Interpreting India

Ashley Townshend on Australia and India’s Convergence on the Indo-Pacific

Episode Summary

In this episode of Interpreting India, Ashley Townshend joins Deep Pal to discuss the recent developments in the Indo-Pacific. What would be the contours of an Indo-Pacific strategy that counteracts Chinese adventurism and influence in the region? How can India and Australia strengthen their bilateral relationship by harnessing their national defense industrial bases? And, how can the QUAD countries become significant contributors to public security in the region?

Episode Notes

The Indo-Pacific has emerged as a region of great significance. China is cementing its strategic presence in the region with a push toward financing infrastructure, announcements of alternative security and development mechanisms, and security pacts, most recently, with the Solomon Islands. Meanwhile, the United States remains preoccupied with its various priorities including the war in Ukraine and a broader engagement with European security. As regional dynamics continue to evolve, actors like India and Australia find themselves facing common concerns, as well as opportunities that continue to converge. 

In this episode of Interpreting India, Ashley Townshend joins Deep Pal to discuss the recent developments in the Indo-Pacific. What would be the contours of an Indo-Pacific strategy that counteracts Chinese adventurism and influence in the region? How can India and Australia strengthen their bilateral relationship by harnessing their national defense industrial bases? And, how can the QUAD countries become significant contributors to public security in the region?

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Episode Contributors

Ashley Townshend is a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the founding co-chair of the annual U.S.-Australia Indo-Pacific Deterrence Dialogue and a nonresident senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. A leading Australian expert on Indo-Pacific strategic affairs, Ashley has written extensively on U.S. strategy in Asia, regional strategic competition with China, the U.S.-Australia alliance, and Australian foreign and defense policy. He is also the co-author of the monograph Averting Crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defence in the Indo-Pacific.  

Deep Pal is a visiting scholar in the Asia program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research and publications focus on the Indo-Pacific, Indian foreign policy in its immediate and greater neighborhood, and regional security of South Asia, with particular emphasis on China.

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Additional Reading

The U.S. Is Losing Its Military Edge in Asia, and China Knows It by Ashley Townshend

US Indo-Pacific Strategy, Alliances and Security Partnerships by Ashley Townshend

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Episode Transcription

Deep Pal

Hello and welcome back to interpreting India!

Deep Pal

As the world looks hopefully to emerge from the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, the first few months of 2022 have been defined by another variant of COVID-19, precarious geopolitical relations, and a rapidly evolving technological landscape. This season, we at Carnegie India are examining many of the challenges and opportunities that India will confront in the coming decade.

Deep Pal

I am your host, Deep Pal, and this week we are discussing Australia’s and India’s areas of convergence in the Indo-Pacific.

Deep Pal

The Indo-Pacific has emerged as a region of great significance. China is cementing its strategic presence in the region with a push towards financing infrastructure, announcement of alterative security and development mechanisms, and security pacts, most recently with the Solomon Islands. Meanwhile, the United States remains preoccupied with its various priorities, including the war in Ukraine and a broader engagement with the European security. As regional dynamics continue to evolve, actors like India and Australia find themselves facing common concerns as well as opportunities that continue to converge. 

Deep Pal

In this episode of Interpreting India, we are discussing the recent developments in the Indo-Pacific. What would be the contours of an Indo-Pacific strategy that counteracts Chinese adventurism and influence in the region? How can India and Australia strengthen their bilateral relationship by harnessing their National Defence Industrial bases? And, how can the Quad countries become significant contributors to public security in the region. 

Deep Pal

Joining us today to discuss this is Ashley Townshend, who is Senior Fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the founding co-chair of the annual US-Australia Indo-Pacific Deterrence Dialogue and a non-Resident Senior Fellow at the United States Study Centre, University of Sydney. A leading Australian expert on Indo-Pacific strategic affairs, Ashley has written extensively on US strategy in Asia, regional strategic competition with China, the US-Australia alliance, and Australian foreign and defence policy. He is also the co-author of the monograph Averting Crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defence in the Indo-Pacific.  

Deep Pal

Ashley Townshend, wonderful to have you for Interpreting India. Welcome!

Ashley Townshend

Thanks, Deep. Great to be here!

Deep Pal

So, let's start with the conversations that you've had over the last week. You've been meeting people across India, people from the strategic community, the government, the military, and so on and so forth. What would be your key takeaways?

