Defence diplomacy: exercises, exports and partnerships

India’s armed forces are increasingly instruments of foreign policy, not just its last resort. Defence diplomacy aims to build strategic partnerships and promote regional stability through cooperation, joint exercises like Malabar, and international forums like RATS-SCO, enhancing trust, boosting indigenous defence exports, and strengthening military capabilities through technology sharing and joint training.

The toolkit has five drawers: joint exercises, logistics and foundational agreements, defence exports, capacity building of partner militaries, and multilateral security forums. For UPSC, this article fills the gap between the conceptual paragraphs in the functional-diplomacy article and the operational reality of how India converts military capability into diplomatic capital.

The definition and the doctrine

India’s defence diplomacy aims to build strategic partnerships and promote regional stability through cooperation, joint exercises (e.g., Malabar), and international forums (e.g., RATS-SCO). It enhances trust, boosts indigenous defence exports under the 2020 policy, and strengthens military capabilities through technology sharing and joint training.

The doctrine serves three masters at once. Strategically, it signals capability and intent to partners and adversaries. Economically, it opens markets for the domestic defence industry under Make in India and the 2020 defence-export policy framework. Diplomatically, it gives India a presence in security conversations, from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, that economics alone cannot buy.

Joint exercises: the visible layer

Exercises are defence diplomacy’s most public face. Malabar, now the Quad navies’ flagship drill, rehearses high-end naval warfare in the Indo-Pacific. Yudh Abhyas with the United States is the army’s largest bilateral exercise. Garuda Shakti with Indonesia, Al-Najah and Naseem-al-Bahr with Oman, and the growing roster of service-level drills convert interoperability from a slogan into muscle memory.

Agreements: LEMOA and the logistics web

The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the United States, signed in 2016, lets the two militaries refuel and resupply from each other’s facilities, the unglamorous plumbing that makes sustained joint operations possible. Reciprocal logistics arrangements with Australia and France extend the web across the Indo-Pacific, so that an Indian warship exercising off Reunion or Darwin operates from friendly ports, not distant home bases.

Defence exports: BrahMos and the 2020 push

The BrahMos supersonic cruise missile’s sale to the Philippines, contracted in 2022 with deliveries beginning in 2024, is India’s landmark defence export: the first time a co-developed frontline missile system found a foreign buyer. Reported contracts such as Akash air-defence systems for Armenia signal that the export pipeline is widening under the 2020 policy framework that set export targets and streamlined clearances.

Exports serve strategy, not just revenue. Every BrahMos battery in the Philippines deepens a security partnership in the South China Sea’s shadow; every training team India sends builds institutional familiarity that outlasts any single government. The export hurdles are real, though: African and Asian sales have been delayed by financing gaps, end-user certification and competition from established suppliers.

Capacity building and multilateral forums

Quieter than exercises but more durable is capacity building: training partner-nation officers at the National Defence College and the Indian Military Academy, gifting patrol vessels and equipment, and advising on coastal security. In multilateral forums, India works the ADMM-Plus for regional security dialogue, the SCO’s RATS mechanism for counter-terrorism, and UN peacekeeping, where India remains among the largest troop contributors, to convert military professionalism into diplomatic standing.

The structural gaps

Five weaknesses hold the enterprise back. Geopolitically, Chinese assertiveness, sharpened after Galwan, forces every defence-diplomacy move to be read in Beijing. Structurally, India lacks defence wings in most embassies and has no unified defence-diplomacy strategy, so implementation is inconsistent across theatres. Coordination between the MEA, the Defence Ministry, DRDO and the services remains friction-prone.

Resource constraints bite: the 2025-26 defence budget of ₹6.81 lakh crore, about 1.9 percent of GDP, must fund modernisation, pensions and operations before diplomacy. And a structural tension persists between promoting indigenous systems and dependence on foreign platforms like Rafale and S-400, which complicates the export narrative.

The way forward

The fixes are institutional, not budgetary. A published defence-diplomacy policy framework would give the services a common playbook. Integrated planning cells spanning the MEA, MoD and DRDO, specialised defence-diplomacy personnel, and defence wings in key embassies would professionalise execution. Regionally, the Indian Ocean littoral deserves first claim on exercises, training slots and affordable platforms, the logic of SAGAR applied to military partnerships. Regular evaluation of what exercises and exports actually deliver would close the loop between activity and strategy.

What examiners keep asking

• The definition verbatim: partnerships, stability, Malabar, RATS-SCO, exports, technology sharing.
• The exercise table: Malabar, Yudh Abhyas, Garuda Shakti, and why Oman is the Gulf outlier.
• LEMOA 2016 and the logistics web: what refuel-and-resupply access actually enables.
• BrahMos to the Philippines as the landmark export: 2022 contract, 2024 deliveries, South China Sea significance.
• The gaps paragraph: no unified strategy, thin embassy defence wings, 1.9%-of-GDP budget, MEA-MoD friction.

Key Terms

• Make in India (defence): Make in India in defence is the indigenisation drive underpinning the 2020 export-policy framework. It links domestic manufacturing to the export and co-production agenda.
• Capacity building: Capacity building is training and equipping partner militaries, from NDC/IMA courses to gifted patrol vessels. It builds institutional familiarity that outlasts governments.
• Defence diplomacy: Defence diplomacy aims to build strategic partnerships and promote regional stability through cooperation, joint exercises (e.g., Malabar), and international forums (e.g., RATS-SCO). It enhances trust, boosts indigenous defence exports, and strengthens capabilities through technology sharing.
• Garuda Shakti: Garuda Shakti is the India-Indonesia bilateral army exercise. It anchors the defence leg of Act East engagement with ASEAN’s largest member.
• Yudh Abhyas: Yudh Abhyas is the India-US bilateral army exercise, the largest in the army’s exercise calendar. It builds ground-force interoperability.
• ADMM-Plus: The ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus is the region’s defence multilateral. India works it for security dialogue and practical cooperation.
• BrahMos: BrahMos is the supersonic cruise missile co-developed by India’s DRDO and Russia’s NPOM. Its 2022 sale to the Philippines is India’s landmark defence export.
• Malabar: Malabar is the Quad navies’ flagship exercise. It rehearses high-end naval warfare and is the most visible instrument of India’s Indo-Pacific defence diplomacy.
• Akash: Akash is India’s indigenous surface-to-air missile system. Reported export contracts, including to Armenia, signal the widening of India’s defence-export pipeline.
• LEMOA: The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement is the 2016 India-US pact for mutual military refuelling and resupply. Reciprocal pacts with Australia and France extend the logistics web across the Indo-Pacific.
• SAGAR: SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) is India’s Indian Ocean doctrine. Applied to defence diplomacy, it prioritises the ocean’s littoral states for exercises and platforms.
• RATS: The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure is the SCO’s counter-terrorism mechanism. India uses it for intelligence and security cooperation in Eurasia.

Practice questions