The India-Japan agreement for cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy went into force in July 2017. It was first such pact ever by Japan with any country not party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—an extraordinary exception from the only country ever to have been attacked with nuclear weapons.

Although noteworthy, Japan’s nuclear exception was not surprising. It was another milestone in a series of historic accommodations and strategically significant activities between Tokyo and New Delhi demonstrating the steady growth of a substantive and significant strategic bilateral partnership.

This emerging strategic relationship between India and Japan is significant for the future security and stability of the recently coined “Indo-Pacific Region.” It also is a critical development for both Beijing and Washington. India possesses the most latent economic and military potential of any state in the wider Indo-Pacific area. For Japan, an expanding partnership with India serves as a hedge against a China acting to challenge the existing post-World War II, rules-based, international and regional order. Together, the two countries will have much to say about the future trajectory of China’s ascent. They also will have a significant voice in defining and establishing the rules of the Indo-Pacific Region, shaping how that enormous geopolitical space will evolve over the coming few decades.

India and Japan share complementary, but not identical, strategic visions. New Delhi and Tokyo both seek to manage—and minimize—the potential negative impacts from the rise of China in accord with their own strategic perspectives. Japan perceives China’s increasingly assertive actions to be a great and growing strategic threat. India, for its part, is concerned about China’s increasingly worrisome behavior, but finds itself relatively more dependent upon China for economic growth and less worried about China’s immediate physical threat than Japan. As a result, India has been—and will continue to be—less vocal in complaints about Chinese behavior, preferring to warn Beijing with subtle signaling and actions.

The India-Japan strategic partnership has yet to garner much attention in Washington during the Trump administration, but it should. Inevitably, any U.S. administration that wishes sustained influence in the Indo-Pacific must do so with an eye toward help from traditional and emerging security partners. Japan is a traditional security partner and India an emerging one. Americans should become more familiar with the backstory and contemporary economic, political and security manifestations of this rapidly evolving and very significant strategic partnership.

The India-Japan relationship is not new: it dates back centuries, involving both cultural and commercial interactions. Buddhism came to Japan from India in the sixth and seventh centuries. The first direct economic contact can be traced to the beginning of Japan’s Meiji period in 1868, when Japan used raw materials from India to enable its early industrialization. The relationship was rejuvenated in 2000 and has become increasingly strategic in orientation since 2006. Modern forces are driving this relationship forward, including the rise of China, the promise of India and the re-emergence of Japan as an active contributor to international peace and stability.

India-Japan strategic relations have evolved through three major phases since the end of World War II. The first ran from 1945 to 1999. The second took place from 2000 to 2005. The third, which began in 2006, continues through 2018.

In the first phase, Japan and India maintained a cordial relationship but remained at a political distance. India practiced leadership of the Nonaligned Movement while Tokyo was closely aligned with the American-led, anti-Communist, anti-Soviet bloc. U.S.-India antipathy—and the distance between Tokyo and New Delhi—grew greater after India’s Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed with Moscow signed in 1971. This first phase came to a rather frosty end after India’s nuclear tests of 1998 and the Japanese decision to join Washington and impose economic sanctions against New Delhi.

The second phase of the relationship began in the first year of the new millennium and continued through the end of 2005. It commenced with the historic visit of American president Bill Clinton to India in March 2000—the first by a U.S. president for more than twenty years. Taking a cue from the Clinton visit, Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori traveled to New Delhi in August 2000, where he announced the Japan-India Global Partnership. Since then, prime ministers of both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan have visited India. Beginning with the visit of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to India in 2005, Japanese and Indian prime ministers have held annual, alternate-host summits. On the security front, the Indian and Japanese Coast Guards began annual joint exercises and leadership exchange visits in 2000.

By late 2006, a third and much broader phase of strategic engagement began between India and Japan. The phase evolved in parallel with greater defense and security engagement by the U.S. presidential administration of George W. Bush with India under the aegis of its “dehypenation policy.” Japan-India relations became increasingly geostrategic in nature.

