ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus

The ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) is a forum where ASEAN countries and eight partner countries cooperate on defence and security. It forms part of the ASEAN-led regional security architecture, combining ministerial dialogue with practical cooperation among defence establishments.

Membership and institutional position

Established in 2010, ADMM-Plus extends the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting’s engagement to eight dialogue partners: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States.

• It supports ASEAN centrality by placing ASEAN at the centre of an inclusive defence forum involving major regional and external powers.
• It complements the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit by providing a dedicated channel for defence ministers and practical military cooperation.
• Its inclusive membership allows countries with competing strategic interests to participate in a common institutional framework.

Dialogue and practical security cooperation

ADMM-Plus links high-level discussion with Experts’ Working Groups, exercises and exchanges. This gives the regional security architecture an operational dimension beyond diplomatic consultation.

• Its seven cooperation areas are maritime security, counter-terrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peacekeeping operations, military medicine, humanitarian mine action and cyber security.
• Defence dialogue and repeated interaction help build trust and improve understanding of participating countries’ security concerns.
• Joint exercises improve interoperability, meaning the ability of different countries’ forces to communicate and work together during shared tasks.
• Cooperation on disasters and other transnational challenges builds habits of working together even when participants disagree on wider strategic questions.

Strategic significance, limits and India’s role

ADMM-Plus is a mechanism for cooperative security, not a collective-defence alliance. Its principal contribution is confidence-building and capacity-building rather than binding security guarantees.

• Its consensus-based approach encourages broad participation, but competing interests can constrain agreement and collective responses to contentious disputes.
• Dialogue and exercises can reduce mistrust, but the forum cannot substitute for political settlements of territorial disputes.
• For India, it provides a platform to support ASEAN centrality and translate the Act East policy into practical defence engagement.
• India can cooperate with ASEAN and other partners on maritime security, disaster response and related capabilities without entering an alliance framework.