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The effect of AUKUS on India’s foreign and defence policies
In September 2021, India greeted the news that Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States had formed ‘AUKUS’ – a security partnership focusing on the Indo-Pacific – coolly. This is despite it improving its diplomatic and security engagements with each of these countries since 2017, when Sino-India relations soured after an armed stand-off over a long-standing border dispute. New Delhi is particularly concerned that AUKUS may cause an increase in the number of nuclear-powered attack submarines operating in the eastern Indian Ocean from the 2030s onwards, an issue aggravated by the fact that the Indian Navy would like to acquire these types of vessels but currently does not have a clear plan to do so.
In 2017, relations between China and India worsened after an armed stand-off relating to a long-standing border dispute. This was an important factor in New Delhi’s decision later the same year to participate in a revived and upgraded version of the quadrilateral dialogue with Australia, Japan and the United States, widely known as the ‘Quad’. India’s willingness to participate alongside the US and two of its treaty allies in this ‘minilateral’ format – a small grouping assembled to achieve limited strategic objectives – was a departure from its traditionally balanced diplomatic posture that had its origins in the country’s non-alignment between the communist East and capitalist West during the Cold War.
On 15 September 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom and the US announced that they had formed AUKUS, a new minilateral grouping focused on security in the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi – which received prior notice of the announcement from Australia – greeted news of the partnership coolly, fearing that it could have negative diplomatic, political and security consequences for India while detracting from the Quad’s significance. Japan, the other onlooking member of the Quad, praised the move and said that AUKUS would be a venue for ‘strengthening engagement in the Indo-Pacific region’.
The AUKUS agreement created a structure for the three participant countries to share intelligence and sensitive military technologies, including cyber and quantum technologies and nuclear propulsion. Cooperation in the latter area will enable the Royal Australian Navy to eventually acquire eight nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs). Australia’s participation in the deal required it to cancel a US$66-billion submarine-procurement contract with a French company, and Paris –historically an important diplomatic and security partner for New Delhi – responded furiously to the announcement. China strongly condemned AUKUS for ‘severely undermining regional peace and stability’ and stated that it ‘intensified the arms race and undermined international non-proliferation efforts’.
New Delhi’s chief concern with the partnership appears to be that it may lead to an increase in the number of SSNs operating in the eastern Indian Ocean from the 2030s onwards, an issue aggravated by the fact that the Indian Navy would like to acquire these types of vessels but has not received political approval to do so. The navy has also experienced significant delays in the pace of submarine acquisition, with only one-third of those promised in the period from 2000 to 2030 having been delivered. The AUKUS partnership, however, may force India to come to a decision over SSNs, encourage it to increase defence cooperation with France, and push it to accelerate its ongoing efforts to build new conventionally powered attack submarines (SSKs) to modernise its ageing underwater fleet.
The Quad factor
On 21 September 2021, in the Indian government’s first public comments on AUKUS, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla was careful to draw distinctions. He said that while the Quad is a ‘plurilateral grouping of countries with a shared vision of their attributes and values’, ‘AUKUS is a security alliance between three countries. We are not party to this alliance. From our perspective, this is neither relevant to the Quad nor will it have any impact on its functioning.’
Shringla’s immediate priority was to ensure that the AUKUS announcement did not distract from the first in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit, to be held in Washington DC three days later, which included Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first face-to-face bilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden. India viewed the summit as the culmination of its efforts to oppose China’s position in the ongoing border dispute and to respond to Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. It was also an important opportunity to highlight the role New Delhi had played in reviving the Quad format since 2017. India has emphasised in its public statements about the Quad that it is not a security organisation but a broad partnership focusing on non-security issues, and indeed, at the 2021 summit, the four countries discussed cooperation over the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine production, emerging technologies, space, cyber security, and 5G deployment and diversification.
However, this skirts the fact that the US has emphasised the security aspects of the partnership. In March 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to the ‘first ministerial meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ during remarks before the Foreign Affairs Committee in the US House of Representatives. The US State Department website also used the term ‘security dialogue’ until 20 February 2022, when it began using ‘Quadrilateral Ministerial Meeting’ instead. In practical terms, the navy of each Quad country gathers annually to participate in the Malabar naval exercise. This began as a bilateral exercise by India and the US in 1992, with Japan and Australia joining in 2015 and 2020 respectively. While all four countries have stated officially that Malabar is unrelated to the Quad, it is unclear whether this is a meaningful distinction in practice.
