India-Japan Defense Ties to Get a Boost With Modi-Abe Virtual Summit - The Diplomat, 20 August 2020

In this week's column for The Diplomat, I looked at the upcoming virtual summit meeting between India and Japan. I argue that despite some disappointments on both sides, the India-Japan relationship looks set to further deepen in the face of an aggressive China.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe will meet for a virtual summit in September. This will be Modi’s second virtual summit this year, after one with the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in June. According to Indian media reports, citing India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the two sides are expected to sign an important military logistics agreement, the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA). While this remains an important milestone moment for New Delhi and Tokyo, it also remains key for both countries to take stock of what has been accomplished so far.

For the full essay, click here.



India and Japan missed their planned 2019 summit because of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Guwahati, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, where the meeting was supposed to be held. Although the Modi government was reportedly keen to shift the meeting venue to Delhi, the Japanese side insisted that the focus of the 2019 summit was on Japanese investment in India’s Northeast infrastructure development and therefore, as a Japanese diplomat said, “The venue is the message.” Since then, India and Japan have been trying to reschedule the summit, but the COVID-19 pandemic further delayed their plans.

The current summit meeting comes against the backdrop of Chinese aggression against both countries, along the Sino-Indian border and the East China Sea. The Abe government is reportedly also keen to explore the possibility of shifting some Japanese manufacturing to India as part of its efforts to shift such operations out of China. This is part of a concerted effort of several countries to shift their manufacturing out of China in order to reduce their dependency on Beijing. The two leaders are also reportedly working to strengthen the Quad agenda in this regard.

The ACSA should also boost the geographical reach and influence of both countries’ militaries. India has so far signed such logistics agreement with the United States, South Korea, and Australia. Such logistics agreements are meant to simplify the processes involved in using each other’s facilities. It took India more than a decade to sign the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the U.S. on account of several misperceptions, but since its signing in 2016 it has become easier for India to negotiate such deals with other countries. Probably to maintain some semblance of balance, India is negotiating a similar agreement with Russia. The Russian agreement is named differently, the Agreement on Reciprocal Logistics Support (ARLS).

The India-Japan ACSA got a big push during the last summit in Japan in October 2018. India’s MEA in a statement at the time said, “The two leaders welcomed the joint exercise between each of the three services and the commencement of negotiations on the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), which will enhance the strategic depth of bilateral security and defense cooperation.” The inaugural 2+2 dialogue, the India-Japan Foreign and Defense Ministerial Meeting, also noted “the significant progress” made in the negotiations of ACSA and their desire “for early conclusion of the negotiations” which would “further contribute to enhancing defense cooperation between the two sides.”

The India-Japan ACSA would provide the two militaries with access to each other’s military facilities for repair and replenishment of provisions as well as overall improve the scope and sophistication of military-to-military cooperation. In fact, the India-Japan ACSA is reported to be broader in scope, encompassing overall defense cooperation between the two countries, with logistics as one important leg in the expanding defense partnership. Japan could get access to India’s key naval bases, including in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, close to the Malacca Straits, a key international sea lane. The agreement will also enhance India’s own operational reach, most specifically for the Indian Navy. India could gain access to Japanese bases such as in Djibouti. Some of the agenda items for broader India-Japan defense cooperation could include stepping up defense trade and technology cooperation under existing mechanisms, such as the Joint Working Group on Defense Equipment and Technology Cooperation (JWG-DETC). There is already cooperative research work being done on areas such as unmanned ground vehicle (UGV)/robotics under this framework, but it could be expanded to an entire range of existing and emerging technologies.

It is also possible that Japan would like to see more discussion on the Japanese-built US-2 amphibious aircraft, which India has been soft-pedaling for a while now. Capacity-building for better maritime security and maritime domain awareness (MDA) are also high on the agenda for India and Japan. Establishment of the Information Fusion Center – Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) by India in December 2018 has been deemed an important step in this regard and Japan will have a liaison officer at the IFC-IOR. Other Indo-Pacific powers such as Australia, France, and the United States will also have their officers at this center.

While ACSA and the defense agenda are forward-looking in furthering cooperation between India and Japan, there are also some difficulties in the relationship. Japan seems to have been considerably disappointed with the Indian decision to walk out of the regional trading agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The fact that Abe was not even informed before New Delhi made the announcement appears to have been a jolt to the Abe administration. Japan was counting on India to be a powerful player within the RCEP to push back on China’s aggressive economic agenda. Tokyo is also possibly disappointed about the lack of enthusiasm in New Delhi about pursuing the defense trade agenda, with the US-2 being a case in point. On the other hand, although India was keen on considering the Soryu-class submarine, Japan has been somewhat cautious, and indeed has not bid for India’s submarine contract.

Nevertheless, Japan has remained a steadfast partner to India. For instance, after the Galwan Valley clash in mid-June, the Japanese ambassador to India strongly supported India, tweeting that “Japan opposes any unilateral attempts to change the status quo.” This suggests that the pressure from China will continue to strengthen India-Japan ties, despite some disappointments on both sides.

