Table of Contents
Today’s brief reads three articles. Om Prakash Das of MP-IDSA sets out what the visit to Indonesia added to an old defence relationship. Harsh V. Pant and Dharminder Singh Kaleka ask whether IMEC can survive the war with Iran. Gurjit Singh writes in the Deccan Herald on what is lost when the last survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki die.
India and Indonesia run their defence ties through standing committees, not single deals.
Om Prakash Das writes on what the Prime Minister’s visit to Indonesia added to an old defence relationship. His case is that the two countries no longer meet only when their leaders travel. Defence work moves through fixed committees, staff talks, joint exercises and port calls. The visit raised the level of cooperation on missiles and renewed the agreement on maritime safety. Das ends on the test that matters. Both governments have stated their intent. Turning that intent into equipment and into a working port is the harder half.
The record
- The Act East Policy was announced in 2014. Das reads it as a shift from trade to a wider strategic partnership with Southeast Asia.
- The 2018 Shared Vision of India and Indonesia on Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific is the base document of the maritime relationship.
- A Defence Cooperation Agreement was signed in 2001 and renewed in 2006. A new agreement followed in 2018, when the two countries raised their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
- The joint statement of this visit welcomed the elevation of defence cooperation, including cooperation on the BrahMos Missile System and the Air-to-Air Missile Cooperation Agreement.
- The visit renewed the Memorandum of Understanding on Maritime Safety and Security Cooperation. It also concluded an Implementing Arrangement between BAKAMLA RI and the Indian Coast Guard.
- The standing machinery is wide. It holds the Defence Ministers’ Dialogue, the Joint Defence Cooperation Committee, working groups on defence cooperation and on defence industries, staff talks for each of the three services, and the Indonesia-India Security Dialogue. Over the last five years the first four met at least twice each.
- The 46th edition of the India-Indonesia Coordinated Patrol was conducted on 17 May 2026. The Indonesian ship KRI Sultan Thaha Syaifuddin and the Indian ship Kulish took part.
- The 10th edition of the joint special forces exercise Garuda Shakti was held at Bakloh in Himachal Pradesh from 3 to 12 December 2025. It trains for counter-terrorism and jungle warfare.
- Cooperation on Sabang port was launched in May 2018. A joint feasibility study was completed by 2023. Das records that the project has not been developed on a significant scale.
- An Indonesian liaison officer sits at India’s IFC-IOR, and the two share maritime intelligence in real time. The Indian Space Research Organisation runs a telemetry, tracking and command station on Biak Island in eastern Indonesia.
The argument
Use this when the question asks whether Act East has grown past trade. The answer lies in the machinery. An agreement, four standing bodies, staff talks for each service and a patrol in its 46th edition are not the marks of an occasional friendship. Name them in the answer.
The second half of the answer is the gap. Sabang was launched in 2018 and is still not built. The missile agreements are commitments and not equipment on the ground. India and Indonesia sit at either end of the eastern Indian Ocean, and India’s weight there will be judged by what arrives and when.
“Both countries are vital stakeholders and partners in ensuring a rules-based maritime order and freedom of navigation across critical sea lanes.”
Om Prakash Das
Every chokepoint that closes makes the case for IMEC and shows what IMEC still lacks.
Harsh V. Pant and Dharminder Singh Kaleka write on the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor. The war with Iran is the strongest argument yet for the corridor. It also shows plainly what the corridor does not have. A trade route is only as strong as the institutions and the security arrangements behind it. By that measure IMEC is still a work in progress. The block is not engineering. It is political, and it sits on the northern arm.
The record
- In 2024 attacks by the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea pushed traffic through the Suez Canal down by roughly 90 per cent at the peak of the crisis. Shipping lines took the long route around the Cape of Good Hope.
- The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a quarter of the world’s oil that goes by sea. Its standing as an open waterway has been thrown into doubt again and again.
- India is the world’s third largest importer of oil. It still draws most of its crude and gas from the Persian Gulf.
