Penny Wong broadens ties with India

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has declared Australia has a ‘high level of strategic trust’ in India despite New Delhi’s close ties with Moscow.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong with her Indian opposite number Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Canberra. Picture: Twitter

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has declared Australia has a “high level of strategic trust” in India despite New Delhi’s close ties with Moscow, as her Indian counterpart upheld his country’s relationship with Russia as one that had “served our interest well”.

Standing beside Senator Wong, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said his country was “very clearly against” Russia’s war on Ukraine, and as a big user of Russian weapons systems, would draw its own lessons from the conflict.

But he said India’s relationship with Russia was a historical fact, cemented by the West’s military support for Pakistan during the War on Terror.

Senator Wong said Australia’s relationship with India – a key Quadrilateral Security Dialogue partner with Australia, the US and Japan – was critical to building a “stable, prosperous” Indo-Pacific region where countries’ sovereignty was respected.

She said India‘s partnership with Russia had no bearing on its Quad membership and was not inconsistent with the Quad’s advocacy for the international rules based order.

“I think the Quad is functioning extremely well,” she said, after ­bilateral talks with Dr Jaishankar in Canberra on Monday.

“I think the level of strategic trust and strategic consistency amongst Quad partners is deep and firm.”

Senator Wong welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments in September calling for Vladimir Putin to “move on to the road to peace”.

Dr Jaishankar said the Quad was primarily focused on the Indo-Pacific, “where the convergence of interests between the Quad partners is particularly strong”.

He declined to say how India would vote in an upcoming UN General Assembly vote on Russia’s annexation of territories in Ukraine, but condemned the conflict as one that “does not serve the interests of anybody, neither the participants nor indeed of the international community”.

At the same time, he said India had “a really a longstanding relationship with Russia – a relationship that has certainly served our interest well”.

“I think we all in international politics deal with what we have. We make judgments, judgments which are reflective of both our future interests as well as our current situation,” he said.

He said India, as one of Moscow’s biggest weapons customers, was closely studying the war in Ukraine, where Russian weapons systems are being increasingly outmatched by the Western-supplied equipment being used by Ukrainian forces.

“We have, as you know, a substantial inventory of Soviet Russian weapons. And we have that inventory actually for a variety of reasons – the merits of the weapon systems themselves, but also because for multiple decades, Western countries did not supply weapons to India and, in fact, saw a military dictatorship next to us as the preferred partner.”

In their bilateral meeting, the ministers discussed the regional security challenges, together with trade, education, clean energy and critical minerals co-operation.

Senator Wong revealed Australia would appoint a new Consul General for Australia in Bengaluru – the country’s technology capital – while India finalised an expansion of its diplomatic footprint in Australia.

Dr Jaishankar said India saw “great potential” in strengthening “mobility of talent and skills” arrangements between the countries, and in Australian universities setting up campuses in India.

“We certainly would like to see Australia, which is one of our major partners in education, also having a stronger presence in India,” he said.

Dr Jaishankar expressed support for Australia’s AUKUS nuclear submarine ambitions and expressed concern at Beijing’s motivations in expanding its naval reach into the Indian Ocean.

“I think a lot of it is really – what is the intent, what is the messaging, what are the behavioural characteristics, how transparent you have been? I think these are all factors when any country assesses the presence of any other country’s naval forces,” he said.