AUKUS trilateral may benefit India

India has not yet responded to the announcement of the Australia-UK-USA (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership. This announcement is expected to make waves, as the security trilateral was meant to help balance out China in the region.

Australia, now a closer ally of the Indo-Pacific, will greatly benefit from this partnership as it would help the nation build its defence capabilities. Aside from that, it will also benefit the QUAD as Australia and the UK are members of the same.

The QUAD and AUKUS will run parallelly, but there may be an opportunity of them merging, in the future.


Australian PM, Scott Morrison tweeted, “Today, Australia begins an enhanced trilateral security partnership with the UK and the US to enable deeper cooperation on security and defence capabilities. This is an historic opportunity for our countries to strengthen our nations’ security in uncertain times.”


Ashley Tellis, senior fellow at Carnegie, said to TOI, “The AUKUS agreement is meant to build Australian capabilities to contribute to the military balancing of China. Nuclear submarines are our ace in the hole — they target China’s biggest vulnerabilities. So it’s a great investment.”

In 2016, France had signed a $40 billion deal to supply submarines to Australia. Now, Australia has scrapped the deal and is joining the UK and US to build them instead. This may be a cause for concern, as it can have an impact on the India-Australia-France trilateral, even though the reason behind the trilateral remains strong as ever.