- IMEC was conceived to cut dependence on single vulnerable chokepoints. It was also meant as a transparent and rules-based counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
- The planned rail runs through Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa. It depends on relations between the Arab states and Israel returning to normal. Those relations have been frozen since the Hamas attack of October 2023 and the war in Gaza that followed.
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 endorsed an American plan. It has held a fragile ceasefire and secured the return of hostages. Its treatment of Palestinian statehood is strictly conditional.
- Saudi Arabia will not restore relations with Israel without an irreversible path to a Palestinian state. Its part is essential to the Gulf leg of the corridor.
- The security arc the authors describe runs from Mumbai on the Arabian Sea, to Haifa on the eastern Mediterranean, to the Greek naval facility at Souda Bay. Greece has the largest merchant fleet in the world.
- Trade between India and the United Arab Emirates reached 101.25 billion dollars in the year 2025-26. The two governments have raised their target to 200 billion dollars by 2032.
- The India-European Union Free Trade Agreement was concluded in January 2026, after nearly two decades of talks. It extends one commercial framework along the whole length of the corridor.
The argument
This is the article for a question on connectivity. The argument is that a corridor is not only rail and port. It needs institutions, and it needs someone to defend it. The memorandum that founded IMEC carried no security arrangement at all. The authors ask that the arc of India, Israel and Greece supply one.
The second use is on China. The authors do not ask the Gulf states to choose sides. Those states hedge, and they will go on hedging. India’s offer is open standards, debt that a state can carry and no price paid in sovereignty. Carry that into an answer on the Belt and Road Initiative and on India in the Indo-Pacific.
“A corridor that cannot function when a chokepoint closes, when a ceasefire wobbles, or when a partner hedges is not resilient. It is merely aspirational.”
Harsh V. Pant and Dharminder Singh Kaleka
Restraint on nuclear weapons has rested on the survivors, and the survivors are dying.
Gurjit Singh writes on the two days Japan sets aside each year for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ceremonies have outlived the generation that lived through the bombings. He argues that they now carry a second duty. Nuclear threats have come back into world politics, and the people who can say from memory what the weapon does are almost gone.
The record
- Japan pauses on 6 and 9 August. Bells toll at 8:15 in the morning in Hiroshima and at 11:02 in the morning in Nagasaki, and a minute of silence is kept.
- The bombings were eighty one years ago. Singh writes that the two cities remember differently.
- Hiroshima has taken up the role of the world’s peace capital. The Peace Declaration read by its mayor calls for nuclear abolition, international cooperation and dialogue among nations.
- Nagasaki is quieter. It is Japan’s oldest centre of Christianity, and its ceremony carries interfaith prayers, hymns and messages of reconciliation.
- The average age of the hibakusha, the survivors of the bombings, is now above the mid eighties, and their numbers are falling fast. Museums are recording testimonies in digital form and volunteers are trained as memory successors.
- Nuclear language has returned to strategic debate. Singh lists Russia’s repeated references to nuclear weapons during the Ukraine conflict, North Korea’s expanding missile programme, China’s growing nuclear arsenal and the threat of use in the Iran crisis.
- Japan is the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks. It also relies on the American nuclear umbrella. Its governments have argued for gradual disarmament while staying committed to extended deterrence.
- World opinion has moved. Singh writes that the debate over the bombings has shifted from military necessity to humanitarian consequence.
- What visitors carry away from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is not a figure from the war. It is a burnt lunchbox, a melted wristwatch stopped at 8:15 and a tricycle left beside a grave.
The argument
The paper is usually answered with treaties. This gives the other half. Singh’s claim is that the weapon was never used again because the harm it does was still spoken of by the people it was done to. Set that beside the standard account of deterrence and the answer on disarmament is complete.
Japan is the example to quote for the contradiction. It asks for abolition and shelters under the weapons of another state. That is moral aspiration and hard compromise held together. It belongs in answers on nuclear proliferation, on the Non-Proliferation Treaty and on India’s own nuclear policy.
“They are annual reminders of the moral limits of warfare and of humanity’s continuing struggle to reconcile security with survival.”
Gurjit Singh
Where this belongs in your syllabus
Open the note and read the full topic.
The questions this feeds
Questions from earlier years that today’s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the PYQ Vault.
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