Beyond bullet train: Will India gift Japan's Abe the diamond of his dream?

For over a decade, Japan PM Shinzo Abe has been courting India to join his proposed 'security diamond' quad for countering China's might in the Asia-Pacific waters

Today's Paper : Japanese top Minister Shinzo Abe’s India visit earlier this month could be remembered, amongst different matters, for the release of the bold bullet educate task. Even as the visit showed his dedication to his united states of america’s ties with India, it also highlighted India’s significance, notably, in another of his key commitments – constructing a counterweight to China’s growing would possibly in the Asia-Pacific waters, an exercising he started out greater than a decade ago.

In 2007, during one in all his visits to India, Abe had courted New Delhi to shape a coalition of democracies securing ‘broader Asia’ – a geographic and financial assemble that might evolve right into a community spanning the whole Pacific Ocean, and incorporating the us of america and Australia.

At some point of his speech in India’s Parliament, Abe had known as for the two nations to work collectively and ensure the Pacific and Indian Oceans have become “seas of freedom and prosperity”. specifically, he had spoken of India and Japan’s shared interest inside the security of sea lanes.

In a December 27, 2012, oped piece that he wrote, days before securing a 2d time period as Japan’s prime minister, Abe constructed upon his ‘Confluence of the two seas’ speech brought inside the Indian Parliament five years earlier. Titled ‘Asia’s Democratic security Diamond’, the oped known as for “a approach whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the usa kingdom of Hawaii shape a diamond to protect the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean vicinity to the western Pacific”. even as the 2007 speech had no longer explicitly named China, the 2012 oped made it clean that China’s naval would possibly and movements had to be challenged. | Readmore...