Beginning with his first cabinet from September 2006 to September 2007, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe brought a personal commitment and dynamism to the relationship with India. Abe fondly recalled that his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, had been the first Japanese prime minister to visit independent India and that India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had introduced him warmly to a great outdoor rally there in 1957.

During the period of Abe’s first government, he and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh signed bilateral agreements that moved the Abe vision toward reality. In 2006, India and Japan signed their first-ever bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement. That same year, the two countries signed a document formalizing their relationship as one of “Strategic and Global Partnership.” In a speech before the Indian parliament in August 2007, Abe laid out a construct called “Confluence of the Two Seas.” In it, Abe asserted that India and Japan had a unique and special role, and responsibility, to see this vision attained.

Abe’s resignation for health reasons in September 2007 did not arrest the positive trajectory of bilateral relations. They continued to expand steadily, if not as vigorously. Strong cultural, economic and political forces drove forward the relationship. The looming specter of China’s ongoing military modernization required that the two nations collaborate on managing the potential challenge posed by Beijing.

Abe’s return as Japanese prime minister in December 2012 set the stage for even greater acceleration in the third phase of the Indo-Japanese bilateral relationship. India signaled its deep commitment to Japan as a strategic partner by making Abe the first ever Japanese dignitary to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day in January 2014—India’s highest diplomatic honor. That spring, Indian elections brought Narendra Modi of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to power, and the bilateral relationship took a dramatic spring forward.

Prime Minister Modi visited Japan in September 2014, making this his first bilateral visit outside of South Asia. On this trip, India and Japan officially updated the description of their relationship to one of a “Special Strategic and Global Partnership.” Japan and India moved forward on greater cooperation in long-sensitive space and defense matters. India also joined Japan in expressing concern about developments in the South China Sea.

High-level diplomacy and strategic interactions accelerated again in 2015 and 2016. Japanese investment in major Indian economic projects took off. On his December 2015 visit, Abe inked Japan’s commitment to funding and building India’s first-ever high-speed railway, along with protocols to enable the future transfer of defense equipment and technology. India and Japan also agreed on joint measures to protect classified military information—a commitment essential to greater technology transfer in the future. India agreed to Japan’s permanent inclusion in the bilateral, annual U.S.-Indian Malabar naval exercises. Bilateral interactions in 2016 included a very significant bilateral civil nuclear deal, signed in early November by Modi on a visit to Japan. This deal opened the way for Japan’s highly capable nuclear reactor businesses, like Toshiba, to build nuclear power plants across India and sell nuclear reactor parts and equipment to other contractors there.

India’s metamorphosis as a modern Asian-engaged nation began in the early 1990s. In 1991, India confronted simultaneous, related crises that demanded a re-think of its decades-old Nonalignment strategy. The first crisis was economic, in the form of a severe balance of payments crisis. The second crisis was geostrategic. India’s principal security and economic partner from 1971–1990, the Soviet Union, collapsed. India lost Soviet subsidies, customers and suppliers in Russia and across the fragmenting Soviet bloc. It also lost its ability to stay distant from the global first world economy led by the United States and Western powers.

Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao announced an alternative economic model in 1992: the Look East policy. This was the start of India’s efforts to cultivate extensive economic and, later, strategic relations across Southeast Asia at first, and then the wider Asia-Pacific region. It led India to pursue economic modernization and integration into the wider capitalist trade and finance framework.

Japan was a natural partner for India’s Look East policy, although relations between the two expanded only slowly at first as New Delhi’s immediate Look East focus went toward relationships with Southeast Asian states. During the 1990s, India did increase its economic ties with Japan. But significant political and strategic potential went uncultivated throughout the decade, especially after India’s 1998 nuclear weapons test.

In 2000, then-Indian prime minister Vajpayee expanded economic and cultural relations with Japan into dialogue and exchange about geostrategic matters of mutual interest. Mori’s August visit to India reciprocated and extended the relationship dramatically. By the mid-2000s, Indian policymakers positioned the Japan-India relationship at the very top of a growing array of strategically important bilateral relationships evolving across the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

In November 2014, some six months after his ascension as prime minister, Narendra Modi announced that India would pursue an Act East policy, extending beyond the two-decade-old Look East policy. His announcement—which utilized a phrase first uttered in a policy speech by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her 2011 visit to India—aimed to further invigorate Look East with a wider set of engagements across the Asia-Pacific region. The Modi government called for greater external investment in India to build state infrastructure, smart cities and economic competitiveness (especially in manufacturing).

