Abstract
For more than fifty years the European Union and India have steadily expanded their engagement, from trade to areas such as education, climate change and connectivity, but the last few years have added a surprising new dimension focused on defence and security cooperation that had hitherto been absent. Officials now discuss collaboration on maritime security, intelligence and counter-terrorism, and defence industries; new dialogues have been set up, including on cybersecurity; and the EU Naval Force and the Indian Navy conducted their first-ever joint manoeuvre in the Indian Ocean. What factors drive this new convergence, and why, given India's traditional reluctance to go beyond bilateral security cooperation with France or the United Kingdom, is Delhi warming to the idea of engaging the EU as a global security actor? Drawing on historical and official documents and interviews with Indian diplomatic, military and other officials, this paper shows that a changing Indian understanding of security — now more focused on cyber, technology, climate and other non-traditional domains — has paradoxically increased the EU's salience in Delhi's geostrategic perspective, with structural uncertainty marked by rising tensions with China, decreasing reliance on the United States, and the United Kingdom's Brexit further incentivising India to engage the EU as a global security actor.
Panel: Thinking European Security through India
Cite this presentation
@inproceedings{eiss-2021-india-s-new-security-approach-to-the-european-union,
author = {Constantino Xavier},
title = {India's New Security Approach to the European Union},
booktitle = {European Security Studies Conference 2021},
year = {2021},
url = {https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-india-s-new-security-approach-to-the-european-union.html}
}