Cavalier India Defence Training Academy

CONTEXT Vietnam has invited India for ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting-Plus (ADMM Plus) being hosted by Vietnam in December 2020. About ADMM- Plus Consistent with the ADMM guiding principles of open and outward looking, the 2nd ADMM in Singapore in 2007 adopted the Concept Paper to establish the ADMM-Plus. The ADMM-Plus is a platform for ASEAN and its eight Dialogue Partners to strengthen security and defence cooperation for peace, stability, and development in the region. Eight Dialogue Partners are Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia and the USA (collectively referred to as the “Plus Countries” ). Agreed five areas of practical cooperation under this mechanism are: Maritime security, counter-terrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peacekeeping operations and military medicine. In 2013, a new priority area of humanitarian mine action was agreed.

While it is unclear if the government is considering joining the China­ led Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership , Colombo seems open to the idea. Located along one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, Sri Lanka is keen on developing the Colombo and Hambantota ports. A view of the East Container Terminal at the Colombo Port. | Photo Credit: Meera Srinivasan Sri Lanka’s growing emphasis on tapping the emerging Asian market would make the China-led Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement seem an ideal forum to build trade ties in the region. But given the island nation’s current economic challenges and India’s decision to opt out of the formidable grouping, the road is far from easy for Sri Lanka, according to economists. Few would dispute Sri Lanka’s distinct advantage, thanks to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean, along one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. “We must develop the [southern] Hambantota and Colombo Ports together with the ...

India, once a counter to China's military clout, now finds itself unable to garner support from the very countries it signed agreements with. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits India's Himalayan desert region of Ladakh, India, July 3, 2020, in this still image taken from video. Photo: ANI Numerous strategic partnerships and security arrangements that India had recently built up to counter China’s growing hegemony and territorial ambitions, have proved futile in all attempts at settling the enduring crisis posed by its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along the line of actual control (LAC) in Ladakh. Senior military officers claimed that all these stridently proclaimed regional pacts, agreed 2014 onwards and confined largely to the maritime domain, have failed in providing New Delhi any leverage in ‘pressuring’ Beijing into vacating large tracts of its territory occupied by the PLA since early May. “The clout these much publicised alliances had promised, and which cou...