4 min readJul 31, 2026 07:26 PM IST
First published on: Jul 31, 2026 at 07:26 PM IST
Is India emerging as the third power in the Indo-Pacific Region (IOR) alongside the US and China?
India’s interests in the IOR are not new. But in the past decade, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has substantially increased engagement with the countries in the region. He has participated in the ASEAN-India Summits 12 times, East Asia Summits nine times, visited Japan eight times, Singapore five times, Indonesia four times and Australia three times. He has been present at all six QUAD leader-level summits since 2021.
Modi is the only Indian prime minister to have visited almost every country in the Indo-Pacific except Cambodia, Taiwan and North Korea. He met with the leaders of 14 South Pacific Island nations thrice in the past 12 years. Interestingly, despite differences, Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping bumped into each other over 20 times in the last 12 years, although not all of them can be called serious engagements.
In his “confluence of two seas” address to Parliament in 2007, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe invoked the terminology of “Indo-Pacific” for the first time for the region known as “Asia-Pacific” since the 1980s. Soon, the term captured the attention of the world, with the US beginning to use the phrase “Indo-Asia-Pacific” initially, before officially adopting the term in 2018. It even renamed its command Indo-Pacific Command. Several countries came out with Indo-Pacific strategies.
Two countries that refused to adopt this terminology were China and Russia. In 2018, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, mocked the Indo-Pacific as an “attention-grabbing idea” that would “dissipate like sea foam”, dubbing it as an effort by the Western powers to encircle and contain China.
Keeping complexities in mind, Modi adopted a gradualist approach to dealing with the IOR. In the Quad, while the US proposed a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) as the motto, Modi suggested Free, Open and “Inclusive” Indo-Pacific — FOIIP — leaving some ambiguity over the question of exclusion of any country. He proclaimed the concept of “ASEAN Centrality” to the Indo-Pacific at the Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore in 2017. However, in the last couple of years, a new assertion is visible. First came the initiative to develop a $10-billion major maritime facility called the Great Nicobar Island Development Project. This project, sitting just 40 nautical miles north of the Strait of Malacca, which witnesses around 100,000 ship crossings annually, 60 per cent belonging to China, is in a way India’s proclamation of its geostrategic activism.
Modi’s engagements with the leaders of Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia in July also indicated an assertion of power. These engagements went far beyond trade and technology, involving defence deals and strategic maritime collaborations. During Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s visit to Delhi in July, India formally agreed to build a trilateral Track 1.5 dialogue mechanism with Japan and the Philippines, hinting at its readiness to step into a tense maritime zone — the East and South China Seas.
The Takaichi government increased its defence budget last year to a record $58 billion, inching towards the 2027 target of 2 per cent GDP spending on defence. South Korea also increased its defence spending steeply to almost $45 billion and aims to take it to 3.5 per cent of its GDP by 2035. This spending surge is indicative of the realisation that the US’s interest and involvement in the region is waning and the China challenge is mounting. In an interview in 2013, Lee Kuan Yew argued that “the size of China’s displacement of world balance is such that the world must find a new balance in 30 to 40 years”.
Through his recent initiatives, Modi raised the bar for India in the Indo-Pacific. Through his personal relationships with leaders in the region and deftness in managing relations with diverse powers based on the principle of strategic autonomy, is Modi poised to build that balance?
The writer, president, India Foundation, is with the BJP
