India shares challenges that led to AUKUS formation: Oz envoy
NEW DELHI: India shares the “challenging strategic environment” that prompted Australia’s move to forge a security alliance with the US and the UK, including territorial tensions across the Indo-pacific and China’s massive military modernisation programme, Australian high commissioner Barry O’farrell said on Friday.
The new military partnership called AUKUS will help improve Australia’s capabilities in line with the country’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update and will not affect the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, which is more of a diplomatic forum, O’farrell said during a virtual media briefing.
AUKUS was unveiled by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and US President Joe Biden against the backdrop of China’s assertive actions across the Indo-pacific, and its first initiative is aimed at equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.
India has chosen to maintain a
studied silence on the new alliance, apparently due to sensitivities related to the strategic situation in the region and ties with key partners. France, a key strategic ally for India, was angered by Australia’s decision to scrap a $90 billion programme to build 12 French-designed conventional submarines and instead opt for nuclear-powered vessels.
Explaining the rationale behind AUKUS, O’farrell said: “The decision reflects a much more challenging strategic environment, an environment we share with India, where great power competition is intensifying, where territorial tensions in the South China Sea, Taiwan and elsewhere are becoming more challenging.”
He said: “Indo-pacific investment in military capability is proceeding at an unprecedented rate and of course that latter point is being driven by China, which has the largest military modernisation programme underway in the world.”
AUKUS is also about “ensuring we have capabilities that contribute, along with India and other countries, to deterring the types of behaviour that threatens the peace and security in the Indopacific today and in the future”, he added.
Amid reports that the new alliance was aimed at balancing China across the region, especially in light of Beijing’s aggressive actions in recent years, O’farrell noted that AUKUS was not directed against any particular country or meant “to provoke any particular regional power”. It was, he said, based on a “sober assessment of the capability required to meet a more challenging strategic environment”.
O’farrell dismissed Beijing’s criticism of AUKUS, saying China itself is engaged in “one of the largest militarisation updates in history”, and “it did strike me as slightly odd that they would criticise another country for investing in increased capability”.