Since then, India has been pursuing options for external investment as well as strategic interaction in a manner to signal displeasure with China’s increasingly assertive unilateralism. Modi has focused on welcoming Japanese infrastructure investment into India, notably choosing Japanese investment over Chinese offers in critical programs, like the Mumbai Industrial Corridor bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, and in critical smart cities initiatives on the east coast of India.

Tokyo has become New Delhi's increasingly preferred economic partner. Although Beijing remains India’s primary economic partner when summing all investments and trade activities, Japan is consistently among the top ten states investing in India since 2010 (China has been conspicuously absent in this top ten list). India has been working to extend and expand overall Japanese economic activity across the country.

Japan has averaged about $5 billion of investment a year in India for the past half-decade. This is about 6 percent of Japan’s overall annual overseas investment during those years and about half of Japan’s direct investment in China. However, this sustained level has been a noteworthy increase over the less than $2 billion per year Japan annually invested in India in the decade before 2009. More importantly, the $3 billion increase in Japanese investment into India since 2009 is twice the amount Japanese investment into China over that same period. Announcements in 2014 and 2015 by India of additional Japanese investment tranches planned through the year 2020 remain relatively consistent with the current $5 billion annual investment, adding a bit more in the area of specific projects.

Japan’s government-to-government official development assistance (ODA) is a critical component of its overall economic support for India. Japan initiated its ODA program for India in 1958. In 2003–04, India became the largest single recipient of Japanese ODA. This program has focused on the development of industry-related infrastructure and India’s energy infrastructure (increasing renewable energy capacity and rural electrification). It is noteworthy that Japan exempted India from cuts in its ODA budget in the wake of the tsunami and meltdown of the nuclear reactors in Fukushima in March 2011.

Japanese ODA support for road and water supply construction in India’s northeast merits special comment. For years, India found it difficult to secure outside investment partners for many of these projects. The China-India dispute over rightful ownership of the 90,000 square kilometers of land in India-named Arunachal Pradesh, referred to as South Tibet by China, consistently inhibited outside investor interest in support for infrastructure projects in these areas. Tokyo has resisted Chinese pressure, becoming India’s lone outside-government investment partner in the region. From late 2014, Japan has pledged about $854 million in funding at reduced interest rates for about 1,200 kilometers of roads across India’s northeast, and several hundred million additional in low-cost funding and aid for water and hydro-electric projects in areas near the Chinese border.

Japan has also supported India in financial matters of strategic significance. In 2013, the Indian rupee went into free fall and international worries about India’s ability to finance growth grew significantly. Japan decisively intervened. In September 2013, Japan signed a $50 billion debt swap with a clause allowing the ceiling on the deal to go as high as India wanted. International currency speculators were thrown off the scent, and the Indian rupee stabilized.

In December 2015, Abe and Modi signed documents in New Delhi marking another expansion in the scope of Japanese investment into India. These included an announcement that Japan would fund a $15 billion project to build a high speed “bullet train” between Mumbai and Ahmedabad in India’s northeast, outbidding a Chinese proposal for this same project.

The two strategic partners formalized the hallmark India-Japan Civil Nuclear Agreement during Modi’s November 2016 annual summit meeting in Japan and put it into force in July 2017. Their November 2016 summit statement extended the India-Japan Vision 2025 document signed in New Delhi during the previous annual summit of December 2015, and confirmed the strategic nature of Japan’s economic assistance to India itself and to mutual interests in the wider region that help counter the potential for undesirable Chinese influence. Three Japanese ventures in the Indian Ocean basin stand out.

First, India in 2015 approached Japan with a proposal for economic cooperation on India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands with a strategic twist. Japanese funding for a fifteen-megawatt diesel power plant to be built on South Andaman will help improve the lives of the population there. Moreover, reliable, robust power on the islands will greatly assist India’s ability to upgrade its evolving maritime and tri-service bases on the islands, expanding its presence in an area where both nations wish to see growing Chinese maritime activities monitored more diligently.