"India has emphasised in its public statements about the Quad that it is not a security organisation but a broad partnership focusing on non-security issues…"
India does have serious security concerns about China even if it is often loath to discuss them in multilateral settings. In June 2020, 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died during violent clashes in the Galwan Valley, according to official accounts. These were the first fatalities in 45 years in the vicinity of the long, un-demarcated land border between the countries known as the Line of Actual Control. India responded by imposing minor punitive trade measures against China – its largest trade partner – and by increasing the size of its military forces and defence-related infrastructure in the border regions. Although soldiers are no longer actively fighting, the situation remains tense despite several bilateral military and political meetings that have been held to de-escalate the situation.
The aftermath of AUKUS
India sought to strengthen its bilateral defence and security ties with Australia, France, Japan, the UK, the US and others in the aftermath of the June 2020 clashes. In October 2020, India and the US signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement, the fourth in a series of defence-cooperation agreements. It focused on the provision of American geospatial intelligence to India, with Washington offering New Delhi defence technologies on a par with those shared with the closest US allies and partners. The first of the four agreements had been signed in 2016, when the two countries released a joint statement on global cooperation in which Washington recognised New Delhi as a so-called ‘Major Defense Partner’.
In May 2021, India and the UK agreed to an unprecedented ten-year roadmap for building a comprehensive strategic partnership, with the strengthening of defence and security ties as one of its five pillars. India had previously agreed to a strategic partnership with Australia, in June 2020, and on 11 September 2021 the countries held their first ‘2+2’ defence and foreign-affairs ministerial dialogue. India and Japan signed an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement for reciprocal provision of supplies and services in September 2020, creating a framework for closer cooperation between their armed forces. The Quad countries participated in a virtual summit in March 2021, and in a French-led naval exercise a month later. And in March 2022 they held another virtual summit, focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The launch of AUKUS had an immediate effect on India’s diplomatic activity and security dialogues. After Australia announced that it would be cancelling its contract to procure 12 SSKs from France, Paris recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington, cancelled a France–UK defence-ministerial meeting, and withdrew from a trilateral meeting with India and Australia. The latter would have been the second in a planned series of discussions between India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and his French and Australian counterparts – a minilateral forum described by Jaishankar as ‘a coalition of the enthusiastic’ and by French President Emmanuel Macron as the ‘new Paris–Delhi–Canberra axis’. Even if these trilateral meetings were to resume, it is unclear what they could accomplish given the distrust that now exists between Australia and France. Discussions about hosting the first joint Australia–France–India naval exercise were under way but have been suspended.
In readjusting its relationships in the Indo-Pacific, however, France may seek to draw closer to India. It is already one of India’s top-three defence and security partners, alongside Russia and the US. (Russia has long been India’s top defence partner and currently supplies just over half of its total arms imports, though this proportion has been decreasing in recent years.) France has provided submarines and combat aircraft to India and has served as a partner on space and nuclear technologies. Significantly, five Kalvari-class SSKs, based on the French Scorpène class, have been built under licence at India’s naval shipyard in Mumbai. The fifth is undergoing testing and has not yet been commissioned, and a sixth and final vessel is expected to be completed and commissioned by late 2023. India would probably be interested in purchasing more weaponry and equipment from France if the commercial terms were to improve. Apart from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, India is currently the only country that operates a nuclear-propelled vessel: it has one strategic ballistic-missile submarine, with up to three more under construction. It reportedly received Russian assistance in miniaturising the nuclear reactor to fit within the hull of the vessel. But it may seek French assistance instead if it decides to acquire SSNs, in part because of the international sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.
"In readjusting its relationships in the Indo-Pacific, however, France may seek to draw closer to India."
In terms of India–UK relations, AUKUS served as a clear signal in New Delhi that London is taking China seriously as a security threat. India’s security establishment noted that the UK’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, released in March 2021, described China as the ‘biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security’ while simultaneously calling for increased engagement with Beijing. But the fact that the UK has now made a long-term commitment to increasing Australia’s military capabilities has allayed concerns in New Delhi that a post-Brexit UK might seek a return to the so-called ‘golden era’ of cooperative Sino-British relations declared in the middle of the last decade by former UK chancellor George Osborne. This makes it more likely that India and the UK will succeed in establishing their planned comprehensive strategic partnership.
