Comparing The Divergences Between Australia And India-Australia Relations

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India-Australia relations have seen a steady growth from 1991 to 2016 despite various disagreements that have risen between the two nations. At the core, both nations are strong, vibrant, secular and multicultural democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. The convergences between India and Australia have increased as the years have gone by, while the divergences have contracted. This is different from how the two countries viewed each other during the
Cold War period, where India saw Australia as a strategic accessory to the USA and
Europe’s legacy of imperialism whereas Australia grew increasingly sceptical of India’s
Non-Alignment Movement as it started to lean towards the Soviet Union.
The post-Cold War period has seen greater interaction …show more content…

This is most demonstrated by the “Four Pillars strategy” that shapes the broad contours of Australian policy towards India since 2012. The first facet of these Four Pillars is an economic relationship built around energy security which will reframe the way India thinks about Australia; the second facet, a political/strategic relationship based on closer defence cooperation, a closer working relationship on institution-building in Asia and the
Indian Ocean through the East Asia Summit and the Indian Ocean Rim Association for
Regional Cooperation; third, a multilateral strategy focused on the G20 with closer collaboration on trade liberalisation and climate change; and fourthly, building the people-to-people relationship in a way which reinforces their shared interests.
The India-Australia ties have grown over the decades in various spheres to address joint concerns, from bilateral issues of trade, strategic cooperation, and socio-cultural exchanges most notable in sports, people to people contact, and multilateral cooperation. There have been numerous studies carried out in different aspects of India-Australia relations and this paper seeks to explore one particular facet of their ties, namely to study the China factor …show more content…

For example, India shares geographic contiguity with China that also translates to border disputes and more severe security concerns in comparison to Australia, which also has security concerns of increasing
Chinese presence in its Pacific backyard; however are not as potent as that of countries like
Japan and India. A recent example of India and Australia interaction is evident in the first-ever Bilateral Maritime Exercise, which was conducted in Visakhapatnam and the Bay of Bengal and later agreed to become a biennial event. Closer strategic cooperation was also evident in the first Secretary-level trilateral talks with Japan in June 2015 and in the decision to hold annual Secretary-level 2+2 talks from early 2016.
The India-Australia nexus that is emerging in recent years is fostered in the commonalities of their interaction with the Indo-Pacific region. This paper specifically seeks to explore the
China factor in the India-Australia synergy and the areas of interest where the three parties connect to foster better relations between these actors. This has become especially

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