“The strategic turn: Modi’s New Zealand visit is far more than free trade”, First Post, July 10, 2026

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Auckland on July 10, the first Indian prime minister to visit New Zealand in forty years. Most coverage will run through the India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement signed in April and what it means for dairy exports and market access. That angle is fair. It is also the easier half of the story.

The harder half started building before the trade deal, and it runs through defence. Christopher Luxon travelled to Delhi in March 2025 to lay the groundwork for a visit like this one. What has happened in Wellington since then has changed how much a defence relationship with India is actually worth to New Zealand and how much New Zealand is worth to India.

What Changed in Wellington

In February 2025, a Chinese naval task group sailed into the Tasman Sea and ran live-fire drills without adequate warning to New Zealand or Australia. Additionally, the Cook Islands, which remains in free association with New Zealand and relies on it for defence, signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Beijing covering seabed minerals and infrastructure, without consulting Wellington. New Zealand’s foreign ministry called it a matter of significant concern and later suspended some funding to the territory. It was a reminder that Chinese engagement in the Pacific does not need a military base to worry a government that treats the region as its own backyard. A country that spent thirty years treating its geography as protection is now rearming because that protection has visibly thinned. That is the backdrop against which Modi’s visit is happening……..”

Read full article at firstpost.com