[19th August 2026] The Hindu OpED: A changing Asia demands more from Delhi and Tokyo, together

Question (2019, GS2): “‘The time has come for India and Japan to build a strong contemporary relationship, one involving global and strategic partnership that will have a great significance for Asia and the world as a whole.’ Comment.” Linkage: This question directly mirrors the article, asking for an evaluation of how a strengthened partnership between Delhi and Tokyo can influence the broader Asian and global landscape.

Mentor Comment

The Japanese Defence Minister’s visit to India this week comes as Tokyo abandons its self imposed military restraint and adopts an active regional military diplomacy. The visit exposes a gap between an India Japan defence relationship that carries the full institutional architecture of a Special Strategic and Global Partnership and a level of operational and industrial cooperation that has stayed slow and incremental.

What is the India Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership?

1. What it is: The Special Strategic and Global Partnership is the highest tier of India’s bilateral partnership framework with Japan, elevated to that designation in 2014 from the Strategic and Global Partnership established in 2006.
2. Political apparatus: It rests on an Annual Summit between the two Prime Ministers, which India holds with very few countries.
3. Security apparatus: It carries a 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Dialogue, a defence ministerial dialogue, a defence policy dialogue and service level staff talks.
4. Operational apparatus: It includes regular exercises across the three services and a mutual logistics arrangement.
5. Where it falls short: Defence industrial cooperation and operational coordination remain well behind the political rhetoric that the designation carries.

What is the Official Security Assistance programme?

1. What it is: Official Security Assistance is Japan’s grant mechanism, launched in 2023, for providing defence equipment and infrastructure to the armed forces of friendly countries, kept separate from its Official Development Assistance which cannot fund military use.
2. What it signals: It marks the first time Japan has used military assistance as an instrument of statecraft, with early recipients including the Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Fiji.

What is a counterstrike capability?

1. What it is: A counterstrike capability is the ability to strike missile launch sites and related targets in an adversary’s territory after an attack has begun or is imminent, which Japan had previously renounced as inconsistent with an exclusively defensive posture.
2. How Japan is acquiring it: Through purchase of American Tomahawk cruise missiles and simultaneous development of longer range indigenous weapons.

What is the UNICORN naval communications antenna?

1. What it is: UNICORN, the Unified Complex Radio Antenna, is an integrated composite mast that houses multiple communication and electronic warfare antennas inside a single stealth shaped structure, reducing a warship’s radar signature.
2. Significance for the relationship: Its co development is the first bilateral defence co development project between India and Japan, announced during the Japanese Prime Minister’s Delhi visit last month.

What is a Mogami class frigate?

1. What it is: The Mogami class is a Japanese designed multi mission stealth frigate built for a small crew, combining anti submarine, mine countermeasure and surface warfare roles in a single hull.
2. Why it matters here: Australia’s decision to acquire Japanese designed Mogami class frigates is the largest defence export Japan has secured since it eased its arms export restrictions.

What is a logistics agreement?

1. What it is: A logistics agreement, in this case the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement, allows the armed forces of two countries to use each other’s bases and facilities for supplies, refuelling, spares and services on a reimbursable basis.
2. Operational effect: It extends the reach of each navy without new basing, which is the practical foundation for sustained joint operations in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific.

What is driving Japan’s shift away from military restraint?

1. The primary driver: The rise of China as a great military power and Beijing’s growing political will to translate that power into concrete outcomes.
2. The economic turning point: China overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy in 2010, and its growing economic resources supported a massive expansion of military capabilities.
3. The shared method of pressure: The People’s Liberation Army applies the same methods on Japan’s maritime frontier and along India’s contested Himalayan land border, namely persistent probing and the slow but definitive alteration of the territorial status quo.
4. The compounding variable: The challenge from China is magnified for both capitals by the volatility of American policy, with the second American presidency reinforcing questions about the predictability of Washington’s regional commitments.
5. What neither capital wants: Neither Tokyo nor Delhi seeks an Asia without America, since Japan remains deeply invested in its alliance with Washington and India sees a continuing American military presence as essential to a stable Asian balance.
6. The policy turn: Japan’s prime minister who returned to office in 2012 accelerated the effort to adapt security policy to these circumstances.

What did Japan’s old post war bargain look like?

1. The basic trade: For much of the post war era Tokyo concentrated on economic reconstruction while relying on the United States for its security.
2. Spending ceiling: Defence expenditure remained around 1 percent of gross domestic product.
3. Export restriction: Arms exports were tightly restricted, effectively closing Japan’s defence industry to foreign customers.
4. Force constraints: The Self Defence Forces operated within narrow political constraints on role, deployment and equipment.
5. When it began to break: Those conditions began to change as the China challenge unfolded through the 2000s.

What do Japan’s 2022 defence reforms actually contain?

1. Spending target: Tokyo set the goal of raising defence related spending to around 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2027, and brought that target forward through additional spending last year.
2. Counterstrike doctrine: Japan is acquiring long range counterstrike capabilities, including American Tomahawk missiles, alongside longer range indigenous weapons.
3. Defensive layers: It is strengthening air and missile defence and building cyber and space capabilities.
4. Unmanned systems and reach: It is investing in unmanned systems and in the capacity to operate farther from the Japanese islands.
5. Industrial base: Tokyo is revitalising its defence industrial base and breaking down the old barriers between civilian technology and national security.
6. Export liberalisation: It has eased restrictions on arms exports, which is what made a foreign frigate order possible.
7. Security assistance: It has begun providing military equipment to friendly countries through the new Official Security Assistance programme.
8. What the package amounts to: Taken together these changes are larger than a rearmament, because Tokyo is treating military power, defence technology, arms exports and security assistance as normal instruments of statecraft.

