The Indo-Pacific region has seen far fewer overt conflicts than continents like Europe, the Middle East, or Africa. While disputes persist (South China Sea, boundary frictions, strategic competition, etc.), the scale of instability—open warfare, civil wars, frequent regime collapses—is less pervasive. One explanation often offered is that regional alignments—like the QUAD (U.S., India, Japan, Australia)—plus India’s evolving strategic policies help underpin stability. 

But peace has many causes; India’s strategy alone is not enough, although it is an important pillar. This essay explores India’s evolving Indo-Pacific strategy—its policies such as Act East, SAGAR, the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI), and newer ones like MAHASAGAR—and assesses how far they contribute to regional stability, freedom of navigation, and balance of power, vis-à-vis QUAD’s role and China’s assertiveness.

QUAD’s Role

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) has grown from informal consultative framework to an increasingly visible element of Indo-Pacific strategic architecture. It aims to ensure maritime security, supply chain resilience, strategic technology cooperation, infrastructure, and climate and health collaborations among its four members. The presence of QUAD does contribute to deterrence: its joint exercises, combined naval presence, and shared norms send signals to China and other actors that coercive aggression will face coordinated pushback.

The limitation of QUAD is that it is not a defence alliance per se, and the members have divergent priorities and threat perceptions. The QUAD’s coherence in crises is untested; its contribution to peace is more reputational, normative, and preventive rather than operational in most cases. QUAD alone account for the relative peace in the Indo-Pacific.

India’s Strategic Approaches

India’s strategy in the Indo-Pacific has evolved over more than a decade, to shape the regional order. India’s Act East Policy aims at deeper economic, diplomatic, cultural and strategic engagement with Southeast Asia and East Asia. India has been strengthening ties with ASEAN, Japan, Korea, Australia, and island states in the Pacific. Trade, infrastructure, cultural exchanges, maritime cooperation, joint military exercises, and connectivity projects are all part of this policy. Through Act East, India seeks not only markets but strategic depth, balancing China’s presence in the region.

Launched in 2015, SAGAR is India’s maritime vision that emphasizes the Indian Ocean’s security, growth, inclusion, cooperation, and stability. It is meant to be a doctrine reflecting India’s responsibility as a maritime nation. Key components include capacity building with littoral states, maritime domain awareness (MDA), infrastructure development (ports etc.), joint exercises, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, and promoting rules-based order. SAGAR contributes to stability by helping small island and coastal states resist coercion, invest in resilience, and maintain their sovereignty.

Announced in 2019 at the East Asia Summit, IPOI is a voluntary non-treaty framework to cooperate across seven pillars: maritime security; marine ecology; capacity building; disaster risk reduction; resources; science & technology; trade and connectivity. IPOI builds upon SAGAR and India’s Act East vision.  These functional and non-confrontational initiatives can reduce instability by offering alternatives to infrastructure and strategic commitments from China.

In 2025, India announced MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions), which updates and expands SAGAR to a more global, ambitious maritime outlook. While SAGAR was largely regional (Indian Ocean and neighbouring seas), MAHASAGAR aims to cast India as a preferred partner for many in the Global South, to extend connectivity, infrastructure, tech cooperation, climate resilience, etc. It reflects a shift from a regionally anchored policy to one with broader Indo-Pacific/global south dimensions.

How these Indian policies contribute to Indo-Pacific stability

Putting these together, India’s policies help stability in several concrete ways:

India’s establishment of the Information Fusion Centre-IOR (for the Indian Ocean) and its many white-shipping agreements enhance transparency in ship movements, maritime traffic, reduce piracy and illicit activity. This builds trust and reduces miscalculations.  HADR operations (e.g. help after cyclones, tsunamis, etc.), capacity building, and infrastructure support by India in its maritime neighbourhood and beyond help strengthen resilience and reduce instability caused by natural disasters. These also bolster India’s image as a stabiliser rather than just a power player.

India has repeatedly emphasized UNCLOS, peaceful resolution of disputes, freedom of navigation in international waters, unimpeded commerce, and respect for sovereignty. These help frame regional expectations and constraints coercive actions. Through QUAD and bilateral ties (Japan, Australia, Southeast Asian states), India participates in balancing China’s growing assertiveness. Its naval exercises, cooperation in infrastructure, maritime security, technology, and diplomatic engagement help maintain a multipolar equilibrium.

India’s investments in ports, digital connectivity, trade, people-to-people ties helps make China’s alternatives (like the Belt and Road) less singular. When states have more options and joint dependence, there's more room for negotiation, less leverage for coercion. India’s approach, via Act East, IPOI, and recently MAHASAGAR, increases regional integration in non-military domains.

Why Indo-Pacific Relatively Stable

While India’s strategic policies contribute, there are also other reasons—and constraints—to why the Indo-Pacific has been relatively more stable.

The Indo-Pacific encompasses many maritime spaces, island states, and non-aligned countries, which reduce the likelihood of large land wars. Many disputes are maritime or jurisdictional, often managed through diplomacy. Asia has deep trade linkages. Disrupting trade hurts all. Even China depends heavily on maritime trade, including through chokepoints in the Indo-Pacific. This gives incentives for restraint.

The U.S. continues to maintain a significant presence in the region. Alliances and forward bases, combined with freedom of navigation patrols, help deter outright aggression.

However, there are rising flashpoints; tensions in the South China Sea and East China Sea; Taiwan’s status; Myanmar and instability spilling over; China's coast guard / maritime militia operations; infrastructure debt and Chinese influence. India’s policies help push back, but they are occasionally criticized for lack of coherence, limited capacity, or uneven follow-through.

Limitations and challenges 

Even as India’s policies are broadly stabilising, there are important constraints:

India often emphasizes non-aligned or balancing posture rather than joining formal blocs. This can give flexibility but dilute possible deterrent strength or clarity. India’s relations with China are complex with coexistence of both cooperation and competition. India’s naval, surveillance, and rapid response capacities are improving but still lag behind major powers like China in size, projection, or technological investment.

China engages in its own infrastructure, economic diplomacy, strategic coercion, military expansion, and diplomacy which sometimes outpaces India’s offers in speed or scale. Also, China’s ability to exert pressure on smaller states through aid, debt, or military presence poses a balancing challenge.

India's Contribution

In summary, the Indo-Pacific has indeed been relatively more stable compared to many other geopolitically contested regions. The QUAD plays a role in deterrence and in norm setting, but its impact is partial. India, through its constellation of policies—Act East, SAGAR, IPOI, MAHASAGAR, etc—contributes significantly to that peace by reinforcing maritime security, promoting norms, enabling connectivity, capacity building, and offering alternatives to coercive leverage.

India’s strategy does more than just balance China: it offers non-military forms of power that increase resilience among smaller states, builds partnerships, promotes transparency and rules-based order, and reduces the appeal of one-sided dependence.

(The author is an Indian Army veteran and a contemporary affairs commentator. The views are personal. He can be reached at  kl.viswanathan@gmail.com )