Australia and India must understand each other better if they want to turn their defence relationship into something truly resilient and responsive. High-end cooperation doesn’t happen overnight. It comes with persistence.
Meaningful signs of progress in a defence relationship can be subtle. Commentators note the frequency of military exercises, and tally senior leader visits. They monitor what agreements are signed and what spokespeople say.
Those are all important, but they don’t tell the full story. Exercises can be frequent but superficial. So can meetings between senior leaders. Officials might sign agreements that send useful public signals but incur few meaningful obligations to cooperate.
Some of the best signs of progress are hard to quantify but demonstrate trust. It’s exemplified by an Indian general who, confronted by a new security challenge, thinks highly enough of his or her Australian counterparts to confer with them about it at short notice.
Organic, working-level cooperation is at least as important. An Australian Petty Officer monitoring Indian Ocean traffic should be able to immediately compare notes with Indian colleagues over a secure line when he or she notices something of interest.
The biggest challenge in bringing such scenarios to fruition isn’t creating personal rapport, or establishing secure communications infrastructure, or even navigating bureaucratic and security rules (though each of these matters).
There are still those in Australia who, shaped by decades of habit, underestimate India’s relevance to core Australian interests, including in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
The real work lies in creating a culture where people on both sides think to call each other unprompted in the first place. For this, they need to value each other’s contributions and expertise – and build familiarity through persistent interaction.
The two partners are well on their way at the military-to-military level. Connection is built through consistent interactions in combined training, expert exchanges and by sending students to learn at each other’s defence colleges. All of this is occurring.
However, we argue in our recent report for the Australia India Institute that their focus should now go beyond short-lived exercises and coursework, and increasingly be on embedding officers in each other’s commands.
Australia should host an Indian armed forces officer to serve at its Headquarters Joint Operations Command, which would facilitate fast information sharing and lay the foundations enabling both countries to respond quickly to short-notice operational requirements.
Australia and India can also better nurture connections among personnel who studied together at defence colleges in both countries. Rules governing contact with foreign officials needn’t dampen relationships if the right forums exist. Australia’s alumni network with Indonesia, Ikahan, offers a useful model.
And Australia and India could consider how to better harness expertise about each other from within their ranks. Canberra could ensure that some staff posted to New Delhi have prior experience in India, such as having graduated from its Defence Services Staff College, and on their return, consider how best to leverage their expertise.
Efforts beyond the uniformed military side are required too. There are still those in Australia who, shaped by decades of habit, underestimate India’s relevance to core Australian interests, including in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Pockets of the Indian system remain sceptical too, seeing Australia as a relatively small partner.
Defence organisations can’t address this alone. But they can complement their governments’ broader support for academic and research engagement. For example, they can exchange instructors at each other’s strategic defence courses (National Defence College in India, and Australia’s Defence and Strategic Studies course).
Exchanging instructors (who may be military officers or civilian academics or officials) would help not just demystify strategic culture on both sides, but also add important perspectives at local universities, where they should be made available to engage students.
From Australia’s perspective, an official posting to New Delhi confronts a system many times bigger than their own. Its defence ministry alone has five departments, informed by complex civil-military relations, and nuanced relationships with other agencies across government.
It also operates in a political and security environment whose nuances aren’t easily accessible to those without prior training or experience. Hindi proficiency can matter more than some Australians may appreciate, as does broader South Asia expertise.
Among other steps, Australia could offer three months of basic Hindi language and cultural training for Defence personnel posting to India if they are not already proficient, while also building a register of linguists and India specialists to encourage continuous investment in language and country expertise.
Finally, there should be closer links between civilian defence officials – not just uniformed personnel. Indian defence civil servants have limited opportunities to interact with their Australian counterparts, despite both wielding significant influence over defence policy.
Australia could host Indian civilian officials to cooperate on defined projects on short-term postings. Seconding an Indian official who works with Australian colleagues to strengthen defence industry cooperation between both countries would be an excellent start.
Top-down leadership from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and successive Australian prime ministers has set Australia-India defence ties on an ambitious path. Defence organisations on both sides should now be setting the conditions for something more organic and self-sustaining.