India’s submarine force
India sees itself as the pre-eminent naval power in the waters to its southeast, near the Malacca Strait and Singapore, but there is a risk that AUKUS could erode this status by drawing SSN traffic to the area before New Delhi has acquired any such vessels itself. Indeed, it is plausible that Australia’s prospective acquisition of SSNs will cause China to accelerate its SSN programme and deploy more of its vessels in the eastern Indian Ocean. China’s attack-submarine force comprises six SSNs and 46 SSKs.
The Indian government has cut the navy’s budget for the past several years. An earlier goal that sought a force level of 212 vessels by 2027 has been revised downward to 170 vessels. The navy’s share of defence expenditure also fell significantly between 2012 and 2019, from 18% to 12%, before rising to 15% in the 2022–23 budget. This was due to its modernisation expenditure surging by 51% in 2020–21 and by 41% in the 2022–23 budget. The navy’s capital expenditure rose from US$3.9bn in 2019–20 to US$6bn in 2020–21, although this consisted mostly of paying for existing contracts and there was little scope for new acquisitions.
India has a fast-ageing submarine force. As of early 2022, it possessed 16 SSKs (see Figure 1), nine of which had been in service for over 30 years, with three others in service for more than 20 years. The Indian government will probably order another set of Kalvari-class SSKs in addition to the six already ordered and partially delivered, but a timescale for the decision has not been announced. As of March 2022, Germany and Russia have reportedly withdrawn from India’s submarine-construction competition because they would be unable to meet India’s demand for the vessels to be equipped with an Air Independent Propulsion system (which would produce an operational advantage by extending the maximum dive time from a few days to more than two weeks). France is a strong contender to replace them, having recently begun sea trials of the fifth of its six Kalvari-class submarines built in India. Yet even if a decision were made immediately to proceed with France’s help, the first SSK of this type would not enter service until the early 2030s.
"It will be a diplomatic challenge for New Delhi to deepen these relationships while also maintaining balanced relations with Russia, which remains a priority"
The Indian Navy’s current submarine-building plan (announced in 2000 for delivery by 2030) called for 24 vessels to be built on two production lines. The programme has recently been modified to include the domestic construction of six SSNs, although reportedly the prime minister has not yet approved this plan. If he decides to proceed, it will take more than 15 years for the first of these vessels to be commissioned. India has also sought to acquire one or two SSNs on lease from Russia from 2025 onwards, having previously leased a Russian SSN from 1988–91 and again from 2012–21. But now, in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, this is unlikely to happen.
Outlook
Because of delays in decision-making, construction problems and the Russia–Ukraine war, which will probably prevent or delay the planned leasing of Russian SSNs, it appears that only seven or eight of the 24 submarines India had planned to acquire by 2030 will be delivered. This would mean India possessing no more than 18 or 19 attack submarines in the foreseeable future, and that number will quickly decrease as older vessels begin to be decommissioned (some after 40 years in service).
In the short term, despite any concerns it may have about the AUKUS pact, India will probably continue to strengthen its defence and security ties with Australia, the UK and the US on a bilateral basis. But it will be a diplomatic challenge for New Delhi to deepen these relationships while also maintaining balanced relations with Russia, which remains a priority. There is a sense of disappointment in many Western capitals that India has taken a largely neutral stance towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including by abstaining from votes critical of Russia’s actions at the United Nations. Given the sweeping international sanctions that have been imposed against Moscow, India is concerned that long-planned purchases of Russian military equipment and spares will not proceed and that it will have to find new suppliers. More immediately, there is some doubt as to whether Russia will deliver components of an S-400 surface-to-air missile system as expected, in June or July 2022 – and if it does, whether India will be subject to sanctions. In mid-2022, Modi will travel to Tokyo to attend the second in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit. India will probably also seek to strengthen its defence relations with France to challenge China’s increasing military presence in the Indian Ocean. And Indian naval planners, who are keen to maintain their operational advantage in those waters, will prod government ministers to decide whether the country will attempt to acquire new lines of SSKs and SSNs.