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The American aircraft carrier USS Nimitz leads a formation of ships from the Indian navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the US Navy in the 2017 Malabar exercises. Photo: AFP

Malabar naval drills: it’s Australia, India, the US and Japan challenging China, analysts say

  • The addition of Canberra to the annual exercises is seen as reflecting a growing clamour for a united front amid concerns over Beijing’s maritime ambitions
  • The same four countries make up the Quad security alliance, and India’s invitation to Australia comes as they manage increasingly antagonistic relations with China
India
The addition of Australia to India’s Malabar naval exercises with the United States and Japan reflects a growing clamour for a united front to challenge China, analysts say, amid concerns in the Pacific about Beijing’s maritime ambitions.

The expanded drills mark a major upgrade in military cooperation between Canberra and New Delhi since the 2017 resumption of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad” – which is composed of the same four countries – after a decade-long hiatus, and comes as Australia and India manage increasingly antagonistic relations with Beijing.

New Delhi on Monday invited Canberra to next month’s Malabar exercises following repeated requests from Canberra and lobbying by Washington and Tokyo. The South Asian nation, which has traditionally followed a policy of non-alignment, had knocked back previous requests by Australia to join out of reported concern for its relations with China.

Will closer India-Australia ties boost Indo-Pacific ‘Quad’ group that has China in its sights?

“There’s one common factor here – and it’s not hard to discern what it is – that is driving these countries that would otherwise not be looking to work more closely together to all of a sudden overcome their reluctance, their uncertainty and their unease to double down on making this arrangement work,” said John Blaxland, professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

“China has to a large extent brought this on itself,” Blaxland said. “Its ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, its unwillingness to negotiate on the South China Sea, its assertiveness across the Indian Ocean, and its assertiveness in the South Pacific have all raised considerable unease and have undermined popular views of China.”

James Goldrick, a former two-star rear admiral in the Royal Australian Navy, echoed Blaxland’s sentiments.

“The reality is that where relationships like the Quad and other forms of regional partnership go will depend directly on the trajectory of China’s behaviour,” he said. “If China continues on its present path, then I believe that [nations in the region] will look to ways to work together to present united fronts on matters where they share vital interests and when those interests appear to be threatened.”

The Quad, envisaged as a “democratic security diamond” by Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe, held just one round of dialogue and joint exercises in its initial incarnation in 2007 before Canberra backed out to shore up ties with Beijing, its largest trading partner.

But the grouping relaunched in 2017 as China’s territorial claims and military build-up in the South China Sea spurred calls for greater pushback and coordination among other regional powers. Beijing lays claim to more than 80 per cent of the strategic waterway, which holds extensive gas and oil reserves and through which passes an estimated third of global shipping.

As Beijing ups the ante, hopes for improved Australia-China relations dashed

Although Beijing has yet to comment on the expansion of the exercises, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in 2018 dismissed the Quad as a “headline-grabbing” concept that would dissipate like “sea foam”.

Australian foreign minister Marise Payne on Monday said the expanded exercises would bolster the ability of the four countries to “work together to uphold peace and stability across our region”.

India’s Ministry of Defence in a statement said the participants were cooperating to “enhance safety and security in the maritime domain”, and that they supported a “free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific” and a “rules-based international order”.

Although neither country mentioned China by name in announcing the expanded Malabar exercise, Australia and India have both seen their relations with Beijing spiral in recent months over issues not directly related to maritime claims.

Canberra and Beijing have locked horns over trade, the Covid-19 pandemic, allegations of espionage, and the national security law in Hong Kong, while New Delhi and Beijing have since May been locked in a tense stand-off along their disputed Himalayan border that has seen deadly clashes between troops.
Ships from the Indian navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and US Navy get into formation for a gunnery live-fire exercise in the Bay of Bengal as part of Malabar 2015. Photo: AFP

In June, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the beginning of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” focused on increased cooperation in areas including defence, education and trade.

Lalit Kapur, a retired commodore in the Indian Navy and senior fellow with the Delhi Policy Group, described the expanded drills as a “positive for India, Australia and the region”.

“It is perhaps a bit late in the day to challenge China over its maritime claims in the South China Sea,” Kapur said. “Those gains, in my opinion, are a fait accompli that cannot be rolled back without major conflict, which no one wants. There is, however, a need to constrain China’s ability to make further gains and to impose its coercive ways in the Indian Ocean, to bring home to China that a continued thrust in this direction will generate unacceptable costs.”

But Kapur said the Quad would need to do more if it wanted to deter Beijing from expanding its territorial claims.

“An annual exercise like Malabar does lay the foundations for synergy and coordinated action, useful for deterrence signalling – but just as an annual exercise cannot be enough to judge national preparedness, much more will need to be done to convert Malabar into dominant combat capability,” he said.

Goldrick, the former Australian Navy admiral, said the expansion of the Malabar exercises was significant, but more so in terms of the symbolism of cooperation between countries wary of China than the “practical benefits of interoperability”.

“The latter will certainly be a result, but the existing, and developing, web of bilateral and trilateral activities – including sophisticated bilateral Indo-Australian naval exercises – is building this [interoperability] already,” he said.

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