Admiral Harris told a congressional committee last week that the US was close, after 10 years of demurral from the Indian side, to concluding a logistics agreement that would allow the two countries' militaries to easily use each other's facilities for refuelling and repairs. HMAS Rankin, a Royal Australian Navy Collins Class submarine, in Sydney Harbour last month. Credit:James Brickwood Although he did not specifically mention China on Wednesday, Admiral Harris spoke of "a potential dark age" in which powerful countries would "bully smaller countries through intimidation and coercion", and made the case that a broad naval collaboration was the best way to avert it. "Exercising together will lead to operating together," he said, before meetings with his Indian counterpart. "By being ambitious, India, Japan, Australia and the United States and so many like-minded nations can aspire to patrol together anywhere international law allows." India reacted furiously in 2014 when a Chinese People's Liberation Army submarine docked in the Sri Lankan port of Colombo and has warily watched the expansion of one of President Xi Jinping's priority projects, a maritime "silk road" with major ports in Pakistan and Bangladesh. When President Barack Obama visited India last year, the two countries issued a joint statement on "the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region", something India had refused to do in the past.

Still, some of the US proposals smack of wishful thinking. India has not, to date, shown interest in carrying out joint patrols with the US, even under the more neutral auspices of counter-piracy operations. US Admiral Harry Harris, left, commander of the United States Pacific Command, with Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani in Tokyo last month. Credit:AP Officials here rebutted a Reuters report last month in which a US official suggested India might participate in joint patrols in the South China Sea, something not even treaty allies like Australia or Japan have agreed to. "The last thing India wants to do is accidentally make itself into a front-line player in the South China Sea," said Nitin Gokhale, a security analyst, adding that "the best US-aligned players can expect" is for India to remain active in regional forums, and shore up smaller navies like those of Vietnam and the Philippines. On HMAS Rankin, a Royal Australian Navy Collins Class submarine last month. Credit:James Brickwood

"I don't think India will be a front-line state," he said. Admiral Harris' proposal of a quadrilateral security grouping, given at a forum hosted by the Observer Research Foundation, is certain to capture Beijing's attention. It did the same in 2007, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan introduced the idea. Chinese analysts viewed the grouping as hostile; one called it a "mini-NATO". Even before the four countries convened for their first joint meeting, China had sent formal diplomatic protests to Washington, New Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo. At a summit meeting with China less than two years later, Australia announced that it was withdrawing from the quadrilateral arrangement. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India's navy has embarked on the creation of a web of bilateral and trilateral agreements, which serve the same purpose but are less likely to be "caricatured" by China as a containment strategy, said Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at the Australian National University. He added, however, that growing cooperation with the US had forced China to take India more seriously. New York Times