The COVID-19 pandemic, U.S.-China tensions and a shared concern about China’s growing influence provide an opportunity for India and Australia to deepen their security engagement. Since 2014, they have stepped up security cooperation to include annual strategic dialogues, regular interaction between their two militaries and intelligence sharing between the two militaries and intelligence sharing on counter-terrorism issues. This cooperation can be taken forward to include:
- Defence technology cooperation: While there are limited opportunities for India and Australia defence trade, they can work on developing defence technologies, required by both countries’ militaries, such as technologies related to sensors, propulsion and nano-materials. They can work jointly on their development by combining the experience of government defence research laboratories and the efficiency of the private sector. This will also benefit the domestic defence industrial base in both countries. India also needs to learn from Australian examples, like the Australian Marine Complex’s Common User Facility at Henderson, near Perth, which offers integrated fabrication and assembly facility infrastructure for its shipbuilding industry – not just defence, but also for oil and gas and ocean mining.
- Cybersecurity for the Indo-Pacific: India is actively cooperating with countries in the region for cyber capacity building programmes. This cyber diplomacy aligns well with Australia’s cyber cooperation programme, under which Canberra helps Indo-Pacific countries in capacity building on cybercrime prevention and prosecution. The scope of the India and Australia Cyber Policy Dialogue can be expanded to reflect these initiatives and focus on creating resilient and safe cyberspace for the Indo-Pacific.
- Foreign investment in critical infrastructure: Recently, India has revised the foreign investment norms to prevent opportunistic takeovers of firms hit by the lockdown induced by the COVID-19 outbreak. Australia has put in place a reasonably robust mechanism to protect its critical infrastructure sectors from foreign interference. Given Canberra’s extensive experience in this domain, it can be another area of bilateral cooperation to understand the national security risks of foreign investments – espionage, sabotage and foreign interference in sectors of telecommunications, electricity, gas, water and ports.
- Quadrilateral Security Initiative: Given the synergies and strengths of the four countries involved, a case definitely be made to expand Quad’s focus from military to non-military but strategic issues – cybersecurity, counter-terrorism and technology including next-generation mobile communication and data transfer standards.