s most populous country, home to more than 1.4 billion people with a median age of 29.8 years, compared to 38.9 in the United States, 40.2 in China and 44.5 in the European Union. This massive and relatively young population, together with a large and fast-growing information and communications technology sector, is supporting an economic boom: India is now the fastest-growing major economy, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting a 6.5 percent increase in GDP this year. India is expected to overtake Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030.

Despite its vast potential, India has long been overlooked by the West, both economically and geopolitically. But a fundamental global realignment is now underway. The US’s unipolar moment has given way to an era of great-power competition that, unlike during the Cold War, features demands by emerging and developing economies for a more inclusive and representative multilateral system. In this multipolar age, both the US and Europe see India—a neutral foreign-policy actor and dynamic emerging economy—as vital to the future of their strategic priorities.

A founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, India has plenty of experience navigating precarious moments in world affairs. During the Cold War, it skilfully balanced its policies toward the US and the Soviet Union. When it engaged with the Soviet Union—from which it received considerable military assistance—it calibrated its approach to offset US support of Pakistan, without taking sides in the great-power competition.

India has since maintained this pragmatic balancing act, adapting its foreign policy to a shifting geopolitical landscape. Today, that means recognising its potential to shape global affairs, including by playing a leading role in building an efficient, realistic and inclusive multilateralism.

This is reflected in Modi’s pursuit of a more assertive, internationalist foreign policy. Beyond building new partnerships and strengthening old ones, Modi has sought to increase India’s influence in traditional and emerging multilateral fora. In 2023 alone, India held the presidency of both the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (a Chinese creation, comprising nine Middle Eastern and Asian countries).

Moreover, India plays a leading role in the BRICS, which, in addition to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, now includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. India’s approach to the BRICS is characteristically nuanced: whereas Russia and, to a significant extent, China see themselves as disruptors of the existing order, India views itself as a reformer. This enables it to maintain strategic flexibility as it advances its economic and diplomatic interests.

India’s relationship with China is complicated by other factors. While the countries work together in some fora, they are also locked in protracted territorial disputes and a competition for leadership in the so-called Global South. And India’s growing global clout—including its appeal to Western powers—stems in large part from its ability to act as a counterweight to China. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor was designed as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and reflects India’s centrality to global supply chains.

India is also indispensable to the Quad alliance with Australia, Japan and the US—a grouping that is officially focused on maritime security and economic cooperation, though its members clearly seek to provide a buffer against China in the Indo-Pacific region. It is thanks to India—a rising ‘Southern’ power—that the Quad is not viewed as just another Western vehicle.

Modi has sought to bolster India’s Southern credentials, including by highlighting its status as the ‘mother of democracy’. By framing democracy as intrinsic to Indian civilisation, rather than a colonial legacy, he has aligned India with the middle powers that are now seeking to redefine global governance on their own terms.

To be sure, India has experienced a decisive shift since Modi became prime minister in 2014. He has moved India away from the secular and pluralistic values that had flourished after independence, in favour of an assertive Hindu nationalism. So many international indices have downgraded India’s democratic status that he is now seeking to create his own.

But Modi—the second leader of independent India (after Jawaharlal Nehru) to be elected to three consecutive terms—remains a dominant force in Indian politics, as recent regional election results affirmed. And at a time of rapid geopolitical change, he is committed to leveraging his position, and India’s profound strengths, to turn India into a global player.

India has long had the potential to be an active shaper of international affairs. It has now arrived.

The Quad foreign ministers joint statement: short and sweet

Today’s joint statement from the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington is short and sweet, particularly for those who have been arguing that the grouping should overtly embrace security cooperation.

The statement’s emphasis on ‘security in all domains’ is a noteworthy and welcome shift from the previous, awkward position that the Quad was not a security partnership, despite working together in health security, cybersecurity and maritime security.

This inherent contradiction was unnecessarily self-limiting and confusing but persisted because Quad members, including Australia, saw this self-constraint as necessary to assuage Southeast Asian sensitivities about counterbalancing or containing China.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should update its official description of the Quad, which is currently a ‘a diplomatic, not security, partnership’.