A new space race in Asia, my article in East Asian Forum

The East Asian Forum of the Australian National University published an article of mine, titled, A new space race in Asia, which examines the new and evolving geopolitical context that has pushed India to become more active in strengthening space cooperative engagements with countries such as Japan, France and the US. Indeed, rise of China and the strategic consequences of its rise have been important contextualising factors for these countries to coordinate their space programmes and policies.

Asia houses three established space powers — Japan, China and India — with space exploration goals ranging from social and economic development to improving telecommunications and national security. But it is the national security drivers of Asian space exploration that are becoming more prominent, partly driven by the changing balance of power equations both within Asia and beyond.

China’s growing space capabilities are driving much of the space competition in Asia. For one, it has led to greater cooperation in space exploration between India and Japan. In September 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to put outer space at the centre of their bilateral relationship. They welcomed the ‘deepening of cooperation between the space agencies of the two countries in the field of Earth observation, satellite-based navigation, space sciences and lunar exploration’. Later in November 2017, the president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum announced that ‘India and Japan will lead the space sector in the Asia Pacific region’.

The Indian space program is more than six decades old, and until recently, New Delhi’s primary focus was in using space technology to improve social and economic conditions for its population. Before China’s first anti-satellite (ASAT) test in January 2007, India appeared to think that security competition in outer space was confined to the big powers. The Chinese ASAT test awakened India to the kind of challenges it needs to confront in its own backyard and demonstrated that even areas of the global commons such as outer space are not spared from terrestrial geopolitical competition. The ASAT test gave way to new debates in India on the kind of counter-space capabilities that it must develop to protect its own space assets.

India says that it has the technological blocks for a successful demonstration of an ASAT capability, should the need arise. An Indian ASAT test would go against the grain of India’s decades-long stance that space must be used for peaceful purposes alone and must not be weaponised. This shift in rhetoric reflects India’s recognition that if it does not keep up with emerging trends in space, it stands to lose in a critical area of technology.

Similar deliberations are taking place in Japan and the new Japanese space policy highlights space security as a key focus area.

Yet space competition in Asia began well before the Chinese ASAT test. China’s first manned space mission in October 2003 — making China the third country after the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve this feat — provided the initial spark. This achievement is part of China’s larger plan to carry out a human exploration program, which has as its final goal the development and operation of a Chinese space station in low earth orbit. At a time when the International Space Station will be winding down its operation, China plans to get its own station up and running by 2024.

China’s growing counter-space capabilities, including developing technologies such as the robotic arm, and the increasing number of close rendezvous operations of Chinese satellites are also raising concerns about the possible security implications of China’s military space program.

In response to China’s accomplishments in space, India and Japan initially looked at pursuing their own independent lunar missions. But so far they have not been able to successfully compete with China’s robotic exploration program. For instance, China’s Chang’e robotic lunar exploration program is considered technologically far superior to anything India or Japan could develop. The Chang’e 4 mission plans to land and explore the surface on the far side of the Moon, which no other country has done so far. Neither India’s ad hoc lunar and Mars robotic missions nor Japan’s exploration of the Moon and near-Earth objects come close to challenging China in this regard. India and Japan have instead decided to combine their efforts, outlined in the Modi–Abe statement.

India is also undertaking meaningful conversations with other space players, such as France and the United States. With China’s aggressive posturing in the South China and East China seas and its growing profile in the Indian Ocean, the use of space assets to achieve maritime domain awareness (an understanding of issues related to the maritime domain that could impact the security, safety, economy or environment of a country) has the potential to emerge as a shared area of cooperation among India, the United States, Japan and France.

All of this suggests that a new space race is heating up in Asia that is compounded by the region’s changing balance of power alignments. Space is becoming yet another domain of competition among Asia’s great powers. It can no longer be seen as an innocent and cooperative arena of policymaking, and one cannot remain sanguine about outer space stability.

It is unlikely that the balance of power equation in Asia will stabilise anytime soon, which would suggest that the budding space race is only going to continue to intensify into the future.

Asia-Pacific Security: Challenges and Opportunities, one of the latest books on the subject and I have a chapter on it as well....

Here's a chapter of mine on the Asia-Pacific security, edited by Dr. Adam B. Lowther. I have contributed a chapter on the US role in the region, to this edited book, titled, Asia-Pacific Century: Challenges and Opportunities. The book has been published by the US Air Force Research Institute, Alabama.

The United States’ Pacific pivot has been much debated since the end of last year. This chapter addresses three specific questions: (1) how Asia-Pacific nations see the role of the United States in the region; (2) as China rises, how its neighbours in the region will react, whether they will they bandwagon or balance; and (3) how states in the region are hedging their bets on the future. The discussion delves into the new alliances and partnerships that are likely responses in view of the new challenges.

For the full book, click here.



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