Having committed to strengthening the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific region with the adoption of specific policy guidelines recently, Germany has vowed to further intensify cooperation with India in the field of maritime security.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while announcing that Berlin has decided to engage in the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has acknowledged that India has assumed global responsibility with the G20 Presidency – and also that of the UN Security Council for the month of December – at a “difficult moment”.
The world situation, she stated during her two-day visit to New Delhi, makes close coordination between the two democracies “more than necessary”.
As Chancellor Olaf Scholz completes one year in office on December 8, Germany maintains that it sees China as a partner in global challenges, a competitor and “increasingly as a systemic rival” as well.
“China has changed very much over the last few years and I think the whole region can see this and feel this. So the exchange with actors from the region is very important to us, especially India as a direct neighbour. This is very important for us to have a good assessment of the challenges ahead,” said Baerbock after her meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday.
The Scholz government’s forward-looking strategic guide for the Indo-Pacific region, published as policy guidelines in September, bats for close cooperation with not only China, Japan and the US – the world’s three largest economies having Pacific coastlines – but also ‘Indo-Pacific power’ India.
India has spotlighted that while the economic ties between the two nations remain strong – Germany is India’s biggest trading partner in the European Union – exchange of information about sanctions and designations against terror groups and individuals, the issues of countering radicalism, and terrorists’ use of the internet and cross-border movement of terrorists, remain equally important.
“I think today, our relationship has matured to a point where our cooperation should be visible more and more to the rest of the world,” mentioned Jaishankar on Monday with Baerbock standing by his side.
Earlier this year, PM Modi and Scholz had asserted the need to further deepen bilateral security and defence cooperation as strategic partners to jointly address global security challenges.
As they co-chaired the plenary session of the 6th India-Germany Inter-Governmental Consultations (IGC) in Berlin on May 2, both leaders agreed to begin negotiations on an agreement on the exchange of classified information.
They also acknowledged the Policy Guidelines for the Indo-Pacific of the German Federal Government, the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative enunciated by India.
The visit of the German frigate Bayern in Mumbai at the beginning of the year – and the scheduled visit of an Indian Naval ship to a German port in 2023 – is being regarded as an important milestone in the growing engagement between the two partners.
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