Second, India and Japan have begun collaborating on an extension of economic ties and infrastructure from India to Myanmar. Although China’s influence is pervasive across Myanmar, Japan’s private sector has long been present. Japan made Myanmar its largest recipient of grant aid projects in 2014, including infrastructure projects for a major bridge, railway improvements, customs modernization and gas power plant construction. Japan also approved over $1.5 billion in very favorable ODA loans for Myanmar’s infrastructure projects during 2013–2015. In late 2016, Japan pledged an additional $7.7 billion in public and private support for Myanmar’s development over the coming decade.

For its part, India views Myanmar as its gateway to the East. Modi announced the Act East policy there on a visit to Naypyidaw in late 2014. Although India-Myanmar trade has been paltry, India has begun more deliberate trade and transit interaction with Myanmar. New Delhi continues to support Japan’s robust investments in Myanmar, looking to link those with complementary ones in northeast India and with other traditional Indian economic partners.

Finally, Japan has joined India in a joint project to develop the strategically important port of Charbahar in Iran. India launched a collaborative venture with Iran and Afghanistan in mid-2016 to boost economic ties and access to natural resources and trade routes stretching from Charbahar to Central Asia. The Charbahar project includes construction and operation of port facilities there, the creation of special economic zones nearby and the development of road and rail connections through Iran, Afghanistan and into Central Asia. This infrastructure will be a parallel route and a potential competitor to the Chinese-sponsored Belt and Road Initiative and its key north-south land component through South Asia: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Unique diplomatic and bureaucratic arrangements now characterize the bilateral relationship between India and Japan. Expanding in scope and depth, these now feature some unique administrative arrangements and activities aimed at working around the most notorious features of India’s often sclerotic bureaucracy and in a manner aimed to assure that a robust bilateral relationship will outlast any one Japanese or Indian prime minister.

Although the close personal relations—and obvious affinity—between Abe and Modi have driven an especially high level of diplomatic engagement since 2014, it is clear that a wide and deepening diplomatic engagement framework preceded them and seems destined to outlast them. This level of diplomatic commitment for New Delhi outside of its immediate neighborhood is unprecedented.

To sustain diplomatic and strategic interaction, both sides have taken steps to overcome frictions inherent in their bureaucratic functions. Of note is the establishment in 2015 of a working-level, joint committee on high-speed railways to expedite progress on the Mumbai to Ahmedabad signature project. Japanese security leaders cite this as a model for successful future interaction. In addition, a number of important adaptations have been institutionalized, many involving defense and security meetings addressed later in this article. At the same time, both prime ministers have taken steps within their respective bureaucracies to facilitate high-level government-to-government interaction.

Abe has made the bilateral partnership with India a national security and diplomatic priority. Since 2014, the Japanese National Security Secretariat has met frequently to discuss the Japan-India relationship, with Japan’s ambassador to India regularly attending when in country.

In India, Modi has enabled Japan unprecedented access within the all-important Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). In 2015, India granted Japan a special ombudsman position directly within the MEA. This representative has special access to the MEA leadership and, as necessary, directly to Modi himself in order to assure that Japanese projects and activities get top priority across the Indian bureaucracy. Combined, these top-level special arrangements aim to institutionalize a special political and bureaucratic relationship before the upcoming 2019 Indian general election.

Defense and security interactions between India and Japan have lagged. India’s historic reluctance on the issue of military-to-military partnerships, attributable to its traditional nonaligned status, has been part of the problem. So too has been Japan’s unique constitutional limitations on military security beyond territorial self-defense. These longstanding limitations though are now changing. Defense and security cooperation activities have begun advancing rapidly in the case of military-to-military exercises, exchanges and, most recently, in the case of military equipment and technology transfers.

