Dr Prakash Gopal
Introduction
In an increasingly contested multipolar regional order, India’s role in shaping the Indo-Pacific security environment is undeniably important. The United States, Australia and Japan, in particular, view India as a critical defence partner and a valuable bulwark against China’s increasingly assertive efforts to alter the regional strategic balance in its favour.1 Concurrently, India views an increasingly revisionist and aggressive China as a threat to its growing economic interests and ambitions to be a regional power.2 Notwithstanding a history of non-alignment, and an avowed commitment to strategic autonomy, it is evident that the evolving Indo-Pacific environment is stimulating greater strategic alignment and military engagement between India and the political West.3
However, even as India’s security outlook for the Indo-Pacific aligns considerably with that of the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies, India’s military contributions to a potential collective defence scenario have been the subject of much speculation and discussion.4 As the only Quad country to share a land boundary with China, there are limits to India’s potential contributions to imaginable collective military efforts, particularly those that may involve direct engagement with Chinese forces. The challenge, therefore, is to imagine the “art of the possible” when it comes to India’s participation in a range of potential collective deterrence and defence futures. For the United States and its allies, thinking through ways in which to maximise India’s contributions in a range of imaginable future contingencies ahead of time could significantly bolster collective defence outcomes in crisis situations, particularly in the IOR where India’s strategic interests would be most immutable and, importantly, where the resources of its partners could be considerably overextended.
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