Also absent from the statement is any reference to ‘ASEAN centrality’. This is notable because past Quad statements have all dutifully replicated this diplomatic deference to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This ellipsis is an early indication that the Trump administration does not intend to pursue cooperation through the Quad only at a pace that is comfortable for Southeast Asian countries. In fact, ASEAN doesn’t appear to register at all as a policy concern among some members of Trump’s cabinet line-up.

While China is not named either, a joint commitment to ‘oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion’ leaves little doubt that Beijing is the Quad’s common challenge. A subsequent reference to ‘strengthening regional maritime, economic and technology security in the face of increasing threats’ should remove any remaining doubt. Beijing will inevitably react to such bluntness. But the Quad’s belated embrace of security cooperation is welcome. After all, security is a public good just like other elements of the Quad’s agenda, and something which the four countries should openly aspire to strengthen, without fear of offending others in the region.

Defence cooperation is not mentioned directly in the joint statement as part of the Quad’s security agenda. But it is strongly hinted in the commitment that ‘rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty, and territorial integrity’ should be ‘upheld and defended’ in the Indo-Pacific. (Note ‘defended’.) The Quad navies already exercise together in the annual Malabar drills. It is likely that a military dimension to four-way cooperation will now develop within the Quad, not only in unwarlike activities as disaster relief but also focused on deterrence. This should not dilute the Quad’s collaborative agenda in other policy fields, such as supply chain resilience and maritime domain awareness, but rather complement it.

The fact that the Quad foreign ministers meeting was virtually Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first official activity will be read as a sign of President Trump’s willingness to back the quartet, which after all was revived in 2017 during his first term in office. This will come as a relief to Australia, India and Japan. And it underlines the Quad’s strategic utility not simply as a counterbalance to China but also as a means to anchor the US security role in the Indo-Pacific via a broad-based partnership with three of its most important regional partners, including its closest regional ally, Australia, and its most important one, Japan. India, which offers the heft as the world’s most populous country and democracy, will host the next summit of Quad leaders this year. Trump’s attendance in Delhi will be essential to maintaining the momentum.

This is a promising turn in the Quad’s fluctuating fortunes. It is tempting to inversely correlate the impact of joint statements with their length. The commendable brevity of this two-paragraph statement packs policy punches that were patently missing from some of the Quad’s recent, prolix pronouncements. When it comes to drafting joint statements, concision should be best practice: less means more.

India’s defence industry is benefiting from cooperation with France

India’s defence industry is benefiting from the country’s switch away from Russia and towards France for weapons acquisition.

India and France have cooperated on several key defence projects, such as Kalvari-class submarines, the Chetak and Cheetah helicopters and the Shakti helicopter engine. These projects involved technology transfer to India under licensed production from French companies.

Since the 1960s, Russia has been India’s primary defence partner and weapons supplier. However, India’s arms imports from Russia have fallen to a historic low. According to a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report, India’s defence imports from Russia fell from 76 percent during the 2009–13 period to 36 percent during the 2019–23 period. It marks the first time since the 1960s that less than half of India’s arms imports came from Russia.

The Russia–Ukraine war, ensuing Western sanctions on Russian entities and growing camaraderie between Russia and China have further prompted India to reduce its reliance on Russian defence exports. Additionally, India has faced significant delays in the delivery for several orders from Russia, such as the S-400 surface-to-air missile system and T-90S tanks. All of this has led to India placing no fresh orders with Russia since the beginning of the Russia–Ukraine war.

Instead, it has increased arms imports from Western countries, mainly France and the United States. France emerged as India’s second-largest defence supplier during the 2019–23 period, when 33 percent of Indian imported arms originated from France. (The US supplied 13 percent of India’s defence imports in the same period.)

Now that France has become a significant arms supplier, the Indian government is looking for possible opportunities for collaboration with it on advanced defence technologies.

French aerospace maker Safran and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation are negotiating to manufacture an engine for India’s fifth-generation fighter jet, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft Mk 2. Moreover, Safran is willing to engage in 100 percent technology transfer across various project phases, including design development, certification and production.

