Quad v AUKUS: Anglos & Allies

India and Japan don’t enjoy the cultural affinity shared by English-speaking Western countries

- Sanjaya Baru

The debate on whether the creation of AUKUS, a defence partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, strengthens or weakens Quad, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the US, will rage on. Proof of the pudding, as the English are wont to remind, will lie in the eating. There is an aspect to the distinction between AUKUS and Quad that has not received adequate attention. It centres around the concept of an Anglosphere, a grouping of Englishspeaking countries.

It is not a coincidence that the one country truly miffed by the creation of AUKUS has been France, a traditional rival of Britain. It is also no coincidence that the US and UK are willing to offer nuclear technology for defence purposes to Australia but have so far shied away from making it available to India and Japan. The West’s alliance with Japan remains warped by the memory and legacy of World War II. India is in a league of its own when it comes to defining her equation with the Anglosphere.

Bernard Shaw observed famously in Pygmalion that England and America are separated by the same language. So too is India, from both the US and UK. A common language can often be a shaky bridge of communication because the interlocutors imagine they do not require interpreters or a dictionary when they converse.

While the US, UK and Australia have been able to maintain a relationship of trust that allows them to create an AUKUS, India and Japan still do not enjoy the required level of either trust or cultural affinity with the West that would give them access to defense-related nuclear technology.