Ashley Townshend

The first point that really struck me is just how much the debate in India has solidified on China. That is to say, certainly in the last couple of years. Whereas the challenge that China presents India both at the border, but more broadly in the security domain is no longer something which is likely to fade away, but is absolutely seen as front and center of Indian defence and security policy thinking. 

Ashley Townshend

One interlocutor said to me that it's no longer the case that India is primarily focused on the border with Pakistan, it's absolutely China now as a number one competitor. And that of course is a competition that is operating in a context of neighboring countries that do need to also have a relationship.

Ashley Townshend

But nonetheless that shift is clear. The consolidation of that shift, you know, since Galwan is clear. And I think that's perhaps not necessarily understood in Canberra, in Washington more broadly outside of those that work on the bilateral relationships with India, just how fundamental and permanent the view of China as a threat is now in the Indian debate.

Ashley Townshend

The second point that really struck me is again the Indian stance on US strategy and where the US sits in the Indo Pacific. Just as there is concern in other parts of the region, again in Australia, in Japan, in parts of Southeast Asia, concerned about America’s focus on the war in Ukraine and America's preoccupation with European security at the moment. That really came through strongly here in India.

Ashley Townshend

There's definitely a sense that the United States is distracted. Both in a security sense because of its focus right now in Europe, but also more broadly in the sense of building out a more well-rounded Indo-Pacific strategy in the economic, diplomatic, and technological domains in Asia as well. 

Ashley Townshend

Now of course, that's not to downplay or to neglect things like the Pacific Economic Framework, which we can talk about later. So, the elements of that are well understood and appreciated here. But by and large, there is a sense of concern that the United States is not only in relative decline but is in relative distraction compared to where we hoped it would be after withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Ashley Townshend

I think the third point, and it sort of builds on that, is that there is an appetite here, not just for greater US presence...that's obvious if there is concern about US distraction...there is an appetite here for greater presence and coordination with like-minded countries.

Ashley Townshend

So, India's, history, strategic culture of non-alignment is obviously still there, but within the context of strategic autonomy be pursued, the interest, the ambition for a range of bilateral and multilateral partnerships, including in the security domain, but not only, is now very much front and center. So, to the point that it would really not be accurate in my view to say that India is a country that has a hard non-aligned position now. It has an non-alliance position but it seems to have an increasing multi-lined framework within the context of specific countries and specific functional areas of cooperation.

Deep Pal

That's really useful to know because when we sitting in India talk about any of these approaches, the question always is that if the message...how the message is being received, right, on the on the other end.

Deep Pal

So, let me take that question forward and say that not now that this, these are your impressions from the perspective of the Australian strategic community, what does all of this add up?

Ashley Townshend

I think the first point is that there is a great deal of convergence between India and Australia when it comes to the Indo-Pacific and what we want to achieve and what we're worried about.

Ashley Townshend

Those three points I mentioned at the beginning—concern about China as a competitor and as a threat in the region, concern about US distraction and it's need to be more present in Asia in more ways, more often, more quickly, and the third point about the need to pursue multilateral and a large number of bilateral alignments in order to achieve our objectives. That's how Australia sees the world.

Ashley Townshend

Maybe go back to 2017, when Australia launched its foreign policy White Paper. 

Ashley Townshend

It was really a White Paper that placed these dynamics front and center. In an era of rising Chinese power and waning American influence, the solution to instability is not going to be found in US unipolarity. It is only to be found in a collective regional balance. The framework used in that White Paper was to build a regional original balance that is favorable to our interests.

Ashley Townshend

Fast forward through to 2020, in Australia’s most recent defence strategic update launch then, it really sharpened that insecurity domain. It's focused Australian defence planning on the Indo-Pacific rather than globally or just on the defence of Australia and it basically sketched out a policy where in Australia would provide much more resources and play a far greater and more ambitious role in shaping a strategic environment that is resilient to Chinese ambition and Chinese influence, to deterring at the high end of the war fighting spectrum, but also at the low end in the conventional sense to deterring Chinese adventurism both independently, with and through the US alliance, but importantly with and through a plurality of regional partnerships, including the Quad and other things. And then also to be able to respond in the event of a crisis with regional partners. And in all of this, Australia seeks to really be a partner of choice with the Quad countries and also with key Southeast Asian partners as a provider of and a contributor to security and defence of the regional order, not just in the narrow sense of the defence of Australia.