The project involves not only the transfer of technology to develop jet engines—usually the most technically challenging part of an aircraft—but also allows the firms to work together on advanced materials and metallurgy, which are important for making aircraft engines.

Such a partnership will give India access to technologies and industrial processes necessary for making the engines. The ability to domestically manufacture fighter engines may help the Indian Air Force to address its extreme shortage of combat squadrons.

Safran will also collaborate with India to develop helicopters that are likely to be the mainstay of the Indian Armed Forces rotorcraft fleet. The company is supporting the propulsion side of the Indian Multi-Role Helicopter program. The program aims to develop medium-lift helicopters to replace India’s Mi-17 helicopters. Safran has also agreed with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to transfer forging and casting technology for the Shakti engine, which powers the Indian state company’s Dhruv, Rudra, Light Utility and Prachand helicopters.

On the naval front, India’s Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers have signed a memorandum of understanding with France’s Naval Group to collaborate on surface ships. The collaboration will support a ship design based on the Naval Group’s Gowind class for the Indian market and friendly foreign countries.

Political reliability and longstanding defence ties make France a dependable defence partner for India. Its emergence as a significant weapons supplier is benefiting India’s defence industry by equipping it with the technology and expertise to manufacture defence products domestically.

Manmohan Singh leaves a large strategic legacy

Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, who has died aged 92, made an impressive contribution to contemporary India. As finance minister, he was the architect of the country’s economic liberalisation. As prime minister, he championed a deal with the United States on India’s nuclear energy program.

Both represented fundamental shifts in India’s direction with long-lasting effects. His apparently apolitical, academic background made him appear as a mild, risk-averse leader, but both the liberalisation and the India-US nuclear deal took India into unchartered and potentially risky waters.

Singh was born in a village in what is now Pakistan’s Punjab province. His family moved to India after the partitioning of what had been British India. Educated in Pakistan and India and later at Cambridge and Oxford—from where he received his doctorate in economics—he worked as an academic and in various policymaking institutions, including as governor of the Reserve Bank of India and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. In 1991, P V Narasimha Rao, prime minister of a newly elected Congress-led coalition government, made him minister of finance.

This led to Singh’s first and the most important contribution, his pivotal role in the opening of the Indian economy and the liberalisation process from 1991 to 1996. The drastic economic and foreign-exchange situation that the country faced—India had barely enough US dollars to pay for a couple of weeks of imports—demanded equally drastic solutions. His economic reforms changed India’s development trajectory, moving India’s economy up from the what had been derided as the Hindu growth rate to more than 7 percent a year.

Shifting the focus from the public to private sector, it was a radical change of direction. India’s new economic dynamism and its status as a rising power resulted from Singh’s policies. Also for the first time, India began to look for international economic collaboration, initiating the Look East policy to build closer linkages with dynamic Southeast Asian economies.

In 2004, a Congress-led coalition unexpectedly won power. Equally unexpectedly, the unassuming non-politician Singh was nominated as prime minister. This set the stage for his second transformative achievement, the India-US civil nuclear deal, which changed the course of India’s relationship with the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture. India had refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in 1998 had conducted nuclear tests and declared itself a nuclear power. But this required some acceptance from the US, the reigning unipolar power.

Building on initiatives by the previous government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Singh reached agreement with the US to normalise India’s civil nuclear activities. More importantly, this transformed relations with Washington. It removed India’s pariah status in the global nuclear order even if it did not remove India’s non-nuclear weapon status under the NPT. India went on to be recognised for its exceptionally clean record in nuclear non-proliferation. The civil nuclear agreement, signed in 2008, was critical in opening nuclear commerce opportunities with the rest of the world.

As prime minister, Singh recognised the need for a closer and warmer relationship with the US, for both economic and strategic reasons. He found a willing partner in US president George W Bush, who was keen to see India at the centre of Asian security order. The US and India each had an eye on China as they built this relationship.

India’s changed relationship with Australia was also a consequence. Singh, along with then prime minister Kevin Rudd, elevated the Australia-India relationship to a strategic partnership in 2009, setting the scene for strengthened relations. Though, to be fair, the modern day comprehensive partnership, including regeneration of the Quad, did not take hold until later under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, unlike Singh, visited Australia.

