February 7, 2025
NEW DELHI – India is ramping up the pace of defence cooperation with South-east Asia – a region it increasingly views through a defence and security lens – from offering weapons to Indonesia to exploring joint defence production with Thailand and Malaysia.
This is in line with India’s growing ambitions, which have gathered pace of late, to increase influence beyond its immediate neighbourhood of South Asia and grow its global footprint.
Analysts noted that India sees an opening in enhancing its presence through defence and security ties in a region where China already has large pockets of economic and strategic influence.
Fearful of disruptions to defence supplies from Russia, many South-east Asian countries have also been looking to diversify their defence imports.
India is in advanced talks to sell the BrahMos missile in multimillion-dollar deals to Vietnam and Indonesia. The supersonic cruise missile, which can hit sea- or land-based targets, is a joint collaboration between India and Russia.
In Indonesia’s case, while the deal worth US$500 million (S$676.3 million) was not clinched as anticipated during Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s visit to India for its Republic Day parade on Jan 26, he announced that a high-level defence delegation would visit India soon.
“To strengthen our cooperation in the defence sector, we have decided to work together in the areas of defence manufacturing and supply chain,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after talks with Mr Prabowo on Jan 25, calling Indonesia an “important partner in the Asean and Indo-Pacific regions”.
India is also exploring defence production with other countries, including Thailand and Malaysia.
At the first India-Malaysia Security Dialogue on Jan 7, the two countries agreed to look into defence industry collaboration, which could include sharing defence equipment and manufacturing capabilities.
Earlier, on Dec 12, during a defence dialogue, India and Thailand agreed to collaborate on military hardware production.
While the specifics are yet to be hammered out and defence deals yet to be clinched, Professor Harsh V. Pant, vice-president for studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think-tank, noted that opportunities are opening up for India given the global climate of uncertainty.
“In some ways, given that South-east Asia and the world are going through this phase of growing US-China rivalry and competition, India in its own way presents an alternative that is not as contentious. As a defence partner, India is a reasonable and comfortable option for many countries,” Prof Pant said.
He added that defence and security cooperation are areas India could push in South-east Asia under the present climate.
“India, of course, wants to emerge as a critical anchor in the defence networks in South-east Asia… India would like in some ways to remain relevant in a geography where China’s footprint is huge. This is one way in which it can do that,” Prof Pant said.
“I think (US President Donald) Trump will be in some ways asking regional actors to share greater responsibility for regional security. So, in that context, it is likely that India’s relations with South-east Asia, defence ties in particular, are likely to grow further,” he added.
“There is an incentive on both sides to engage with each other more, particularly with some countries who see China as a challenge.”
India’s defence cooperation with South-east Asia is not entirely new, with ties in some countries being more advanced than others.
For instance, India has longstanding defence ties with Singapore, with cooperation spanning military exercises and training troops in India.
In October 2024, at the 6th India-Singapore Defence Ministers’ Dialogue, the two countries extended a bilateral agreement on joint military training between their armies for the next five years.
A release from Singapore’s Ministry of Defence on the dialogue said the two sides also agreed to step up defence engagements in areas such as information sharing, emerging technologies and defence industry cooperation.
In 2023, for instance, the navies of India and Singapore held joint battle exercises in the South China Sea. The two sides also deployed a submarine each for the first time.
In 2022, India’s budding defence industry received a boost with the sale of BrahMos missiles to the Philippines in a deal worth US$375 million. It also marked India’s first big defence deal, with delivery of the missiles starting in 2024.
In tandem, India, while not pushing the envelope too much, has also become more vocal on the importance of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, where China is embroiled in territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.
In 2023, India for the first time called on China to abide by a 2016 ruling on the South China Sea by an arbitration tribunal in The Hague. The tribunal had adjudicated in favour of the Philippines on its territorial claims in the sea.
India’s ties with the South China Sea claimant parties have grown in recent years. Defence has emerged as a key area of cooperation with Vietnam, for instance, with India offering a fully operational missile corvette to the country in 2023, apart from other military equipment and training.
The defence-related meetings over the last two months between India and various South-east Asian countries have deepened the trend, noted Mr Viraj Solanki, research fellow for South and Central Asian defence, strategy and diplomacy, at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“It is further indication that following the India-China border clashes of June 2020, New Delhi is seeking to engage more closely with China’s neighbours on regional defence and security issues to counter the latter’s influence – where previously it was more hesitant to do so for fear of antagonising Beijing,” he said.
India and China have been repairing ties laid low by the deadly border clashes in 2020, but distrust remains.
Speculation has been rife that Indonesia has been going slow on the BrahMos deal in an effort to balance ties with China.
How quickly India can ramp up defence linkages with South-east Asian countries also depends on those countries’ efforts to balance ties with China.
Prof Pant said: “The challenges remain huge because Chinese pressure is going to be there on many of these countries. The Chinese economic influence is huge in South-east Asia, which India is not in a position to match. The way China can pull levers in South-east Asia will continue to hobble aspiration to some extent.”
Still, he noted that “India is also insistent that it will continue to pursue defence collaborations” in South-east Asia. This is seen through defence exports, joint exercises and potential sharing of technology or research and development.
- Nirmala Ganapathy is India bureau chief at The Straits Times. She is based in New Delhi and writes about India’s foreign policy and politics.