ABSTRACT The backbone of the global communication infrastructure, the subsea fibre-optic cables carry over 99 percent of global communication data. As global geopolitical tensions rise, in addition to the increase in China's naval presence, safeguarding these cables, prone to espionage, sabotage, and damage, has become imperative for India in maintaining its defense communications, civilian engagements, economic stability, and digital sovereignty. As India aims to modernize its defense sector, this paper addresses the crucial element of protecting the subsea fiber-optic cables and how it is imperative for the strategic position of the country. It examines the complex interplay between technological advancements and the evolving security doctrine amid the increasing geopolitical competition, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

ABSTRACT The developmental challenges for small island developing states (SIDS) globally are also relevant to the Indian Ocean SIDS: Comoros, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles. Here we review the issues of economic vulnerability, state functioning, and climate change. There is also a more detailed assessment of maritime security as an issue that impinges on the ability of the Indian Ocean SIDS to meet their developmental challenges, giving attention to illegal fishing, piracy, and drug trafficking, including the way the SIDS have responded. Having assessed the developmental position of the Indian Ocean SIDS, including the issue of maritime security, the argument turns to how this situation is relevant to geopolitics in the region. The major powers can assist the SIDS to meet their developmental challenges, thus enhancing their own position in the region. However the SIDS also have agency by being proactive in responding to their developmental challenges, including maritime security.

ABSTRACT South Asia is globally the most vulnerable region facing climate change in the form of frequent and intense extreme-weather events and slow-onset climate change that are causing disaster, disease, death and displacement. With the global focus falling on this region, countries are initiating several climate policies to arrest the adverse impacts of climate change, focusing on adaptation, resilience, disaster risk reduction and preparedness, besides policies for environmental protection, energy security, etc. This paper analyses the climate policies of India, Bangladesh and Nepal through the lens of human rights and examines the provisions to handle certain human aspects like internal displacement, international migration, inclusion of gender and disability in relief, resettlement and rehabilitation policies. The enquiry finds that the existing policies as a whole have gaps in ensuring ecological human rights for the vulnerable people, especially women, disabled and the climate migrants. Bangladesh has adopted a relatively more people-friendly approach, with gender and disability being included in the policy objectives. Nepal, too, has included gender in their policy goals, while India has a long way to go regarding social inclusion in climate policies. Regional cooperation among these neighbouring countries may help design appropriate policies to solve similar and cross-border problems.

ABSTRACT High education informal diplomacy is a recent concept placed at the heart of the international agenda by the growing intervention of non-governmental players in the conduct of international relations and the growing importance of major global issues. It involves circulating knowledge through a collaborative academic reply and establishing global governance based on scientific expertise. Recognized by a growing number of countries as part of their public policies, it differs from international university cooperation, which doesn't involve national interests. Historically part of the influence strategy of few states, it is now the prerogative of new powers, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. It is an under-exploited tool of influence in the Indian Ocean, despite the fact that France benefits from a well-developed higher education and research ecosystem in this area, ensuring its participation in today's major regional and international debates.

ABSTRACT The Indo-Pacific has increasingly emerged as a fluid but strategically significant geopolitical construct, shaped by diverse interpretations among states, policy makers, analysts and sectoral stakeholders. Although conceptual and geographic boundaries have expanded and contracted over time, global recognition of the region's importance has intensified amid growing strategic competition. One key driver of this evolving discourse is the expansion of human activity into maritime spaces to meet rising demands for food, resources, and living space. As terrestrial reserves diminish, the ocean is increasingly viewed as a frontier for sustainable development, encompassing resource extraction, scientific inquiry, commercial enterprise, and naval competition. These pressures generate a complex array of unilateral, coercive, and cooperative behaviors among actors seeking access to oceanic stock and flow resources. Consequently, emerging patterns of competition and collaboration elevate questions of security and governance, underscoring the need for sustainable practices to preserve ocean health within the Indo-Pacific's dynamic strategic landscape.

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the engagement of the coast guards of the Quad. It argues that increasing engagement – represented by growing joint training, operations, and exchanges – is representative of an ever-pervasive mode of networked governance underpinned by practice transfer that we conceptualize as an informal form of policy transfer. This paper argues that a focus on the various activities being undertaken cooperatively by coast guards constitutes an important dimension of informal maritime security governance in the region, providing peace, prosperity, and opportunity. The paper makes three contributions. First, it focuses on relatively understudied Coast Guards and demonstrates the important international roles they are playing in the collective maritime governance of the Indo-Pacific at a time when they are being formally recognized by the Quad. Second, it demonstrates that regional maritime security governance is increasingly ordered by flexible informal cooperation between these actors, who transfer practices catalyzed by the shared regional focus. Finally, it contributes to the literature on policy transfer and informal governance by combining it with a networked approach to demonstrate how informal networks are fostered, maintained, and utilized.

ABSTRACT Japan's foreign and security policies are becoming increasingly aligned due to the growing great power rivalry sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's rise to prominence. This paper examines how these developments have impacted the Official Development Assistance (ODA) policy, which the Japanese government considers an essential diplomatic tool. The securitisation of ODA, or the use of ODA to further Japan's national security objectives, is the biggest change. In 1992, the ODA Charter was established which makes this period relevant to study the evolution of Japan’s ODA. The development of Official Security Assistance (OSA), which seeks to support Japan's security objectives by enhancing the deterrent power of developing nations embroiled in territorial conflicts with China, indicates this trend. Notably, Japan is using the defence of the universal value of the international rule of law to support this new trend in ODA. Stated differently, Japan is reorienting its assistance to emphasize the rule of law in international interactions rather than the internal problems of democracy and human rights in each receiving country. This reflects Japan's attempt to maintain universal ideals while minimizing the possibility of upsetting the regimes in power in recipient nations with dubious histories of domestic governance.