The naval cooperation between India and Singapore in Southeast Asia region

The relationship between India and Singapore has progressed in various domains since the early 1990s. In recent years, India and Singapore focus on defence-security bilateral ties by singing an agreement of defence cooperation in 2003. Due the security challenges and threats to the safety of navigation along waterways in Southeast Asia (SEA) region represented by China’s assertiveness to control the Sea Lanes of Communications and its rising military power, besides other non-traditional threats such as; piracy and terrorism, there is a crucial need to enhance the naval cooperation between India and Singapore. Thus, India and Singapore signed the agreement of naval cooperation in 2017. This paper aims to examine the recent status of growing relationship between India and Singapore in the maritime domain since 2003 till 2018. The discussion of this paper is based on content analysis derived from selected themes of scholarly works in the area, which examined the relations between Singapore and India in the domain of naval cooperation and from official statement and documents as well. This paper suggests that to increase the maritime security in the SEA region and keep the regional balance of power vis-à-vis China, India and Singapore should strengthen their bilateral naval cooperation to secure their interests in the region. This paper will address some questions such as; what are the mechanisms of naval cooperation between India and Singapore? What is the implication of their cooperation on other regional power such as; China? Whether the naval cooperation between the two parties will actively succeed to keep the regional stability in the region in the short and long terms? This paper agrees that India attempts to exercise its strategic role to compete the influence of China’s maritime power in SEA region.

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