Tag: Marise Payne

At First ‘2+2 Dialogue’, India, Australia Discuss Changed Security Scenario in Afghanistan

On Saturday, September 11, Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, and her defence colleague Peter Dutton held joint ‘2+2’ talks with their Indian counterparts, S. Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh.

New Delhi: At the inaugural two plus two ministerial dialogue, Indian and Australian foreign and defence ministers grappled with the changed security scenario following the return of the Taliban, including “concerns” over the composition of the new caretaker government and use of Afghan soil by terrorist organisations.

On Saturday, Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, and her defence colleague Peter Dutton held joint ‘2+2’ talks with their Indian counterparts, S. Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh. With this meeting, India has instituted ‘2+2’ format talks with all ‘Quad’ members. The first ‘2+2’ meeting with the US was held in 2018, followed by Japan in 2019.

At the end of the discussions, Jaishankar told reporters that there had been a “detailed exchange of views” over Afghanistan.

On August 15, the Taliban walked into Kabul, completing their re-conquest of Afghanistan 20 years after being thrown out due to the US invasion after 9/11. The last US troops left Kabul airport on August 31, and the Taliban announced a new caretaker government earlier this week.

“Our approach is very similar. In one way, it is summed up by the UN Security Council resolution 2593, which emphasises most of all that Afghanistan must not allow its soil to be used in any manner by anybody for terrorism,” said the Indian minister.

He referred to the resolution passed by the UN’s main body in charge of peace and security on August 30 that called on the Taliban to adhere to its commitment to not allowing its territory to be used by any terror group or entity against any other country.

“Apart from that, there were concerns about the inclusiveness of the dispensation, concerns about the treatment of women, children and minorities, concerns related to travel of Afghans, issues related to humanitarian assistance,” stated Jaishankar.

While the Taliban emphasised the ‘caretaker’ nature of the government, the lack of diversity in the cabinet has run alarm bells in many world capitals. Out of 33 members, all but three are from the dominant Pashtun community. There were no women members.

Stating that Australia also shared interest in counter-terrorism, Payne also added that Canberra was “very focussed on seeking safe passage for those in Afghanistan citizens, foreign nationals, visa holders of other countries who seek to leave Afghanistan and we have urged that they be allowed to leave safely, and means are available to do so”.

Both the ministers remembered the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that had ushered the Afghan republic but has now become history.

Over 39,000 Australian soldiers have served in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led military coalition. Australia had evacuated 4,100 people on 32 flights from Kabul before the evacuation efforts were brought to a halt by the twin bomb attacks near the airport on August 26.

Payne also highlighted disquiet that the status of women would regress under the Taliban regime.  “There are many (Afghan) women and girls who attest to the achievements of those two decades, and Australia stands with other members of the international community seeking that it is not wound back and the participation of women and girls in their own way and in a just way is allowed to continue”.

Incidentally, Cricket Australia has called off its scheduled test match with Afghanistan if the Taliban did not allow women to play sport.

During the media interaction, Jaishankar said that the description of the ‘Quad’, comprising of US, Japan, Australia and India, as an ‘Asian NATO’ was a ‘cold war’ formulation.

“We call ourselves Quad, and Quad is a platform where four countries have come to cooperate for their benefit and for the benefit of the world. I think a term like NATO is very much a cold war term, looking back. I think Quad looks to the future. It reflects globalisation. It reflects the compulsions of countries to work together,” he said.

He also said that Quad members were more focused on issues like supply chains, connectivity and vaccines.

“We also say that we have a positive and practical agenda – around vaccines, around climate, around critical technology also trying to address some of the dangerous misinformation that pervades the world experience in relation to the (Covid) pandemic,” added Payne.

At the first summit of Quad leaders held in March, there had been a high-profile announcement about the distribution of one billion covid-19 vaccine doses, using India’s manufacturing capacity in pharmaceuticals. However, the devastating second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic had put a question mark on the program’s timeline.

Later this month, the leaders of the four Quad countries will meet in person for their first physical summit in Washington.