Ashley Townshend

That mindset to me, that the Australian strategy for the region to me, seems to align very neatly with how India wants to see the development of geopolitical trends in the region. It seems to me that with the sort of these...the concerns that India faces at the border in the region, including in the maritime space across domains from the security challenges through to economic and top technology challenges, through the challenges of development and infrastructure financing in the region...that India is looking for and has a great appetite for ambitious involvement by countries that share its values, that share its interests rather, in this in this regard.

Ashley Townshend

I think there's, it seems to me, a great appetite to do more on the Australia-Indian leg of providing that kind of Ballast 2 and pillar of order in the region.

 Deep Pal

Right! You talked about the Quad and about multipolarity, and we'll come to that in a second. But I was wondering about, you know, the kind of strategic, geoeconomic changes that India has seen in its new neighborhood.

Deep Pal

Australia has seen similar things happening, whether one talks about the islands, whether one talks about ASEAN, right? With that in view, right, what are the clear challenges moving ahead for Australia?

Ashley Townshend

The clear challenges for Australia right now, I think to be able to do multiple things at once. So, the last Australian government had a Pacific step up. It resourced its Pacific step up fairly substantially on the domestic side, but clearly not to the point that it was able to prevent or at least complicate the efforts by China to really build Chinese influence in parts of the Pacific.

Ashley Townshend

And of course, the security agreement between the Chinese Government in Solomon Islands government earlier this year really highlighted just how far, or the endpoint or a way station even of Chinese influence in the Pacific and just how far things had moved in that direction in certain Pacific Island countries.

Ashley Townshend

Of course, it's not only limited to the Solomon Islands. There is indeed a pursuit of influence and presence, (not only) political, geopolitical, economic, but also strategic in the Pacific by China, we've seen in a range of countries in that region. 

Ashley Townshend

So, I think, for Australia there is a need to step up further that effort and do so in ways that are clearly going to be more effective than they have been to date, but do so in a way that doesn't preoccupy the rest...the larger horizon, the broader picture of Australia investment in Indo-Pacific security.

Ashley Townshend

The new Albanese government has prioritized Southeast Asia and wants to see a similar kind of step up in Southeast Asia diplomatically in terms of our economic policy, in terms of our security policy. You've seen the foreign Minister Penny Wong really invest both in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia her time and efforts so far to try and bring that to the forefront of Australian foreign policy.

Ashley Townshend

That's also critical because Australian defence policy views the Southeast Asian literal as really one of the front lines for Australia's security in Australia's influence if we do want, if we do believe as I think we should that Australian security is really only insured in a region that is stabling original order, that is healthy and stable and resilient, with states that have sovereign autonomy where they can defend their territorial integrity and then maritime borders and so forth, and do so with the help of others...then we do need to invest in that region.

Ashley Townshend

We can't only invest in security assets. So, there's a recalibration going on when it comes to the prioritization of Southeast Asia. So that's the second thing we have to do at once. And then we also need to balance this kind of investment in statecraft and defence policy in the region with our alliance management and our management of major power defence cooperation or strategic cooperation with the United States, Japan, and with India...so, the US alliance, the strategic partnerships with Japan in India as well, and the Quad as a collective. 

Ashley Townshend

Different tools are required for each of those each of those partnership and it's very easy for a country which is a small country and a small bureaucracy to privilege some over others, when in fact what Australia needs is investment in all three of those levels, if you like, of Australian statecraft at once.

Deep Pal

And, all of this we were talking about earlier, right, have to happen at a time when, when there are other developments that are happening. And, so as we were talking about, the necessity is to be able to walk and chew gum as well. And that is somewhere you were saying that there has been a commonality in how Australia sees the geopolitical, geoeconomic, strategic developments are happening and how India is focusing.

Ashley Townshend

Yeah, that's right! I think, a very clear commonality for me is the conversations that we've had this week with Indian security thinkers on multidimensional security. I'm thinking about multidimensional national security challenges, multidimensional deterrence, integrated deterrence...to use the Biden administration’s term.

Ashley Townshend

Australia has also been pursuing for some time now for a much more integrated, whole of government, whole of society approach to the challenges in the Indo-Pacific, you know. Some of that is expressed and is undertaken on the home front, through counter foreign interference legislation, through counter-espionage legislation, through the strengthening of controls on inbound finance by China in Australia or in critical sectors, and so on and so forth.

