By Prashanth Parameswaran
Australia, however, will reportedly be left out.
On June 30, The Indian Express reported that Japan would be participating in this year’s Exercise MALABAR, which initially began as a bilateral naval exercise between the United States and India back in 1992.
The report cited unnamed sources as saying that this was confirmed at the seventh U.S.-India-Japan trilateral dialogue held in Honolulu last Friday.
If so, that would be a significant though not entirely surprising development. Although Japan has participated previously in three iterations of the exercises – in 2007, 2009 and 2014 – media reports had earlier indicated that its involvement this year was not confirmed. New Delhi has previously been anxious about how China would react to efforts to expand the bilateral exercises. When the 2007 edition of the exercises in the Bay of Bengal were expanded to include Japan and Australia, Beijing lashed out at what looked like the so-called quadrilateral security dialogue or ‘quad’ between the United States, Australia, Japan and India operating at sea. As such, while India had included Japan in the 2009 and 2014 exercises held in the north-western Pacific, it was unclear whether Tokyo would be invited to the 2015 version back in the Bay of Bengal as well. But if the report about the confirmation is to be believed, the issue of Japan’s involvement this year is now resolved.
Read the full story at The Diplomat