India joins French-led naval exercise, revealing clues about Quad’s plans to contain China in Indo-Pacific
- The three-day La Perouse exercise in the Bay of Bengal will also include the United States, Japan and Australia
- Beijing has criticised the Quad as an ‘Indo-Pacific Nato’, and analysts say Asean countries would be wary of the alliance but remain open to bilateral engagement with individual members
All four nations took part in the India-led Malabar exercises last November but adding France, which will lead the naval exercises, makes it a “Quad-plus” exercise that the four countries could use as a blueprint for further cooperation with countries, analysts said. The previous La Perouse exercise in 2019 led by France featured Australia, Japan and the US but not India.
This comes just two days after the US Defence Secretary said that the efforts of the Quad countries were important “in countering the malign influence of China in the region”.
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Collin Koh Swee Lean, a Research Fellow at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies’ (RSIS) Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said the exercise would be “definitely significant” if the countries decided to make it a regular event.
“If this exercise pulls off well, it might become an encouraging sign for other non-Quad regional countries to consider similar cooperative activities with the Quad,” Koh said.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the French embassy in India called the exercise a “large-scale five-country exercise” and said it would “provide an opportunity for these five like-minded, high-end naval forces to develop closer links, sharpen their skills and promote maritime cooperation throughout a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
Yogesh Joshi, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, said it would send a signal to Beijing that “if all other major states are calling out China’s behaviour or aligning [themselves] to deter China’s assertiveness, then there must be something wrong with China’s behaviour in the first place”.