Ashley Townshend

Part of that is also in the way we engage and work with regional countries. Let's say in Southeast Asia, to build up their cyber resilience, to build up their own counter foreign interference or their own counter disinformation competencies, and so on and so forth.

Ashley Townshend

The struggle that plays out for influence in those spaces, the struggle that plays out for influence in the region in the economic space with, you know, rising stocks of Chinese, rather rising flows rather of Chinese investment in the region as a whole, the major provision of infrastructure financing, the delivery of infrastructure projects, be they white elephant, be they critical depending on the on the project in the region, buys China influence in something which Australia, Japan, India, the United States in different configurations have tried to combat. But the way that these different kinds of influence and shaping activities by China build the groundwork for military strategic influence or the denial of military strategic influence to us is well appreciated in Australia.

Ashley Townshend

It seems to be well appreciated in India and there certainly seems to be an appetite for working with countries like Australia on certain elements this where we have, being both of us on the front lines of some of the pointier actions by China in recent years. Let's say economic statecraft or economic coercion that both of our countries have experienced or Chinese-led disinformation. There is a willingness to learn lessons and to inform others about best practices that comes through.

Deep Pal

If we take it up further right in Australia, India or even other regional players, right, if we do look at China’s increasing spread in the region. We are talking about a player that has far higher capacity and even as actors like India, like Australia or anyone else are trying to get there, there is definitely a lag, right?

Deep Pal

How do you see these countries dealing with the fact that in the coming decade China may actually, be in terms of geoeconomic aspects or political aspects or strategic aspects, manage to put other players behind, that there would be need to be a coming together of these players, but there would also...this would also be the time when China would look at moving ahead, with some of its objectives with some of its mock set goals, and all of the rest of the players will have to figure out how to contain with those.

Ashley Townshend

So, I mean there are two points to that. Number one, I think you know at a high level, it’s clearly the case that we can't counteract or deal with the consequences of Chinese influence, of Chinese presence if we act alone. Collective action should be synonymous with Indo-Pacific strategy.

Ashley Townshend

No country's destiny in the region can be shaped by themselves alone. I think that's well understood. But what that means is that, in very practical ways, countries that have shared interests, that have substantial if not perfectly overlapping interests, need to work together on a range of fronts. 

Ashley Townshend

This characterizes multipolar systems as well. You know the Indo- Pacific is not the struggle that we are seeing is not between China and the United States alone, it's between China and a range of countries, and the US is a factor in this. India is a factor, Japan is a factor, Australia and so forth.

Ashley Townshend

It's very messy; but the alignments and the coalitions that can be built around responding to shaping and counteracting the elements of Chinese behavior that are most corrosive to order or to stability or to, you know, principles like sovereignty, that we want to see maintained in the region...that is...the form of those efforts will be different, but the objective will be common.

Ashley Townshend

I think there's also a point here about the timelines that's worth ringing in. You know, one thing that struck me...one thing that strikes me about the debate in Australia and the USA, and in India, say, about defence policy, about strategic policy, and about the challenge that China presents, is that timelines are absolutely front and center to those discussions right now, and, I think, the war in Ukraine has put that into even sharper relief.

Ashley Townshend

By this I mean, you know, in the United States, it's a very common narrative; not everyone believes this, but it's a very common assessment, really, that between now and the end of this decade, the Chinese military will be at its greatest level of preparedness for undertaking a Taiwan style contingency or even another contingency in the region and the US will be at its lowest point fairness to deal with that. 

Ashley Townshend

We really have a fairly short-term window to prepare ourselves as best we can to deal with what is likely to be an asymmetry in our ability to defend or to respond to a potential active Chinese aggression, and that, in fact, we need to do so in order to just to deter it.

Ashley Townshend

I think in India there is a sense that...on the India-China border front...we are here, it has arrived, the tensions have happened, the confrontations have happened. 

Ashley Townshend

If that is well managed and it is de-escalated, India can hide and bide; it can buy some time over the next ten years to invest in the kind of force structure, in the kind of defence industrial base, in the kind of military and strategic policy settings, domestically in the main but also with the alignment partners, in order to be better able to deal with that in the future. 

Ashley Townshend

It is not yet urgent. 

