Make hay while the sun shines: India needs to act quickly on some geopolitical tailwinds coming its way

India seems to be catching some favourable geopolitical winds that it must cash in on at the soonest. The trigger? Shock waves from the first Chinese submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test in the South Pacific last week, winds of change within the Five Eyes (FVEY) - the intelligence-sharing alliance comprising the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - and a deeply divided Gulf looking for non-Iran, non-Saudi, non-Turkiye security and economic arrangements.

On July 6, China's 7,500 km JL-3 nuclear-capable SLBM took a path that flew across Pacific Islands and the Philippines to land in an ocean space within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) as defined by the 1986 Treaty of Rarotonga. This pact has all five declared nuclear weapons powers, including China, as signatories to a commitment to Australia, New Zealand and 12 Pacific Island countries that they will not test or deploy nuclear weapons in this zone.

China has argued that the missile was not nuclear-tipped and, thus, didn't violate the treaty. But as both Australia and New Zealand conveyed to Indian authorities during Narendra Modi's visit last week, to them, the test was an assault on the spirit, principles and purpose of the treaty. On top of that, China had given only 60-90 mins' notice to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and other countries in the region.


It prepared for two plausible routes - one over Japan, the other across the South China Sea. This kind of muscle flexing is usually associated with the US in the Pacific.

With the Trump regime still reticent on China, Australia has moved on its own and signed a defence alliance with Fiji on the principle that an attack on one, will be an attack on the other. The word out is that New Zealand, the first OECD country to sign an FTA with China in 2008, is now seriously considering joining the alliance following the SLBM test.

The shift is not going to be easy. While Australia and New Zealand are economically very dependent on China, Pacific Islands like Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Fiji - over whose territories the missile flew - don't even have standing armies. They have paramilitary forces dependent on Chinese police aid.

This China threat, coupled with Washington's reluctance to act, was reason enough for Canberra and Wellington to shift gears with New Delhi. In fact, the first alarm rang with China's 2024 ICBM test. Now, it's the SLBM, raising strong suspicions that an air-to-land ballistic missile test could be next in line.

As for India, it was also around 2023-24 that the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (Asno) shifted its stance, and indicated willingness to find a way forward on technical issues blocking a uranium supply agreement. Both governments had agreed to this in principle. But Asno's insistence on a separate bilateral arrangement 'flagging' Australian uranium through its entire usage cycle posed a technical problem.

India said it gives a Material Balance Report (MBR) to IAEA for civilian reactors based on the principle of 'fungibility', where uranium can be interchanged with that obtained from other sources, but is fully accounted for as per IAEA requirements. Having resisted the Indian line for nearly a decade, Asno finally agreed to the fungibility principle, with an assurance that a copy of the IAEA MBR would be shared. This resulted in this strategic deal during Modi's visit.

Away from this theatre, India has witnessed a significant shift by Canada. The Mark Carney government is undoing the damage Justin Trudeau, and his pro-Khalistan politics, did to the relationship. But, more importantly, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police made it clear that it had, so far, found no evidence in its investigations of Indian government involvement in the Hardeep Singh Nijjar killing, pinning it now on organised criminal gangs in Indian prisons.

This distinction has found resonance in the US as well, indicating that a nuanced shift from charging the Indian state with extraterritorial killing was now underway. This is a big shift within FVEY, which had a few years back sought to build these cases as leverage against India.

From a diplomatic standpoint, this eases the path for realigning India's North American strategic agenda to its original course. This will also rub off positively on India's efforts at developing the US and Canada as alternate energy sources following the West Asia conflict, besides structuring favourable trade deals.

Similarly, in West Asia, where S Jaishankar conducted a trip at the same time the PM was in the Indo-Pacific, India stood by smaller Gulf countries like the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait as they faced attacks from Iran. While India has opportunities of oil trade with Iran if sanctions are removed, the security and economic agenda is much broader with these Gulf nations looking to chart a course of their own, much like the South Pacific countries.

Now that India has set its eyes on entering UNSC again in 2028-29, this period could well be the crest India was looking to ride after having battled the uncertainties of Chinese aggression, Covid, the Ukraine war, Trump shock and, now, West Asia conflict.

What holds the key for India, though, is not sailing with favourable winds, but to motor these winds to achieve speed and pace in a time that will still be dominated by instability, insecurity and unpredictability.