The Bush administration took the leadership in getting various exemptions required within the US domestic legal structure as well as the global ones at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the member countries of which seek to support nuclear non-proliferation. Neither was easy.

Singh also faced challenges, leading a disparate coalition government in the Indian parliament that included communist parties that unrelentingly opposed the deal. His own party was less than supportive, not understanding why the government had to be risked for a deal for closer ties with the US. But Singh was equally determined, reportedly threatening to step down as prime minister if his party didn’t support him; this forced the Congress party leadership to back him. The communists withdrew their support to the coalition, but the coalition, and the nuclear deal, survived.

He remained prime minister until 2014.

Singh had his share of disappointments too. The vaunted economic liberalisation hasn’t entirely dismantled the central economic and market role of the Indian government, with bureaucratic obstructionism and red tape still a serious problem. Equally, he was unable to prevent his own party from undermining his nuclear deal with a destructive nuclear liability law that negated much of the benefits of nuclear commerce that the deal promised.

But probably his biggest failure was in failing to respond forcefully to the Mumbai terror attack, when Pakistani terrorists held the city to ransom for two days. His failure led to an image of Indian impotence that no doubt led to greater support for the much more assertively nationalist turn in Indian politics.

Singh was known as the accidental prime minister, a characterisation that he appeared to like. This was both his strength and his limitation. But, as he himself asserted at his last press conference as prime minister, history will no doubt prove kinder to his record and achievements.

Manmohan Singh, born on 26 September 1932, died in Delhi on 26 December 2024.

Beijing’s online influence operations along the India–China border

The Chinese government is likely conducting influence operations on social media to covertly dispute territorial claims and denigrate authorities in India’s northeastern states.

As part of a joint investigation with Taiwanese think tank Doublethink Lab for its 2024 Foreign Influence on India’s Election Observation Project, we identified coordinated social media campaigns seeking to amplify social tensions in Manipur and criticise the Indian government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party and its policies. This occurred in the lead-up to and during the Indian general elections, when social divisions were especially heightened.

Despite Beijing publicly seeking stability with India the Chinese Communist Party will likely use other covert methods, mainly targeting Chinese-speaking diasporas, to destabilise the India-China border and pursue its territorial ambitions.

The CCP has a history of trying to exploit ethnic and political conflicts in India’s northeastern states, such as in Manipur, where Beijing has allegedly fostered instability using Myanmar-based and local terror groups. On 3 May 2023, Manipur’s latest ethnic conflict in erupted between the Meitei and the Kuki indigenous ethnic groups over a disputed affirmative action measure related to benefits for the Meitei people. According to reports, the violence resulted in 221 deaths and displaced approximately 60,000 individuals.

Our findings shows that most of the narrative had first appeared on Chinese social media platforms which then entered the Indian social media landscape through translation or AI enabled translations. This way it reached to the targeted audience, the Meitei people. Anthropologists say the Meitei people may be ethnically related to Tibetans, whose land is now part of China, but the Meitei do not speak Chinese.

Violence in Manipur became a hot topic on Chinese social media platforms and websites in early 2024, amplified by pro-CCP writers and likely inauthentic social media accounts seeking to push CCP narratives in the region. These accounts spread misleading narratives, such as ‘There is a little China in India that holds the six-star red flag, does not speak Hindi and refuses to marry Indians’ (印度有个“小中国”，举六星红旗，不说印语，拒绝和印度人通婚). Others are ‘conflict in India’s Manipur is a result of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crackdown on religious and ethnic minorities’, ‘India is running concentration camps for minorities’, and ‘Manipur has never been a part of India and the demand for independence in the state is justified.’

We also identified coordinated inauthentic accounts likely originating from China disseminating the ‘Little China in India’ narrative on Western social media platforms, such as X and YouTube. For example, one Chinese-language speaking account named jostom, created in November 2023, posted the phrase ‘Little China’ 小中国, and shared a YouTube video with the nonsensical title ‘Manipur India known as “small China” once the impact of independence on India?’