Ashley Townshend

The tensions on the border are immediate, but the broader challenge and the likelihood for this to get out of control even...the time is still a little bit on India’s side. 

Ashley Townshend

So, there's a difference there.

Ashley Townshend

Then, in Australia’s sense, Australia is a country that has no disputed border, no disputed maritime boundary, with relatively secure strategic geography. But (it) nonetheless talks about the end of strategic warning time. For Australia, what that means is that...whereas we previously based our defence planning around an assumption that we would have at least a decade of planning time to prepare for a direct attack on Australia or an Australian interest in the region and to respond, including by maintaining our military technological edge in ways that would then prevent that challenge for materializing...that's gone out the window.

Ashley Townshend

We no longer believe we have a ten-year strategic warning time.

Ashley Townshend

So, if you look at these three countries, I think, you have a bit of a difference between the extent to which India feels it can buy time and the extent to which in the Western Pacific...and, I think, Japan shares this too in Taiwan that, in fact, time is running out.

Ashley Townshend

And, so, that does pose some challenges to the way that we cohere in terms of strategic and defence policy action, but, I think, the general necessity of preparing ahead of time and of doing so now is common amongst all of those countries.

Deep Pal

That's really interesting!

Deep Pal

Before we get onto the court, I wanted to talk a little bit about the India-Australia bilateral relationship, the defence relationship most specifically, and the direction that you have seen it take, especially given as you mentioned, there are a number of commonalities in the challenges that the two countries face.

Ashley Townshend

Right! so I think I.

Ashley Townshend

So, I think, the bilateral defence relationship between India and Australia has really been a success story of recent years and in many ways is the anchor of the major uptick in bilateral relations between our two countries in recent years.

Ashley Townshend

Obviously, going back to 2020, India and Australia entered into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which has brought both of our countries, across the ball but in the realm of defence and defence industry explicitly closer together. Some of the some of the dividends of work that's been going on, for a decade now, in bringing India and Australia closer together as maritime...like-minded maritime partners in the region have...and can now be appreciated.

Ashley Townshend

Earlier this year, for the very first time, we had reciprocal P8, you know, anti-submarine warfare aircraft visits and operations in each of our countries.

Ashley Townshend

Indian P8 was in Australia undertaking patrols and anti-submarine warfare drills in northern Australia, and the same thing then took place within Australian P8 Visiting India and doing similarly in the Bay of Bengal our two countries hold now an annual maritime Exercise Ausindex, which is basically geared around high-end maritime security, high-end anti-submarine warfare drills and the like.

Ashley Townshend

Again, moving ahead in leaps and bounds from where it was even five years ago!

Ashley Townshend

And, in terms of the kind of agreements, there are more examples...we could talk about this for a while...in terms of the kind of agreements that underpin it...you've seen those start to fall in place as well.

Ashley Townshend

There is still an ongoing push to formalize an information and intelligence sharing arrangement, but we are nonetheless able to do that in certain ways.

Ashley Townshend

At the moment there's also the mutual logistic support agreement between our two countries that provides for a greater depth in operating in each other’ strategic environments as well as providing support to each other in an operational sense.

Ashley Townshend

And, I think, you've also seen most recently a bit of a reset and reprioritization of a bilateral defence industrial part to the defence relationship as well.

Ashley Townshend

It's not the easiest part; it's certainly something which I think all countries in the region find difficult to do because of Defence Industrial Corporation is a very sensitive area and it's an area where a lot of industrial and trade policy restrictions are often in place.

Ashley Townshend

But, I think, there is a clear commitment by both countries, both by the way which are looking to strengthen their own national defence industrial base. 

Ashley Townshend

As we talk about sovereign capabilities in Australia...we're looking to build precision guided weapons in Australia with Australian industry content because we recognize that these are critical and that we can't rely on global stocks.

Ashley Townshend

India is pushing to indigenize its defence industrial base. It's looking to Make in India...a lot of its high end and new and emerging technologies as well as existing legacy platforms by the way.

Ashley Townshend

And it's also looking to find new ways to learn the lessons from what's happened in Europe and the United States when it comes to harnessing defence tech-startups and leveraging, you know, the competitive advantage that it can have when it comes to some of the non-defence technology sector and applying it to the defence space.

Ashley Townshend

So, if we can bring this similar, if not entirely the same but similar instincts together between India and Australia and find ways to work together as defence industrial partners. I think that would be another real boon to the bilateral defence relationship but also the bilateral relationship as a whole because defence industrial innovation and collaboration drive downstream benefits in other areas as well. 

