Australia’s churn in the Indo-Pacific with India and Indonesia

The shared vision for a free, open, rules-based, and inclusive Indo-Pacific brings Australia, India, and Indonesia together. Being democracies and maritime powers with overwhelmingly large coastlines, the three countries are natural partners. Australia and India have just inaugurated a ‘2+2’ Dialogue of foreign and defence ministers on September 11. Meanwhile, Indonesia and Australia have conducted seven ‘2+2’ ministerials so far since 2012.

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The mutual interaction between these countries has improved over the years. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton are on a visit to New Delhi, the Indian capital, from 10-12 September 2021, with the main point of agenda being the commencement of the annual ministerial-level consultations, taking the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to the next level. They are on a four-country Indo-Pacific tour, spread over two weeks that began on September 9, with their first leg being Jakarta, the Indonesian capital where the headquarters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is also located. The Australian minister-duo will be heading to South Korea and the United States after concluding their India visit.

Looking back on Australia-India ties

2021 has been the fourth year since India and Australia recalibrated their ties in the second avatar of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad 2.0 that came into being in 2017. Last year witnessed several landmark moments in India-Australia relations. Australian PM Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi held a virtual summit in June, followed by the elevation of bilateral ties to a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ and the signing of a naval interoperability pact called the ‘Mutual Logistics Support Agreement’ (MLSA) to access each other’s bases and reciprocal use of each other’s military facilities, including refuelling and repair. Both leaders also agreed on a ‘Shared Vision for Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific’ in 2020. The year also saw Australia returning to Exercise Malabar after 13 years, accepting India’s invitation, and both countries participated in the drills for two consecutive years – 2020 and 2021 – along with Japan and the United States. Shared concerns on the disruptive rise of China in the past few years have also brought Australia closer to India.

Australia and India have joined hands with Japan for a Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) last year for the diversification of supply chain risks across a group of supplying nations instead of being dependent on just one or a few and for ensuring the free flow of goods, apparently with China in mind, with which both countries have deep-rooted economic and trade links. Both India and Australia are victims of Beijing’s bullying in different arenas. If territorial disputes with China form a major part of Indian security concerns, for Australia it is the trade and tariffs-related tensions. Both countries are also apprehensive of Chinese telecom companies and their technological edge, particularly regarding 5G trials and rollout.

Australia was the first country in the world to ban Chinese firms of next-generation technology Huawei and ZTE from 5G trials due to the alleged links of these companies with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which if allowed could’ve been used against Australia’s national security interests one day, capitalising on increased tensions between the two countries. Under Chinese law, companies that operate in Chinese territory are obligated to co-operate with the country’s intelligence services. With China upping the ante in the Himalayan frontiers with India that resulted in a bloody skirmish in eastern Ladakh in June last year, New Delhi has also taken similar steps like the banning of Chinese mobile applications and not permitting Chinese firms from participating in the 5G trials in India.

In a subtle reference to China while addressing an event organised by an Indian think-tank during the recently-concluded visit to India, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said that Canberra seeks a region in which the rights of all states, large and small, are respected with a strategic balance, in which ‘no single dominant power dictates outcomes for others’. Today, India-Australia ties cover a wide range of areas that goes beyond maritime security and defence cooperation such as science and technology research, economic and multilateral cooperation, innovation and entrepreneurship, agriculture and water resources management, education, culture, tourism and people-to-people ties.

Looking back on Australia-Indonesia ties

The Indonesian archipelago lies to the north and northwest of Australia. Both countries are immediate maritime neighbours and touch upon both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The governments of Indonesia and Australia have held seven ‘2+2’ Ministerial Dialogues so far. In the recently concluded such dialogue, issues that were discussed include defence cooperation, the pandemic, the situation in Myanmar, an ASEAN member-nation, and also the regime change in Afghanistan.

