India makes a big pacific pivot | Viewpoint by Amitabh Mattoo

Modi's visits to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand puncture the notion that India is estranged from its extended neighbourhood

ISSUE DATE: Jul 27, 2026

There are official visits and there are voyages that refashion the mental map of a country’s foreign policy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visits to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand were the latter. The signal: the Pacific is not remote anymore. It is now part of India’s strategic neighbourhood.

Asia was too often viewed from New Delhi through a lens of anxiety: Pakistan, China, the Himalayas and the turbulence to India’s northwest. Its predominance has waned as the global pivot has shifted to oceans. India’s prosperity, security, trade and strategic independence will be increasingly defined by what happens in the maritime corridor between the eastern Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.

The Indo-Pacific is not an American invention that New Delhi has chosen to adopt; it is an unignorable geopolitical reality. Beijing gets it. China is translating economic might into military expansion, infrastructure loans into diplomatic leverage and nebulous interdependence into quid pro quos clouded with deference. Xi Jinping does not seek India’s permission to access the Indian Ocean. Even if China is not to be contained, it cannot be allowed to become the fulcrum of regional destiny with others managing its margins. India must not accept a Sudetenland moment in the Indo-Pacific, in which the big power dictates and everyone else genuflects.

The US, too, matters greatly. Power persists longer than power politics. Presidents come and go, allies can be barked at, tariffs turned into missiles and friendships tested. New Delhi must cooperate with Washington but cannot delegate either its security or sovereignty to it. Partner, yes. Client, never.

Indonesia is the link, straddling vital sea lanes, anchoring the Southeast Asian region and connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans. India and Indonesia were never truly separated by sea, instead, once connected by it. The BrahMos deal elevates ties from the inertia of history to today’s necessities. Being a security supplier to Southeast Asia’s largest archipelagic country bolsters Act East, reinforces ASEAN centrality and guards against the Indo-Pacific becoming a theatre of rivalry between Beijing and Washington.

Australia is the foundation stone. Few bonds have come as far in two decades. Defence, critical minerals, education and civilian ties deepen the relationship. The civil nuclear agreement sealed during this visit, enabling the commercial supply of Australian uranium to Indian reactors, is proof. Canberra long ago realised that New Delhi is central to the regional equilibrium.

New Zealand was the invitation to come further. Small geopolitically, but mighty in potential symbolism, it signals India’s acceptance into the South Pacific. The first visit by an Indian prime minister in 40 years elevated a relationship—anchored by the free trade agreement signed in April—into a strategic partnership. The mutual logistics support arrangement signed in Auckland allows an Indian naval ship, in times of peace, to provision in New Zealand.

Jakarta. Canberra. Wellington. In isolation, these are significant bilateral achievements but, together, they create an ecosystem of India’s making. Modi’s tour has done more than puncture the argument that India is estranged from its extended neighbourhood. Yet India cannot advance its cause in the Indo-Pacific just by haranguing others about a ‘rules-based order’. That hoary clich must now be retired to the dustbin of geography, the place where slogans go when they substitute capability. A balancing power reacts to others. History teaches us that nobility of intent is rarely matched by military means. Geopolitics is nine parts diplomacy and one part sermon. Beneath it all lie diesel, guns and submarines.

What India needs to become is a making power: one that forges coalitions, builds institutions, supplies public goods and gives smaller countries options other than capitulation. The Indo-Pacific will shape India’s future. Here’s a better idea. India should start shaping the Indo-Pacific’s future as well.

—The author is Professor and Dean, School of International Studies, JNU, and honorary professor, University of Melbourne

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