India's bid to boost ties in Asia, the Pacific and with Australia is not a direct effort to counter China's rise but to ensure collective security in the world's most militarised region, a former diplomat says.
New Delhi is pursuing its own interests with security - and especially maritime - as it is inextricably linked to the region, former Indian foreign secretary and national security advisor Shivshankar Menon said.
"Asia is the most heavily militarised and nuclearised part of the world today," a transcript of his address to the Lowy Institute on Monday said.
"The kindling for conflict has been collected and the sparks to light it are available in the disputes and security dilemmas that exist across maritime Asia."
But while the competition and tension between the US and China was growing, it wasn't the Cold War redux.
He pointed to three reasons why the power dynamic was different than during the Cold War - technology, a globalised economy and new domains being contested, such as cyber, space and undersea.
"They are mutually dependent economically, joined at the hip as it were, and are part of the same globalised economic system," he said.
"Therefore there are limits to their decoupling."
But that didn't mean conflict was off the table in an "era of great power rivalry and competition" where the balance of power was shifting.
He predicted the Asian order would be fragmented and disorderly rather than dominated by a single power.
Although, Asian nations wouldn't choose between the US and China but rather hedge their bets and work with each when it suited, he predicted.
Collective security and economic prosperity across the Indian Ocean and greater subcontinent remain New Delhi's priority as "we cannot prosper alone in a subcontinent that is falling apart".
"For India, partners like Australia and the US are not just balancers to China," Mr Menon said.
"India works increasingly closely with the West as an essential partner if we are to transform India into a modern, prosperous and secure country."
China and Russia may have learnt the wrong lessons when there was little consequence against the former for expanding its security laws into Hong Kong to quash dissent and the latter when it annexed Crimea.
Canberra and New Delhi could work together on strengthening security in the cyber and deep sea domains, he said.
There is also the potential for collaboration as part of the second stage of AUKUS, an alliance between Australia, the US and UK.
The first AUKUS pillar outlines Australia's pathway to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and the second includes advances in the fields of AI and hypersonic weapons.
"Whether that will actually figure in AUKUS and so on, I think it's a little too early to say," he told AAP ahead of his speech.
"But certainly it's something we discuss with the US that we'd be happy to discuss with others as well."
