STUDY PAPER - Australia and India: From Estrangement to Convergence

While a variety of domestic development and shifts in the strategic dynamics in the Indo-Pacific have contributed to this trajectory, shared concerns over the rise of China and its implications have been the primary factor driving the contemporary degree of strategic convergence between Australia and India, including in the framework of the Quad. [...] The intensification of shared concerns regarding China between the Quad members and a more open willingness and capacity to push back against Chinese conduct marks a significant shift in comparison to the Quad that was initially established in 2004 in response to the tsunami in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans (Envall, 2019). [...] In the strategic discourse of all Quad members, the concept of the Indo-Pacific has replaced the Asia- Pacific as the dominant discursive tool to describe the geographical scope of the Quad and its partnership(s). [...] The Malabar Exercise, initially held by India and the United States, has now come to incorporate Australia and Japan, and seeks to boost the interoperability of the naval forces of the four members in regard to MDA capacities, anti- piracy operations, and the coordination and implementation of HADR missions (Rajagopalan, 2021). [...] Playing on both the strategic convergence, a (mostly) shared vision of regional order, and the complementarities between the national economies, the ties between Australia and India are likely to emerge as one of the most crucial connections between major economies in the Indo-Pacific in the years to come.