On 20 April, India’s Chief of Army Staff, General Upendra Dwivedi, touched down in Hawaii for talks with the Commanding General of the US Army Pacific, Ronald P. Clark. The visit comes as Japan – in one of the most significant defence policy shifts in decades – moves to permit the export of military equipment including missiles and advanced technology to partner nations – opening new avenues for Indo-Pacific security cooperation. The timing is clear.

As the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz continues, the Indo-Pacific’s democracies are quietly, but urgently, tightening their security partnerships. For a region already contending with Chinese assertiveness and a North Korea that has conducted seven ballistic missile launches this year alone the crisis has served as a pointed reminder. Open sea lanes and freedom of navigation are by no means guaranteed. For India, the stakes are particularly high. As the world’s third-largest oil importer, its economic lifeblood runs through open sea lanes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the disruption in the Strait ‘unacceptable’ as India scrambles to offset the impact by turning to 41 alternative sources of energy imports.

Yet the more consequential danger is that threats to India’s sea lanes do not begin and end in the Middle East. The US-Iran conflict has made plain that strategic waterways can be weaponized with near impunity. That lesson will not be lost on others – least of all China. The risk is that Hormuz ushers in a new template, one in which maritime access becomes leverage, and the norms underpinning a Free and Open Indo-Pacific are eroded by hostile states. In the South China Sea, Chinese naval and coast guard activity reached record levels in 2025, with the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reporting a record daily average presence of Chinese vessels in contested waters.

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