By Rory Medcalf
A serious strategic partnership between Australia and India has long been a missing link in the security architecture of Indo-Pacific Asia. Now the gap is at last being filled, if a high-level visit this week is anything to go by.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr was in New Delhi on January 21st and 22nd, to follow up the visit by Prime Minister Julia Gillard last October, which itself had heralded a breakthrough in ties between these two Indian Ocean democracies. Carr’s talks with his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid had a strong security focus.
During the Cold War these were two democracies were estranged by the Western-Soviet divide. From the 1970s until recently, India's isolation by the nuclear non-proliferation regime prolonged mistrust between New Delhi and Canberra, long a self-styled anti-nuclear white knight.
Yet with a raft of growing shared security concerns ranging from the rise of China to transnational maritime issues and the scourge of jihadist terrorism, and with rapidly deepening economic and societal links, the logic of closer ties between Australia and India is now clear. Australia is now a major energy exporter to India's voracious economy, and Indian migration and investment is now helping sustain Australia’s own economic success.
Read the full story at The Diplomat