The first phase of the Malabar exercises is due to begin in the Bay of Bengal off Visakhapatnam coast on Tuesday and end on November 6. The second phase of the mega exercise is scheduled to be held from November 17 to 20 in the Arabian sea.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton from the Australian side will meet with External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
Downing Street said Johnson reiterated the year 2021 as an important one for UK-India ties and also re-emphasised the UK's commitment to the wider Indo-Pacific region, ahead of the first deployment of the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier group to the region next year.
Foreign portfolio investor (FPI) flows into India may remain tepid in 2022, said a recent note by Goldman Sachs, who now peg the foreign portfolio investment into India at $5 billion in 2022, down from their earlier forecast of $30 billion with risks skewed to the downside. "There has been $15 billion of equity outflows YTD in India already, and the IPO of the largest insurance company has been pushed out. "Additionally, with no mention of India's inclusion in global bond indices in the Union Budget, there are risks to our already conservative base case assumption of an announcement of India's likely inclusion into the GBI-EM Global Diversified Bond Index in Q4-2022," wrote Andrew Tilton, Goldman Sachs' chief Asia-Pacific economist in a co-authored report with Santanu Sengupta and Suraj Kumar.
In the opinion piece after the summit, the leaders said the cooperation, known as "the Quad," was born in crisis. It became a diplomatic dialogue in 2007 and was reborn in 2017.
With the signing of the pact, the Quad grouping of India, Japan, Australia and the US is set to gain more heft now, notes Dr Rajaram Panda.
Malabar 2011 is the latest in a continuing series of exercises conducted to advance multinational maritime relationships and mutual security issues.
Speaking at a joint press appearance with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Washington, DC, Blinken said that the US tried everything possible to avert the Ukraine conflict through diplomacy.
Taiwan on Sunday expressed gratitude to India and several other countries for their calls for exercising restrain and avoiding unilateral actions to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in the face of China's belligerent military posturing following United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the island.
Global rating agency Moody's on Monday said the high commodity prices and supply chain disruptions due to further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine crisis could expose about 42 per cent of rated Indian companies to significant risks. They are mainly in the oil and gas and automotive sectors. The impact may be seen under two scenarios: first, revised base line and second being downside economic scenarios incorporating a global recession and a more severe liquidity squeeze, it said. The military conflict between Russia and Ukraine is impacting companies in Asia Pacific, adding to existing challenges from supply chain disruption and the coronavirus pandemic.
The coming together of the Quad and the Australia-UK-US grouping would be a formidable adversary, moving toward the creation of a 'thousand ship navy' that reins in the PLA navy in the Indo-Pacific.
Remarks from Indian External Affairs are significant as it comes after China slammed Quad and said the formation of "exclusive cliques" targeting other countries runs counter to the trend of the times and is "doomed to fail".
The Modi government finds itself in a contradiction of its own making. It has encouraged pro-Russian, Westophobic public sentiment while setting strategic policy that's exactly the opposite, points out Shekhar Gupta.
The Indian Navy has a big role to play in support of our strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean. The increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is a matter of concern and need to be factored. Hence, the requirement of an Aircraft Carrier is a foregone conclusion, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
In a reflection of growing bilateral ties between India and the US, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday held wide-ranging talks covering the situation in Afghanistan, Indo-Pacific engagements, Covid-19 response mechanism and ways to strengthen regional security.
The elephant in the room will permeate the conversations, predicts Rup Narayan Das.
Indian Armed Forces around the country and beyond performed yoga to celebrate the eighth edition of the International Day of Yoga, June 21, 2022.
In an address at the Global Dialogue Security Forum, he underlined the need for India to put greater focus on having strong bilateral, trilateral and multilateral arrangements with like-minded countries to maximise its strategic leverage in the region.
Severely critical of China, Pompeo, cited killing of Indian Army personnel in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh in a clash with the Chinese military, and asserted that both India and the US are taking steps to strengthen cooperation against all threats and not just those posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Lavrov will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Friday.
China said that military cooperation should be "conducive" to regional peace and stability.
It said that the transit was "ongoing" and that there had been "no interference from foreign military forces so far."
Washington is signalling to Delhi that it can rely on American support in any great game vis-a-vis China. Delhi shouldn't fall into the trap, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Ahead of the Quad summit on Friday, China said exchanges and cooperation between countries should contribute to mutual understanding rather than "targeting" a third party and refrain from "pursuing exclusive blocs".
The Indian troops guarding the nearly 3,500-km Line of Actual Control (LAC) maintained an assertive approach in sync with the broader national security doctrine and procured a variety of military platforms and weapons to enhance their combat capabilities.
China has been an aggressor against India along the Himalayan border, a top American diplomat nominated by President Joe Biden as his next envoy to Beijing has told lawmakers, stating that the US must hold the Chinese government accountable for failing to play by the rules.
The bilateral and Quad summits, in which Prime Minister Modi played a significant role, has sent the right message to China, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The virtual meeting comes in the midst of some disquiet in Washington over India's position on the Ukraine crisis as well as its decision to procure discounted Russian oil.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to visit Taiwan, with scheduled meetings with government officials at the self-governed island that China threatens to forcefully overtake, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
India believes in sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas, sabka prayaas and walks ahead with it, Modi said.
'Even as discord over US-India trade and commerce colours diplomatic relations, defence relations between the two countries remain on a firm footing,' points out Ajai Shukla.
Here's the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to a joint session of the United States Congress, delivered on Thursday.
Admiral Philips Davidson, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, also told the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that China's recent activities along the Line of Actual Control have opened India's eyes to what cooperative effort with others might mean for their own defensive needs as he observed that New Delhi, in the very near term, will deepen its engagement with the Quad.
'The crisis has strengthened America's resolve to work towards building its relationship with India as a bulwark against Chinese aggression'
In a secret-ballot voting in the 193-member UN General Assembly on that race, Pakistan secured 169 votes.
US Defence Secretary Llyod Austin described China as a pacing challenge for the United States.
We very much hope that wisdom dawns on the Chinese side, Jaishankar said in Bangkok.
Brinkmanship in the Taiwan Strait will not only be a recipe for disaster to both China and Taiwan, but also to international peace and stability, warns Rup Narayan Das.
Biden and Modi committed that the US and India will work closely together to win the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, renew their partnership on climate change, rebuild the global economy in a way that benefits the people of both countries, and stand together against the scourge of global terrorism, the White House said in a readout of the call.
'Even though as Xi will seemingly continue to stay in power beyond his third term, competitions for the post-Xi leadership would be inevitably unfolded beneath the surface of water, and that will be a big headache for Xi the dictator.'
