After five decades of testy or distant strategic relations, India and Australia began in the early 2000s to forge an increasingly cooperative defence and security partnership. The primary drivers were similar concerns about China’s rise, behaviour, and assertiveness, as well as converging views about the regional strategic landscape.

The decreasing salience of their divergences — Cold War-era geopolitics, India’s nuclear status, strained people-to-people ties, and shallow economic and trade links — also helped create more favourable conditions. Starting slowly in 2000, and accelerating in 2006 and 2014, the Australia–India strategic relationship began to involve policy dialogues, military exercises, defence exchanges, and security arrangements of greater frequency and sophistication.

Today, all the major elements of a robust defence partnership are in place, although still at very early stages of development. Important constraints remain, including mismatched capabilities, divergent priorities, and differing strategic circumstances, especially concerning relations with China and the United States. In addition to appreciating and navigating these differences, New Delhi and Canberra can enhance their strategic partnership by structuring and prioritising their consultations, improving military interoperability, deepening technological collaboration, and broadening relations.

Key findings:

• India and Australia have successfully managed to overcome prior inhibitions about security cooperation. Since 2000, the two countries have significantly improved their strategic coordination, military interoperability, and maritime cooperation, motivated by China’s rise and behaviour, faltering regional security institutions, and uncertainty about the United States’ role.
• Today, India–Australia security relations comprise regular military exercises, professional exchanges, operational coordination, and nascent defence technology cooperation. But the two countries’ different capabilities, priorities, and strategic circumstances will have to be overcome if relations are to deepen.
• Future priorities should include institutionalising bilateral and multilateral coordination mechanisms, improving military interoperability, deepening defence technology collaboration, and broadening relations to give ballast to the security relationship.