Notably, both countries have enhanced their military-level cooperation in the recent ‘2+2’ meet with the joint decision to renew the defence cooperation arrangement (DCA) that was agreed in 2012. With a new framework, Indonesian defence personnel will be trained in Australian military academies, along with their Australian counterparts, for the very first time. Soon, it is expected that both militaries would conduct joint military exercises in Australian soil, along with maritime drills.

Indonesia and Australia have crossed the milestone of 70 years of diplomatic ties just last year and their cooperation in counter-terrorism operations have improved considerably from the early 2000s, particularly in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings that also included Australian victims, but it followed a brief period of strained ties owing to Indonesia’s intervention in East Timor and its alleged military excesses and spying.

In 2006, both countries signed the landmark Lombok Treaty, named after an Indonesian island lying east of Bali, which set out a ‘Framework for Security Cooperation’ that covered both traditional and non-traditional challenges to security. This commitment was reiterated in 2014 with the signing of a Joint Understanding on a code of conduct on the same between the two countries. Even though there have been ups and downs on their ties, both countries have been conducting ‘2+2’ ministerial-level consultations annually since 2012. Indonesia and Australia have signed a Joint Declaration on Maritime Cooperation in 2017 that took their ties to the next level, and in the following year it was elevated to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

While Indonesia represents the ‘ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific’ that distances itself from great power rivalries, Australia is one of the four partners in the Quad, which accepts the centrality of ASEAN as essential for their conceptualisation of the Indo-Pacific. Even though balancing Chinese assertion is one of the non-explicit objectives of the Quad in which Australia is part of, as evident from Exercise Malabar, Indonesia seems least concerned with antagonizing China. In fact, Jakarta is a key participant of China-sponsored Maritime Silk Road, a key component of Beijing’s trillion-dollar project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

However, these differences have not prevented the both countries from cooperating in the realms of military, diplomatic, economic and maritime cooperation. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has said in the latest ‘2+2’ Dialogue with her Indonesian counterpart that Canberra welcomes a ‘healthy competition’ based on rules and norms, on a ‘level-playing field’, rather than the one that risks sliding into a conflict. However, she played down the need for direct ASEAN-Quad consultations.

An emerging trilateral and the way ahead

The emerging Australia-India-Indonesia trilateral sheds light on the Asia-Pacific’s evolving mini-lateralism and a multipolar order that has its beginnings in 2017 with the Senior Officials’ Strategic Dialogue held in Bogor, Indonesia, with the three countries participating. Further such meetings were followed in Canberra in 2018 and New Delhi in 2019. As the US-China great power rivalry continues to take a new shape, this trilateral of the three maritime middle-powers would further enrich multilateralism and the overall regional architecture in the Indo-Pacific.

Common interests that bind Australia, India, and Indonesia include a rules-based, free, and inclusive maritime order in the region, and the respect for international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). The Australia-India-Indonesia trilateral could also complement the Quad and other trilaterals and minilaterals in the region such as the Australia-India-Japan and the Australia-France-India groupings. India’s ‘Act East’ policy, Australia’s ‘Pacific Step-Up’ policy, and Indonesia’s ‘Global Maritime Fulcrum’ policy are well-capable of effectively finding strategic convergence with each other.

Bejoy Sebastian
Bejoy Sebastian
Bejoy Sebastian writes on the contemporary geopolitics and regionalism in eastern Asia and the Indo-Pacific. His articles and commentaries have appeared in Delhi Post (India), The Kochi Post (India), The Diplomat (United States), and The Financial Express (India). Some of his articles were re-published by The Asian Age (Bangladesh), The Cambodia Daily, the BRICS Information Portal, and the Peace Economy Project (United States). He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi, where he acquired a post-graduate diploma in English journalism. He has qualified the Indian University Grants Commission's National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) for teaching International Relations in Indian higher educational institutions in 2022. He holds a Master's degree in Politics and International Relations with first rank from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, Kerala, India. He was attached to the headquarters of the Ministry of External Affairs (Government of India) in New Delhi as a research intern in 2021 and has also worked as a Teaching Assistant at FLAME University in Pune, India, for a brief while.