Japan views India as playing an important security role in the Indian Ocean and in maintaining a rules-based maritime order in the region. Beginning in 2012, the Japanese Maritime Security and Defense Force and the Indian Navy have engaged in the Japan-India Maritime Exercise. On a broader basis, India and the United States invited Japan in 2007 to be a guest participant in their bilateral maritime Malabar exercise. Japan participated in the two Malabar exercises that year—one near Okinawa and the other in the Bay of Bengal. Japan again participated in the annual Malabars of 2009, 2011 and 2014. In 2015, India, with U.S. support, expanded the annual bilateral Malabar exercise to include Japan as a permanent participant. Japanese officials and naval officers viewed this invitation as an “important uptick in exercise partnerships.” The trilateral 2016 Malabar exercise was held in waters off Okinawa; the 2017 exercise in the Bay of Bengal; and, the 2018 exercise was conducted off the coast of Guam.

India and Japan also are extending and normalizing security and defense relations through expanded military-to-military offices, meetings and exchanges. During 2015, Japan expanded its representational defense presence in India from one to three officers and also seconded a Japanese Coast Guard senior officer there. Since 2010, India and Japan have conducted regular staff talks between uniformed naval leadership. They have conducted a vice minister of defense policy dialogue since 2009. Defense and foreign ministry personnel conduct a recurring maritime security dialogue. Defense ministers meet annually, and often more than once each year.

Finally, the sale of defense equipment and technology occupies an important and increasingly active area in the expanding relationship between the two nations. Japan would like to see India better equipped to provide reliable security and assured deterrence against Chinese encroachment in the Indian Ocean (in the near-to-mid-term) and into the Southwestern Pacific (in future years). Indian officials aim to secure Japanese weapons, technologies and defense know-how in several critical areas related to these mutual security aims. India would like greater Japanese investment and assistance to help grow India’s anemic indigenous armaments manufacturing capacity. New Delhi also would like to procure key Japanese weapons platforms and advanced technology for maritime surveillance and patrol, eventually extending these acquisitions that will translate into a robust anti-submarine warfare capability. In conjunction with the United States and other Western partners, India would similarly like Japanese assistance in developing its indigenous shipbuilding capacity. The transfer of Japanese intelligence and cyber know-how into military as well as civilian applications is a long-term aspiration. New Delhi also desires Japanese investment and technology transfer for India’s civilian and military space programs.

Especially concerned with China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi is focused on the near-term improvement of maritime surveillance and intercept capabilities. A feature example of bilateral nascent defense weapons and technology cooperation is the half-decade-long effort by Japan to sell its US-2I amphibious search and rescue airplane to India. Negotiations on the sale of twelve Japanese US-2Is to India began in 2011 before the return of Abe to the Japanese prime minister’s office in late 2012. The negotiations side-stepped Japan’s self-imposed ban on selling arms by focusing upon the sea rescue aspects of the aircraft and its utility for the Indian Coast Guard. This point of obfuscation became unnecessary after 2014, when Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced a revision of Japan’s ban on arms exports to allow for arms export in cases that will contribute international peace and stability and serve Japan’s national interest. The US-2I export would be Japan’s first explicit defense equipment deal in its post-World War II history.

Nonetheless, India’s purchase of the US-2I remained deadlocked over pricing and technology transfer issues. In September 2016, Japanese sources reported that the Ministry of Defense planned to work with the manufacturer, ShinMeiwa Industries, to reduce the price of the $1.6 billion package in order to close the deal. More than two years later, in late August 2018, the deal was still not done.

Challenges with the US-2I aircraft sales demonstrate the pitfalls accompanying the promise of future bilateral India-Japan weapons sales. India’s hidebound defense bureaucracy is notoriously opaque, inefficient and resistant to change from a state-run model of weapons procurement that favors national content over weapon effectiveness. Even the dynamic leadership of Modi has generated only modest impact upon the Indian Defence Research and Development Organization’s proclivities for prevarication and arms course reversals, as Tokyo has learned. Japanese officials recognize there will be similar frustrations in future military weapons sales and technology transfer ventures. At the same time, Japan is very new to the military weapons sales game, only entering this stage formally in 2014. Japan lacks, and must develop, the bureaucratic infrastructure to support the sale or transfer of military technology. Its limitations in this area were cited as a major reason for the disappointing failure of the Japanese bid to win Australia’s tender for its next-generation submarine force.