What do Japan’s other partnerships demonstrate about the pace India Japan ties could reach?

1. Australia, the frigate order: Australia’s decision to acquire Japanese designed Mogami class frigates is a breakthrough for a country that until recently imposed extraordinary restrictions on exporting weapons, and it shows that Japanese defence industry can now deliver a major platform to a partner.
2. Australia, the access architecture: Canberra and Tokyo have expanded military exercises, reciprocal access, logistics and defence industrial cooperation, which is a deeper package than the logistics arrangement India and Japan currently hold.
3. New Zealand: Japan is deepening defence ties with Wellington, and the Japanese Defence Minister came to Delhi after consultations in Canberra with his Australian and New Zealand counterparts, signalling a coordinated Indo Pacific circuit rather than a series of bilaterals.
4. South Korea: Tokyo is reaching out to Seoul and other regional neighbours, which matters because it means Japan is willing to build security ties across historically difficult relationships.
5. Europe: Japan is strengthening security engagement with European partners, extending the same instruments of exercises, access and industrial cooperation beyond Asia.

What does the existing India Japan defence architecture already provide?

1. Ministerial mechanism: A 2+2 dialogue bringing foreign and defence ministers of both countries into a single format.
2. Sustainment mechanism: A logistics agreement giving each side reciprocal access to the other’s facilities for supplies and services.
3. Exercise programme: Regular exercises across the three services, alongside participation in the trilateral and multilateral formats both countries belong to.
4. The most recent political push: The Japanese Prime Minister’s Delhi visit last month called for more sophisticated exercises, stronger maritime domain awareness and deeper defence industrial cooperation.
5. The first industrial output: That visit announced the first bilateral defence co development project, the UNICORN naval communications antenna.

Why has the institutional architecture not translated into operational weight?

1. The stated gap: India Japan defence cooperation has expanded and remains well behind the political rhetoric attached to the Special Strategic and Global Partnership.
2. The slow node: Defence industrial cooperation has been painfully slow, which is why a single antenna counts as the first co development project after two decades of partnership.
3. Exercises are not coordination: The armed forces exercise together without moving to operational coordination, so joint activity does not accumulate into joint capability.
4. Asymmetric urgency: Japan is demonstrating greater purpose and urgency in responding to the changing balance of power, which places the burden of matching commitment on Delhi.
5. The reassurance that removes the excuse: Unlike China, India has long welcomed the prospect of a stronger Japan, so there is no political obstacle on the Indian side to a larger partnership.
6. Why a review agenda is insufficient: Treating the visit as an occasion to review bilateral exercises and exchanges repeats the incrementalism that produced the gap.

Where should the partnership go next?

1. Industrial ambition: Delhi and Tokyo need much greater ambition in joint research, development and coproduction of weapons and military technologies.
2. Anti submarine warfare: Operational coordination should extend to anti submarine warfare, the domain where Japanese capability and Indian Ocean geography combine most directly.
3. Maritime surveillance: Coordination in maritime surveillance would convert two separate domain awareness pictures into one.
4. Air defence: Air defence cooperation follows from Japan’s investment in layered air and missile defence.
5. Logistics: Logistics coordination would turn the existing agreement from an access arrangement into a sustained operating capability.
6. Why now: The unfolding transformation of the Asian security environment is the reason the pace has to change, not the specific content of any one visit.

Challenges to India Japan defence cooperation

1. Slow defence industrial delivery: Joint projects take years to move from announcement to contract on both sides, e.g. the first bilateral co development project, the UNICORN antenna, was announced only last month after two decades of partnership.
2. Technology transfer caution: Japan’s defence industry remains new to export and is protective of sensitive technology, e.g. the long negotiation over the US-2 amphibious aircraft never converted into an Indian order.
3. Procurement process mismatch: India’s defence acquisition procedure and offset requirements do not align with Japanese corporate practice, e.g. Japanese firms have limited experience bidding into competitive Indian tenders with local content conditions.
4. Cost sensitivity: Japanese platforms carry high unit costs relative to Indian budget norms, e.g. the US-2 aircraft’s price was a principal reason the proposal stalled.
5. Divergence on Russia: India’s continued defence and energy relationship with Russia limits the sensitivity of technology Japan is willing to share, e.g. India’s Russian origin air defence and submarine fleet complicates interoperability planning.
6. Dependence on American policy: Both partners calibrate against Washington’s commitments, so volatility in American policy slows their own planning, e.g. questions about the predictability of the second American presidency have reopened alliance debates in Tokyo.
7. Domestic legal limits in Japan: Constitutional and legislative constraints on the Self Defence Forces still bound what Japan can commit to jointly, e.g. Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution continues to shape the scope of collective self defence.
8. Chinese economic leverage: Both economies remain deeply linked to China, which raises the cost of visible security alignment, e.g. China’s rare earth export restrictions have exposed the vulnerability of both countries’ defence electronics supply chains.

Conclusion

Japan has changed the terms of its own security policy through the 2022 reforms, a spending target of around 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2027, counterstrike capabilities, eased arms exports and the Official Security Assistance programme, and has already converted that change into a frigate order from Australia. India and Japan possess the full institutional architecture of a security partnership, a 2+2 dialogue, a logistics agreement and tri service exercises, and have produced a single co development project in the UNICORN antenna. The gap is one of ambition rather than of instruments, and closing it means moving from exercises to operational coordination in anti submarine warfare, maritime surveillance, air defence and logistics.