In a strong signal, all the Quad members participated in the Malabar naval exercise, with Australia joining the other three in November 2020.

On bilateral issues, Jaishankar stated that he asked his counterpart to take a sympathetic view about the difficulties faced by Indian students in travelling to Australia due to travel restrictions.

“The frustrations felt by students and their parents are completely understandable. Students would like to be in the institutions where they were studying or were already studying. We discussed it in some detail today. Minister Payne also told me what Australia thinks about this situation,” he said.

Payne responded that Australian rules were based on scientific research and modelling to allow for relaxing restrictions based on the vaccination level. “We are on our way to vaccinating Australians to a level which will give us the confidence to reopen in a manner that will enable students to return in phase 3 and phase 4. There is a shared desire on both sides to see that travel resumes,” she stated.

In First Meeting After Biden Inauguration, Quad Foreign Ministers Ponder Over Myanmar

The usual buzzwords of “free and open” Indo-Pacific, the rule of law and ASEAN centrality also featured in the separate statements issued by India, the US, Japan and Australia.

New Delhi: The continuing fallout from the Myanmar military takeover was one of the topics broached in the conference call between the foreign ministers of India, US, Japan and Australia, which also marked the first meeting of the ‘Quad’ after the new Joe Biden administration took over.

On Thursday, the 90-minute-long phone call was the third ministerial-level meeting of the Quad; the first was in New York in September 2019, followed by their second outing in Tokyo in October 2020.

It was the first time that US secretary of state Anthony Blinken had taken part in a Quad meeting, even though he had already spoken to the three other foreign ministers on the phone separately.

In the continuing tradition of the resumed Quad meetings since 2017, there was no joint statement but separate press releases by the four foreign offices, which had overlaps but also divergences based on their national priority.

The usual buzzwords of “free and open” Indo-Pacific, the rule of law and ASEAN centrality featured in the statement. Japan and India pointedly noted that there was increasing support for the concept of Indo-Pacific, especially from Europe.

All the press releases noted that the exchange of views was around current topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, counter-terrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), supply chain resilience and Myanmar.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated that the ministers highlighted their “shared attributes as political democracies, market economies and pluralistic societies”. The Indian readout said the “changes” in the world makes a “strong case for their countries working closely together”. “It was important for the international community that the direction of changes remains positive and beneficial to all,” it added.


Australia described the Quad as “bringing together four like-minded democracies committed to respecting and upholding international rules and obligations through positive, practical engagement to protect and support the sovereignty, prosperity and security of the region”.

The Japanese foreign ministry’s press release was more explicit in pointing fingers at China. The four ministers “shared the recognition that the existing international order has been under challenge in various fields including unilateral attempts to change the status quo”, noted Japan.

According to Tokyo’s readout, the four ministers “concurred to strongly oppose unilateral and forceful attempts to change the status quo in the context of the East and South China Sea”. However, there was no reference to the East and South China sea in statements from India, Australia or the US.


There was a common mention of Myanmar in all the press releases, but the emphasis was varied.

Incidentally, India didn’t refer to any consensus but only noted minister S. Jaishankar’s remarks on the developments of February 1, when the Myanmar military declared an emergency and detained all elected leaders. “In the discussion pertaining to recent developments in Myanmar, the upholding of rule of law and the democratic transition was reiterated by India,” the read out said.

Australia also employed similar phrases to assert its commitment to Myanmar’s “democratic transition”, while labelling the developments as a “military coup”.

The US claimed that the ministers discussed “the urgent need to restore the democratically elected government in Burma” and the “priority of strengthening democratic resilience in the broader region”.

However, the most detailed remarks on the developments in the south-east Asian nation was issued by Japan, with foreign minister Motegi expressing grave concern about the “deteriorating situation in Myanmar”.

He stated that Japan, one of Myanmar’s largest donors, had told the military junta to “immediately stop violence against citizens including shootings” and release all the detained politicians, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

Echoing language used by the US, the Japanese statement also added that the “four ministers shared the view on the need to recover the democratic regime early”.

