India, explained.
General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, left, during a 2023 visit to Australia (Rodney Braithwaite/Defence Department)
It’s a good time for Canberra to reassess military cooperation with Islamabad given limited influence and competing Indo-Pacific priorities.
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India’s concern could reshape Australia's Pakistan defence tiesIndia’s concern could reshape Australia's Pakistan defence ties
When Richard Marles meets counterparts in India this week, he is nearly certain to hear a particular request: to wind down Australian defence cooperation with Pakistan. New Delhi holds Islamabad responsible for enabling, if not directing, the 22 April terrorist attack against civilians in Kashmir.
Australia’s relationship with Pakistan matters, and managing it is a sovereign prerogative. But Marles must recognise New Delhi’s long frustration with cross-border terrorism, the limits of Australia’s influence in Islamabad, and Australia’s numerous competing priorities in the Indo-Pacific. A modest recalibration may be in order.
Analysts can reasonably debate the merits of India’s response to the 22 April attack. New Delhi’s grounds to attribute it to Islamabad, and build international support for its response, would have been more persuasive if it had presented material evidence – difficult as it is to prove covert links between governments and non-state groups.
Destroying terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan appears resolute but typically won’t degrade terrorist capabilities in the long term. Cheap structures can be rebuilt after they’re hit with expensive munitions. And the strikes that unfolded last month would hardly have been a surprise to terrorist leaders, who would have sought shelter in anticipation.
Of course, while India’s targets were terrorists, its audience was Pakistan, which responded to the violation of its sovereignty with force of its own. India has now set increasingly stronger public expectations for muscular responses to terrorism that will be hard to dial down when – not if – the next attack occurs.
Setting these legitimate debates aside, few credible analysts doubt Pakistan’s long history of benefitting from terrorism. Australians who deployed on operations in Afghanistan are intimately familiar with the problem.
No defence organisation likes to cede influence in a country whose importance to Australia may grow again. It’s easier to hold ground than seize it.
So are Indians. Most of those responsible for horrific terrorism in India, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks, were based in Pakistan, supported by elements of its military and well-known non-state groups.
New Delhi has sought for decades to conceive responses to a Pakistani state that sees proxies as a viable means to pursue its interests at India’s expense without necessarily provoking war. Kashmiris and other civilians pay the price. From India’s perspective, international responses to the problem have been lukewarm.
Pakistan still matters to Australia. It’s a nuclear-armed state bordering two other nuclear states. It contributes and leads missions that Australia supports, including UN peacekeeping and counter-piracy patrols. It is presumably an important hub for Australia to monitor trends in transnational militant Islamism.
Defence cooperation specifically takes on heightened importance with Islamabad because of the extent to which Pakistan’s coup-prone military dominates politics. Defence diplomacy supports broader bilateral ties in any context but becomes crucial in an environment like Pakistan.
Australian Defence Force personnel go through border security after returning from Afghanistan (Jesse Kane/Defence Department)
The two sides conduct counterterrorism training and military educational exchanges, for example. The latter are an important means of building personal relationships that pay off as military leaders progress to more senior levels. They’re underpinned by a desire to expose foreign officers to Australia and its institutions. This is seen to build goodwill and expose counterparts to Australia’s conceptions of security, healthy civil-military relations and human rights.
However, Australia needs to be clear-eyed about which interests and relationships it must protect, weighed against those it would be nice to preserve. This can be tough, because no defence organisation likes to cede influence in a country whose importance to Australia may grow again. It’s easier to hold ground than seize it.
That said, Canberra should be realistic about the extent to which it might influence Pakistan’s military and strategic culture – which is shaped by deeply embedded sense of vulnerability in the face of India’s rise, and a long history of benefitting from militant Islamism. Islamabad has far more incentive to listen to its neighbour and close partner China than it does to Australia.
Offering Pakistani military students postgraduate degree programs or hosting mid-career military delegations won’t build much influence in Pakistan’s more than half-a-million strong defence system. But it could go a long way in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, both of which are higher strategic priorities for Australia.
Australia is competing for influence in a crowded Indo-Pacific. It faces a less-certain ally in the United States and ever greater friction in its strategic environment. And it has precious little time, or resources, to waste.
Australia can’t be everywhere, all at once. Perhaps now is time for a rethink.
About the author
Kim Heriot-Darragh
Kim Heriot-Darragh is a Research Fellow at the Australia India Institute.
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