Deep Pal

Actually, you know, something that strikes me as we talk about the India-Australia bilateral relationship, but also the bilateral relationship between the Quad countries, right. It somehow seems like there is a lot more happening or there is a lot more appetite for a lot more to happen bilaterally than maybe in the Quad, right. 

Deep Pal

There has been strategic potential, but there has also been some sort of reluctance to really push the envelope.

Deep Pal

So, from Australia's perspective what...and how far can the Quad really go, in providing public security code but going beyond that?

Ashley Townshend

So, a few points on the Quad. First, I think you're right that the Quad needs to occupy space where it is perceived by the region as a major contributor to public security and to public goods, generally defined. And that's the space that it currently occupies. But, at the same time, there is a recognition by the Quad countries that it also needs to advance a security agenda as well, and that this is also integral to the way that order in Asian will be preserved amongst like-minded partners as China's ambition and assertiveness arises. 

Ashley Townshend

But, of course, the Quad itself is not always going to be, or in most cases hasn't been, the best vehicle to advance that latter goal. That latter goal has been a product of the aggregate of the bilaterals that underpin the Quad, rather than Quad’s priorities themselves, with the exception of some elements of maritime domain awareness and maritime security in the non-traditional security front that are already on the Quad Agenda.

Ashley Townshend

But in order to move forward, I do think it is critical that the Quad has a clear sense of how it will chart a stronger maritime security and defence cooperation agenda over the coming decade.

Ashley Townshend

I don't think it needs to be marketed or branded as a Quad initiative. I certainly don't think we should have any more Quad working groups; we have plenty already.

Ashley Townshend

What the Quad needs to do is have an understanding of what kind of bilateral and trilateral arrangements, enabling agreements, exercises, operational priorities...and so forth are needed...and reforms critically across a whole range of areas, from maritime domain awareness and anti-submarine warfare to choke point security, and defence industrial cooperation.

Ashley Townshend

We need to harmonize our approaches to these things within the bilateral and trilateral relationship that underpin the Quad so that we can stitch them together when we need to.

Ashley Townshend

I do think that there is more ambition in the Australia-India bilateral then there can be right now within the Quadrilateral when it comes to advancing maritime security.

Ashley Townshend

So, for example, in Australia, they are already, as has been discussed a moment ago, undertaking annual maritime drills. They're undertaking integrated drills that combine not just maritime forces but air forces as well. They're undertaking reciprocal P8 visits. This has an anti-submarine warfare component. It has maritime domain awareness component. 

Ashley Townshend

But they're also both worried about the security of our sea lines of communication of that part of the East Indian Ocean that extends into the Southeast Asian littoral where Chinese flotillas, Chinese submarines, Chinese commercial vessels gain access to the Indian Ocean and onwards to the Persian Gulf.

Ashley Townshend

And both of our countries have an interest in working Southeast Asian partners to be better able to know what's going on in that part of the region. Track and follow Chinese naval vessels in that part of the region and undertake choke point security drills and operate checkpoint security measures, if need be, in the event of a regional crisis.

Ashley Townshend

This is integral to the direct maritime security interests of Australia and India.

Ashley Townshend

You know, from my book, this should be where the Australia-India bilateral was going now.

Ashley Townshend

That can be plug in other forum, again without the branding of the Quad, when it comes to the way that the US and Japan, or the US, Japan and Australia undertake a chokepoint security archipelagic defence or island chain defence in parts of the Western Pacific. These are similar objectives, similar operational requirements.

Ashley Townshend

We will not necessarily ever be involved in an operation where all four Quad countries will be delivering this effect as a group, but certainly we want to be in a place amongst us, in time, where, for reasons of capacity, of political will...of whatever..we can plug and play across the Quad...aircrews, maritime assets, ISR, etc., and bring together a coherent package to provide a coherent effect for the region.

Ashley Townshend

We do need to be able to do this, and I'm...I do think that the Quad needs to have this mindset lodged beneath your bilaterals and lodged beneath the other good things that it's doing in the region.

Deep Pal

And perhaps that is the most effective way of looking at the Quad, right—a kind of an arrangement where these various other initiatives can, as you said, plug and play.

