ISAS Insights

The comprehensive strategic partnership between India and Indonesia, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joko Widodo during the former’s visit to Jakarta at the end of May 2018, is to be built around annual summit meetings between the leaders of the two nations, sustained high-level bureaucratic exchanges, substantive defence cooperation, including on arms production, stronger counter-terror collaboration, deeper economic integration and more expansive people-to-people relations. What stands out in this sweeping agenda is the maritime dimension. The joint maritime vision for the Indo-Pacific unveiled by the two leaders rests on the long-delayed recognition that the two nations share a vast oceanic neighbourhood. This has acquired an urgency thanks to the power shift in the waters of Asia marked by the rise of China and its deteriorating ties with the United States, and the sharpening of Beijing’s territorial disputes with its neighbours.