The video (which had had only around ​​2500 views at the time of writing) was uploaded on 18 March 2024 by the YouTube account Earth story, which claims to be a Chinese-language ‘popular science number [sic] on international relations that everyone can understand’. It is unclear whether the videos uploaded by the account are original content or reuploads from an account of the same name on Douyin, a short-form video app popular in China. However, some video titles are also in English, indicating that the channel’s target audience goes beyond Chinese-speaking diasporas. In addition, there are always auto-generated captions in Hindi or English when the narrator speaks in Mandarin.

The jostom X account was one of many likely inauthentic accounts spreading the Little China narrative. The latest post by jostom was on 20 April 2024. The account has only 22 followers and follows 31 accounts, and mostly shares content with Chinese landscape pictures, a common feature of Chinese propaganda. Out of 71 posts on the account, the Little China video is the only political content.

Among its 22 followers, at least six accounts appear to be inauthentic: they were created around the same date, and their profiles and posts share many similarities. For example, they are all following a similar number of accounts, and the only posts these six accounts made were on 22 or 23 July 2023.

These accounts display similar characteristics to a sophisticated subset of Spamouflage disinformation networks, which ASPI identified last year as having interfered in an Australian referendum. This network goes beyond spreading typically pro-China propaganda and is known for amplifying domestic issues in democracies. Like the accounts that targeted Australia, accounts following jostom use images of Western women to develop their personas. Their first posts are aphorisms or quotes, many of which are incomplete.

The small sample of accounts discussed above is likely part of a broader network of inauthentic accounts originating from China that has increasingly sought to interfere in India’s domestic affairs. Since 2023, social media conglomerate Meta has publicly disclosed at least two coordinated inauthentic networks targeting India and originating from China in its quarterly Adversarial Threat Reports. The first disclosure in 2023 revealed that fake accounts originating from China were criticising the Indian government and military by focusing on issues on the India-China border. The second campaign, disclosed in early 2024, was linked to the original 2023 campaign but instead targeted the global Sikh community, creating a fictitious activist movement called Operation K that called for pro-Sikh protests.

On X, many of the accounts identified by Meta in its Adversarial Threat Reports continued to operate and disseminate disinformation in the lead-up to the 2024 Indian elections. Common topics and narratives spread by these included accusing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not being concerned about the welfare of people in Manipur, amplifying protests in nearby Nagaland and fomenting dissent against the Indian government in another northeastern state, Arunachal Pradesh (see screenshot below). In some cases, accounts called for Indians to boycott the BJP over its activities in the Manipur region.

ASPI has identified some of the same accounts used for interfering in the 2024 Taiwanese elections.

The accounts appear to be copying tweets from other prominent Indian commentators rather than creating original posts. Sometimes this resulted in errors, such as the Nawal Sharma account appearing to have copied a tweet from India Daily Lives but failing to correctly copy the Hindi text while posting the same hashtags and link (see screenshot below).

The CCP’s influence operations targeting India in 2024 were mostly ineffective. However, they are part of a broader strategy to destabilise countries in their neighbourhoods. It has used similar methods to influence electoral outcomes and political narratives in Canada, Taiwan and Britain, where it has employed a combination of disinformation and covert support to influence public opinion and political results. These actions often reveal Beijing’s true intentions, such as its territorial ambitions in India’s northeastern states, and contradict its charm offensive with neighbouring states.

As the CCP resorts to more covert methods to pursue its interests, democratic countries should publicly expose these influence operations and share information on observed tactics, techniques and procedures with allies and partners. Indo-Pacific countries should consider financial sanctions against private companies or state-affiliated media conducting intelligence activities and disinformation campaigns, similar to sanctions applied to Russian disinformation actors. While it may be difficult to deter the CCP through these policy actions, it will at least impose costs on Beijing and make it more difficult to conduct these operations with impunity.

India and Philippines speak different strategic languages. Australia must be multilingual

The ‘emerging axis’ of autocratic powers epitomised by China’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine is, as Australia’s top intelligence chief Andrew Shearer recently said, one of the most troubling strategic developments today.