While India and Australia stated that they looked forward to regular ministerial-level Quad meetings, only Japan and the US mentioned that it will be held on an annual basis.

‘Quad’ Gets an Upgrade as Foreign Ministers of India, Japan, Australia, US Meet

The four countries of the informal group first met in 2007, much to China’s consternation.

New Delhi: The ‘Quad’ has received a profile lift, with foreign ministers of India, Japan, Australia and the United States holding a meeting on Thursday. This is being seen as a “significant elevation” of its status since officials of four countries first met in 2007.

The meeting – on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York – was attended by the Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar and his counterparts, Mike Pompeo (United States), Marisa Payne (Australia) and Toshimitsu Motegi (Japan).

The first meeting of the four countries at the additional secretary level took place in May 2007, to help with coordination in disaster mitigation during the 2004 tsunami. However, China had issued a strong démarche to all the four countries after the first meeting, interpreting the group as the formation of a nascent alliance against Beijing.

The ‘Quad’ format had since then gone dormant until about 2017. On the sidelines of the East Asia Summit, senior officials of joint secretary rank met after a decade to revive the consultations. At the meeting, they affirmed their support for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and the centrality of the ASEAN.

Since then, officials have met at least twice a year on the sidelines of multilateral fora. These meetings have not yielded any joint statement, but each side had issued a separate press statement. This time there have been no press releases, except for tweets from the official accounts of the ministers. 


According to the US state department’s acting assistant secretary for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells, the September 26 meeting marked a “significant elevation in the level of…dialogue”.

She said the upgradation in the dialogue level “demonstrates the leadership of all four countries in institutionalising this gathering of like-minded Indo-Pacific partners”.

Bloomberg has reported that  Australian foreign minister Payne had emailed a statement to the media that the four countries “reaffirmed their commitment to shared values and cooperation on maritime security, infrastructure and connectivity in support of rules-based frameworks”.

As can be seen in her tweet, Payne also posted that the ministers discussed “efforts to maintain and promote an open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific”.

Jaishankar has previously stated that India does not consider the ‘Quad’ as a response to a single country, but rather a reflection of shared aims.

So far, there has been no statement issued by the Chinese foreign ministry on the meeting of the four foreign ministers. In July this year, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi had said that one of the principles of regional cooperation should be to “focus on openness and inclusiveness, without forming factions or seeking small cliques”.

Next month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host Chinese President Xi Jinping for the second edition of their informal summit in India.

The Indian Ocean Region May Soon Play a Lead Role in World Affairs

Around 80% of the world’s maritime oil trade passes through the Indian Ocean. And the economic and political might of the region is growing.

In recent days, Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne announced efforts to strengthen Australia’s involvement in the Indian Ocean Region, and the importance of working with India in defence and other activities. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi – a geopolitical conference co-hosted by the Indian government – Payne said:

“Our respective futures are intertwined and heavily dependent on how well we cooperate on the challenges and opportunities in the Indian Ocean in the decades ahead.”

Among Payne’s announcements was A$25 million for a four-year infrastructure programme in South Asia (The South Asia Regional Infrastructure Connectivity initiative, or SARIC), which will primarily focus on the transport and energy sectors.

She also pointed to increasing defence activities in the Indian Ocean, noting that in 2014, Australia and India had conducted 11 defence activities together, with the figure reaching 38 in 2018.

Payne’s speech highlights the emergent power of the Indian Ocean Region in world affairs. The region comprises the ocean itself and the countries that border it. These include Australia, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Somalia, Tanzania, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

In terms of global political significance, the Atlantic Ocean can be viewed as the ocean of our grandparents and parents; the Pacific Ocean as the ocean of us and our children and the Indian Ocean as the ocean of our children and grandchildren.

There is an obvious sense in which the region is the future. The average age of people in the region’s countries is under 30, compared to 38 in the US and 46 in Japan. The countries bordering the Indian Ocean are home to 2.5 billion people, which is one-third of the world’s population.

