Nations’ new ways of working together, Xi’s nuclear deterrent display, scandal probe’s link to scandal probe, South China Sea’s geopolitical reality, Korean company’s record market listing, and the region’s shadow baby trade.

The journey this month by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand marks the consolidation of a new approach to the Indo-Pacific, one that might be called ‘G Minus Two’.

That is the assessment of Indian academic and foreign policy commentator C Raja Mohan, a professor at Delhi’s Council for Strategic and Defence Research.

Mohan says in a commentary in The Indian Express the idea of the US and China dominating Asia has always made Indian strategists uneasy. Donald Trump’s references to a G2, along with his administration’s decision to discard the term Indo-Pacific, have reinforced their anxiety.

“Delhi is responding to the new dynamic between Washington and Beijing by expanding its co-operation with the rest of Asia,” he says.

Recent visits to Delhi by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and South Korea President Lee Jae Myung underline the urgent approach by Tokyo and Seoul to widen their Asian ties, Mohan says. Modi’s eastern journey this month points to the same logic – the importance of increasing room to manoeuvre by strengthening co-operation among themselves.

An analysis in The Diplomat, the Asian online news magazine, says Australia and India are uneasy about relying on the US to resist China and are now seeing how they can gain strength from each other, much as Australia and Japan are increasingly working together.

“Australia and India are framing new minilateral coalitions to maximise their strategic options,” the article says.

The analysis was written by Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and reprinted from the institute’s The Strategist. It says a joint declaration on defence, signed during Modi’s visit, has notable aspects, including an intention to increase interoperability between the defence forces and a focus on strengthening regional security.

“Probably the most striking part is the undertaking to ‘consult on defence-related developments in the Indo-Pacific that affect shared interests’,” the commentary says. “This would have been unthinkable… even a few years ago.”

It notes the observation by Griffith University’s Ian Hall that this is almost alliance-like language, similar to the wording of the ANZUS Treaty.

An opinion piece in The Japan Times, written by author Brahma Chellaney, says until recently the Washington consensus on India was that helping the world’s largest democracy to become stronger served US interests by creating a counterweight to China.

“Washington’s India consensus is now quietly unravelling,” he says.

Chellaney says the clearest sign of change came in a March speech in Delhi by US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who said Washington would not repeat its China mistake – that would not allow India to ‘develop all these markets’ only to outcompete America.

“These remarks deserve far more attention than they received,” Chellaney says.

Missile test message aimed at US

When China fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile deep into the Pacific this month, Australia’s political class – media and politicians – tried to find a message for Canberra and its links with Pacific Islands nations.

Asian media took a broader geopolitical view.

An analysis in Nikkei Asia, the online politics and business magazine, said that behind the launch was Xi Jinping’s intention to test Donald Trump’s red lines. Xi gave the go ahead after deciding the launch was unlikely to draw Trump’s ire. He got response he expected: the State Department complained but Trump did not make any remarks that would impact the next Sino-American summit.

The analysis, by former China bureau chief........

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