Deep Pal

That is where my next question comes in. Where does AUKUS fit in in all of this...if we could talk a little bit about that. It's just a little over a year, I think, since AUKUS has been announced. With that in mind, is it turning out to be all that Australia hoped and wished and needed it to be and how does that fit in?

Ashley Townshend

So, in terms of where it fits in, firstly, it doesn't really fit in to the conversation we just had because AUKUS is not an alliance. It's not an alignment; it's not about defence or strategic policy coordination or effects; it's not about being operationalized in region.

Ashley Townshend

It's a defence industrial initiative. It is a procurement arrangement...will be a procurement arrangement for Australian nuclear-powered submarine and it will also be a set of arrangements to enable greater collaboration between the three AUKUS countries on emerging capabilities.

Ashley Townshend

It is in the same domain as the Australia-India Defence Industrial Cooperation conversation, but, obviously, at a completely different level because of the Five Eyes relationship and the kind of technology that we're looking at. But other than that, it really doesn't connect through our conversation about regional alignments and what we want to do in the region about policy, because that's not really what AUKUS this is about and I think there's a lot of misperceptions about that.

Ashley Townshend

But when it comes to, you know, your second question, how's it going, I think, it did have its 2nd birthday this week.

Ashley Townshend

There were some things to celebrate. There's been a major overhaul, for example, in the Australian bureaucracy.

Ashley Townshend

Really, we're talking about hundreds of people who have been reorganized in different parts of our system to deliver on the AUKUS Agenda. We've seen similar fairly substantial institutional bureaucratic reforms in the US and in Britain in order to deliver on their side of the AUKUS equation as well.

Ashley Townshend

That is, that is progress.

Ashley Townshend

The submarine arrangement is being, you know, in the pilot. The study is being undertaken at the moment. We won't really know much about that until March. I won't comment further about the submarine deal, but on the emerging capability side, I don't think we have much progress to show for 12 months.

Ashley Townshend

What I think Australia hoped is that we would have seen much more of an urgent move towards the kinds of export control and the tech transfer, reforms, regulation, refunds that are needed to really enable a seamless two-way integration between US and Australian and British defence industrial bases. 

Ashley Townshend

We've been here before. In 2017, the United States, Britain, and Australia came together in an expansion of the US national technology and industrial base and that really should have provided the kind of integration of Australian and British, you know, industry into the US Defence industrial base...in AUKUS they now trying to achieve. That project failed because really the cultural barriers to doing that in the US just couldn't be broken down.

Ashley Townshend

So, AUKUS is a second bite at the cherry in that regard, and I don't think we've seen a whole lot of progress on that front yet, although it is comforting that everyone now understands the problem the same way.

Ashley Townshend

We still haven't gone the extra mile to solve it.

Ashley Townshend

The other part that I think we still haven't cracked in AUKUS...but it will take a bit longer than 12 months...is really the way that we seek and the way that we determine capability priorities that we will seek as a group.

Ashley Townshend

AUKUS has seven working groups on emerging technologies that are now in force, and each of those are domains that matter—artificial intelligence, quantum, hypersonics, etc.

Ashley Townshend

But with one or two exceptions, their domains of R&D... they're not domains. They're not capability priorities that can be fielded even in even in a ten-year horizon.

Ashley Townshend

Now we are looking to show some proof of concept with certain elements of that agenda; unmanned autonomous vehicles is one. In the next 12 to 18 months, that will be positive. But I think the jury is still out as to whether or not AUKUS is going to be able to reform export controls quick enough and select capabilities that can make a difference operationally in the region quick enough. And to do so in the next, you know, five years, better than some of the other kinds of initiatives that the US, Britain, and Australia are pursuing.

Ashley Townshend

By those other kinds of initiatives, what I'm really referring to are new and, I think, quite exciting partnerships between private sector and militaries, saying the Australian context between Anduril and the Royal Australian Navy to build an underwater autonomous vehicle in ways it can circumvent a lot of the baggage and the red tape and regulations that still exists that the AUKUS is trying to break.

Ashley Townshend

You can try and wade through it, or you can work around it. We'll see which of those approaches works best.

Deep Pal

Right!

Deep Pal

On that note, Ashley Townshend, thank you so much for joining us on Interpreting India. It's been a pleasure!

Ashley Townshend

Thank you, Deep. Thank you very much!

Deep Pal

We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode.

Deep Pal

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