But there is also a strong economic and political logic to spotlighting the Indian Ocean as a key emerging region in world affairs and strategic priority for Australia.

Some 80% of the world’s maritime oil trade flows through three narrow passages of water, known as choke points, in the Indian Ocean. This includes the Strait of Hormuz – located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman – which provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

Also read: Indian, French Forces to Access Each Other’s Naval Facilities in Indian Ocean

The economies of many Indian Ocean countries are expanding rapidly as investors seek new opportunities. Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Tanzania witnessed economic growth in excess of 5% in 2017 – well above the global average of 3.2%.

India is the fastest growing major economy in the world. With a population expected to become the world’s largest in the coming decades, it is also the one with the most potential.

Politically, the Indian Ocean is becoming a pivotal zone of strategic competition. China is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across the region as part of its One Belt One Road initiative.

For instance, China gave Kenya a US$3.2 billion loan to construct a 470 kilometre railway (Kenya’s biggest infrastructure project in over 50 years) linking the capital Nairobi to the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa.

Chinese state-backed firms are also investing in infrastructure and ports in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bangladesh. Western powers, including Australia and the US, have sought to counter-balance China’s growing influence across the region by launching their own infrastructure funds – such as the US$113 million US fund announced last August for digital economy, energy and infrastructure projects.

In security terms, piracy, unregulated migration and the continued presence of extremist groups in Somalia, Bangladesh and parts of Indonesia pose significant threats to Indian ocean countries.

Countries in the region need to collaborate to build economic strength and address geopolitical risks, and there is a logical leadership role for India, being the largest player in the region.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Shangri La Dialogue in June, 2008:

“The Indo-Pacific is a natural region. It is also home to a vast array of global opportunities and challenges. I am increasingly convinced with each passing day that the destinies of those of us who live in the region are linked.”

More than previous Indian prime ministers, Modi has travelled up and down the east coast of Africa to promote cooperation and strengthen trade and investment ties, and he has articulated strong visions of India-Africa cooperative interest.

Broader groups are also emerging. In 1997, nations bordering the Bay of Bengal established the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), which works to promote trade links and is currently negotiating a free trade agreement. Australia, along with 21 other border states, is a member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) which seeks to promote sustainable economic growth, trade liberalisation and security.

But, notwithstanding India’s energy and this organisational growth, Indian Ocean cooperation is weak relative to Atlantic and Pacific initiatives.

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper seeks to support IORA in areas such as maritime security and international law. Private organisations, such as the Minderoo Foundation, are doing impressive research – as part of the Flourishing Oceans intiative – on the migration of sea life in an effort to advance environmental sustainability and conservation.

Also read: Maldives, Pakistan Discuss Joint EEZ Patrolling in Indian Ocean Nation

But Australia could focus more on how to promote the Indian Ocean. In Australia’s foreign affairs circles, there used to be a sense Asia stopped at Malta. But it seems the current general understanding of the “Indo-Pacific” extends west only as far as India.

What this misses – apart from the historical relevance and contemporary economic and political significance of the Indian Ocean region generously defined – is the importance of the ocean itself.

Not just important for trade and ties

If the ocean was a rainforest, and widely acknowledged as a repository of enormous biodiversity, imagine the uproar at its current contamination and the clamour around collaborating across all countries bordering the ocean to protect it.

The reefs, mangroves and marine species that live in the ocean are under imminent threat. According to some estimates, the Indian Ocean is warming three times faster than the Pacific Ocean .

Overfishing, coastal degradation and pollution are also harming the ocean. This could have catastrophic implications for the tens of millions of fishermen dependent on the region’s marine resources and the enormous population who rely on the Indian Ocean for their protein.

Australia must continue to strengthen its ties in the region – such as with India and Indonesia – and also build new connections, particularly in Africa.The Conversation

Craig Jeffrey, Director and CEO of the Australia India Institute; Professor of Development Geography, University of Melbourne.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.