And just as those axis nations—which also include North Korea and Iran—have as many strategic differences as commonalities, countries such as Australia that are worried by, and looking to counter, this malign axis should understand that they’ll need to accept and work with a range of approaches from partners.

This reality was underscored by remarks made at ASPI-hosted events in recent weeks by India and the Philippines—two key regional players who are dealing with China’s assertiveness in their own ways but whom are both important partners to Australia.

First, India. The emerging giant’s stance on the axis is the more complicated. India has had a long strategic partnership with Russia, going back to the early Cold War. Yet it has an equally long history of disputes with China. This has included not just the contest over their unsettled border but also tensions stemming from Beijing’s support to Pakistan and its barely disguised efforts at undermining India on a variety of issues such as refusing to allow India to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group which governs transfers of civilian nuclear technology and material, and refusing to back India’s efforts to promote UN Security Council reforms as well as India’s quest for a seat on the Security Council.

So where does that leave India with respect to the new axis? At the Raisina Down Under summit, which ASPI co-hosted with India’s Observer Research Foundation, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar answered by explaining that the three biggest countries of the Eurasian landmass formed a strategic triangle. This was, he reminded the audience, basic geometry learnt in all schools.

It was in India’s interests, he said, that it ‘never allow two sides to come to a point where the third is utterly disadvantaged’.

‘And I would even argue going beyond that,’ he continued, ‘at a time when … Russia’s relationship with the West is very badly damaged and Russia is turning more and more towards Asia, it’s useful in Asia that we give Russia more options … The more broadly Russia is engaged by Asian countries, frankly, that will allow that much more political, diplomatic flexibility for everybody concerned.’

The implication was that it is a better Indian strategy to tolerate Russia’s aggression and lawlessness, and to engage with both Russia and China through groupings such as the BRICS—which also includes Brazil and South Africa—than leaving India’s Eurasian strategic peers to pursue their no-limits partnership unchecked and without giving Moscow some kind of off-ramp.

Jaishankar’s further implication is that this is not just in India’s interests but the broader region’s and the West’s as well. Of course, whether this undermines the rules-based order intended to protect smaller and weaker states, and whether it’s a convenient excuse for India given its reliance on Russian energy and defence equipment, are both fair questions.

Still, India’s approach can clearly offer strategic balance. Better to have India there than not, Jaishankar is effectively saying. India, he pointed out, is neither Western nor anti-Western.

Our challenge is not to pressure New Delhi to pick a side. We should remember that China represents as much or more of a military and political threat to India as it does to any other country. It’s a principal reason why New Delhi invests in relations with Canberra and Washington, and why it participates in the Quad. We also know New Delhi is genuinely concerned by Russia’s growing closeness to China and by the two authoritarian states’ ‘no limits’ partnership.

The Philippines, by comparison, is a smaller player whose main goal right now with respect to China is to preserve its sovereignty. The strategic priorities it articulates are shaped accordingly. Speaking to an ASPI audience in Melbourne just days after the Raisina event, Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr stressed the importance of calling out coercive action by China and the need for like-minded partners to do so together. There were no geometric metaphors—just a demand that the threat be clearly understood and responded to.

The Philippines has its own backstory: a treaty ally of the United States against both the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, and a more recent history in which the mercurial leader Rodrigo Duterte harmed his countries’ interests by trying unsuccessfully to find a modus vivendi with Beijing.

Despite the different approaches, these are both very important partners to Australia. It’s worth noting their common strategic assessments and their emphasis on collective action. We know that limiting our reading of strategic challenges to ‘major power competition’ is wrong. Collaboration among regional powers, including smaller ones, is critical to what Foreign Minister Penny Wong calls ‘strengthening influence, leverage and sovereignty’.

Australia and likeminded countries such as the US and Japan need to assure India, the Philippines and others in the region—with all their varied approaches to the China challenge and the growing axis—that it is in their interests and the region’s to work with us.

The foundation is mutual interest rather than strategic altruism, as Ashley Tellis once characterised it. This doesn’t make it transactional however. Rather it is based on core principles of territorial integrity, democratic sovereignty, individual freedoms and national security. It might be useful for all sides to acknowledge this.