Bilateral bureaucratic challenges will limit rapid growth in the Japanese sale of military equipment to India, despite the obvious appetite for Japanese expertise in maritime surveillance, search and rescue, anti-submarine capability and missile defense technologies. Growth will also be constrained by the lack of compatibility in military equipment, the lack of shared doctrine and limited experience in joint exercises. While the potential is great, the processes to realize this potential will take time to emplace.

Both Japan and India share a complementary geopolitical vision. In September 2011, then out-of-office Shinzo Abe addressed the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi. There, Abe told his audience that a strong India is in the best interest of Japan and a strong Japan is in the best interest of India.

For Japan, the strategic relationship with India is manifestly security-related and overwhelmingly about China. As a U.S. ally, Japan remains confident that it does not have to fear China—for now. Australia also is a Japanese security asset—the second leg of its regional security “stool.” But for Tokyo, its biggest future security asset is India—one that is growing and that occupies an important strategic location.

In this context, India represents Japan’s best long-term hope to balance China on the Asian continent. Japan views Indian engagement in Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan as a strategic parry to Chinese investments and Indian Ocean access via Pakistan. For these reasons, Japan plans to be an investment partner with India in port, road and rail projects planned for Iran and Afghanistan.

While they know that India is concerned with China and Chinese behavior, Japanese leaders recognize that India is presently unable to join with Japan in a full-throated criticism of China. India cannot afford to alienate Beijing when New Delhi remains far more heavily dependent on the Chinese economy for its vital sustained economic growth than does Tokyo. Senior Japanese officials emphasize that Japan-India strategic cooperation is not against anyone, but rather in support of the international system that has created postwar prosperity.

In India, there is a broad political consensus that strategic relations with Japan are very important. New Delhi continues to view the vital aspect of the bilateral relationship as that of strategic economic engagement. Japan has an exceptionally important role to play in India’s pathway to sustained robust economic growth, industrialization and modernization of its national infrastructure. Japanese ODA can do things that other Indian economic partner programs, like those of the United States and Western Europe, cannot, including the funding of sensitive infrastructure projects in northeast India.

Indians also appreciate Japan’s special role in elevating India’s global status. Tokyo’s intense focus on the bilateral strategic relationship conveys gravitas and importance to Indian economic, diplomatic and security activities across the Asia-Pacific region and globally.

At the same time, India’s political leadership views the bilateral strategic relationship with Japan as a complement to—not a substitute for—India’s growing bilateral strategic relationships around the world, especially its relationship with the United States. Japan is clearly now among the top five strategic relationships for India, and many in India’s ruling class believe that within ten years strategic relations with Japan will be among India’s top three in importance, eclipsed only by the United States and perhaps the European Union.

Together, Japan and India are growing a formidable strategic partnership—one spanning the entire Indo-Pacific. Tokyo and New Delhi continue to pursue many avenues of cooperation with China. Yet beneath the surface, the two countries share historic worries and competitive dynamics with China that make for their common cause. Theirs is a strategic partnership with shared political, economic, cultural and strategic norms that do not resonate with China.

Japan provides India with economic, political and diplomatic interactions that New Delhi cannot replicate elsewhere. Japanese economic assistance is special in that it can undertake projects of enormous scope and scale in the Indian economy—offering a competitive and often preferred alternative to Chinese bids on critical Indian infrastructure projects. As a technologically advanced industrial nation with an established defense industry, and one now enabled to export weapons platforms and technologies abroad due to a historic political evolution, Japan can help India advance its national military and defense capabilities.

The Indo-Japanese strategic and defense relationship exhibits the most regional potential toward growing enhanced capacity and capability in support of long-term and enduring U.S. economic, humanitarian and security objectives. While the India-Japan strategic partnership will not supplant Washington’s vital regional role for the foreseeable future, it can become a vital complement for Washington’s near-term regional security commitments. In time, this bilateral strategic relationship might prove even more capable in support of historic American security interests in the Indo-Pacific Region. The United States has good reason to do all it can to nurture and support its growth.

Thomas F. Lynch III is the distinguished research fellow for South Asia and the Near East at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not an official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

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