Chapter- Five

Geopolitics of Indian Ocean and Its Implications for India’s Maritime

Security

Maritime Security has emerged as one of the dominant discourses in international

and security studies. Although, the maritime security has been the concern of the littoral
states but it has gained initial importance after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
in US and the associated fears over the spread of maritime terrorism. If maritime
terrorism has largely remained a virtual threat, the breakthrough for maritime security
came with the rise of piracy off the coast of Somalia between 2008 and 2011. The
dangers of piracy for international trade brought the maritime dimension of security to
global consciousness and lifted it high on policy agendas. Moreover, the inter-state
tensions in the maritime domains, such as the SCS, or the East China Sea and the
increasing investments of emerging powers, such as India and China in the blue water
navies have attracted the attention of the strategic thinkers and policy makers for the
oceans as a security space.

Maritime security can be understood as a concept referring to the security of the

maritime domain and SLOCs through a set of policies, regulations, measures and
operations to secure them. Before the end of the Cold War, maritime security was rarely
used in the calculus of national security. During the Cold War period, it was primarily
referred to establish control over maritime areas in the context of the superpower
confrontation in the maritime domain. In the Cold War period, maritime security was
more frequently employed in references to geopolitical considerations such as
sovereignty claims over maritime territories, the status of coastal waters, and the control
over maritime zones. Since the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st
Century, maritime security was increasingly used to describe preventive measures to
respond to illegal activities at sea or from the sea. Terrorism (post 9/11) and piracy
(especially after 2007 and the rise of attacks at the Horn of Africa) attracted the attention
of strategic community and policy makers. However, arms and drug trafficking, human
trafficking, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUUF), and deliberate pollution

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still represent the bulk of illegal and disruptive activities at sea. Maritime security is also
increasingly linked to economic and environmental considerations. Marine environment
and fisheries protection as well as maritime surveillance initiatives have been
instrumental in raising maritime security objectives to the top of the security agenda of
various state and non-state actors.

Maritime Security, like other international buzzwords, is a term that draws

attention to new challenges and rallies support for tackling these. Discussions of maritime
security frequently do so by pointing to ‗threats‘ that prevail in the maritime domain.
They refer to threats such as maritime inter-state disputes, maritime terrorism, piracy,
trafficking of narcotics, people and illicit goods, arms proliferation, illegal fishing,
environmental crimes, or maritime accidents and disasters. Maritime security is however
also linked to economic development. Throughout history the oceans always enjoyed the
vital economic importance. The majority of trade is conducted via the sea and fisheries
are a significant industry. Both global shipping and fisheries have developed into multi-
billion industries. The commercial value of the oceans has moreover been increasingly
re-evaluated due to the economic potential of offshore resources, centrally fossil energy
but also seabed mining as well as the economic promises of coastal tourism. The
concepts of ‗blue economy‘ and ‗blue growth‘, proposed at the 2012 Rio+20 world
summit and widely endorsed, for instance, in the European Union‘s Blue Growth
Strategy aim at linking and integrating the different dimensions of the economic
development of the oceans and constructing sustainable management strategies for these.
The concept of blue economy is linked to maritime security since sustainable
management strategies not only require the enforcement and monitoring of laws and
regulations, but a secure maritime environment provides the precondition for managing
marine resources.

The term maritime security can conjure up different meanings to different people
and organizations depending upon their organizational interests, or even political or
ideological bias. Typically, the term has been utilized in carefree manners. Geoffrey Till
wrote in the mid 1990s that there was ―a particular need to be clear about what is
necessary for future maritime security and prosperity.‖ He acknowledged, however, that

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―this is a far from easy task since the phrase ‗maritime security‘ comprehends so much 1‖.
On the one hand, maritime security could be seen to reflect the wider conceptual debate
on security. It thus might be viewed simply as another dimension of security, although
the security studies literature does not reflect that, perhaps maritime security is never
identified as an independent domain of national security.

On the other hand, each dimension of security may also be applied to the
maritime environment, with each arguably possessing maritime element. Similarly, each
of the alternative security system ―concepts‖ may also be applied to the maritime sphere.
It is thus possible to speak, of ―marine environmental security,‖ ―comprehensive
maritime security‖ or ―cooperative maritime security,‖ and so on. The existing literature
on maritime security has tended to focus on the characteristics of the sea and its varied
uses, and the threats posed to those uses. Till has placed his analysis within the
organizing concept of ―good order at sea,‖ whereby the sea as a resource, as a medium
for trade and information exchange, and as an environment, faces ―risks and threats to the
good order on which their continued contribution to human development depends2‖.

To many observers maritime security appears to be a large and sometimes

nebulous concept. In fact, it has become a large task involving many entities from
international, public and private sectors aiming at preserving the freedom of the seas,
facilitating and defending commerce, and maintaining good governance at sea.
Transnational forces and irregular challenges continue to be the primary threat today and
in the foreseeable future, especially in the maritime domain. Having described the term
Maritime Security and concluded that there is no universal definition. The character of
the seas has changed, from an open space where freedom was the rule to a shared
common domain

1
Geoffrey Till: ―Developments in Maritime Security‖, Peter Cozens, eds., New Zealand’s Maritime
Environment and Security, Wellington: University of Wellington, 1996, pp-5-27.
2
Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-first Century, London: Frank Cass, 2004, p.311.

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Geopolitics and Maritime Security: A Dialectical Relationship

The term geopolitics has been employed indiscriminately by both practitioners

and scholars in reference to states‘ zones of interest or influence and how they clash with
each other. Geopolitics aims at explaining how geography somewhat constrains politics,
how states try to bypass those constraints, and in the case of critical geopolitics, how they
try to use geography to their advantage, including in discourses through series of geo-
informed representations. In practice states and other international actors take into
account the constraining impacts of geographical factors. They develop and tacitly or
explicitly endorse geopolitical visions or geo-strategies that directly or indirectly guide
their foreign and security policy goals and activities. In other words, both in practice and
in the collective imaginaries, geography contributes to define the boundaries of what is
possible to achieve in international relations along with other material and ideational
factors.

The geopolitical dimension of maritime security accounts for the way geography
constrains and informs maritime security policies, regulations, measures and operations,
as well as how states take geography into account when developing their maritime
security strategies. Geographical permanence such as the length of a country‘s coastline
or the absence of direct access to the high seas constrains sea power in general and
maritime security policies in particular, as for geography does not argue, it simply is.
This in no way means that politics and policies are determined by geography but that
geographical factors need to be taken into account in the list of explanatory factors along
with other material, structural and ideational factors. Thus, states are differently impacted
by maritime security threats depending on their actual geographical location.

Be it understood as a concept or a set of practices, maritime security has a

geopolitical dimension. The maritime domain is a space within which human actors
operate, either to perform illegal, disruptive and damaging activities or to police and
secure the sea in order to fight criminal actors. Maritime refers to a geographical space,
that is to say the sea, which has different characteristics compared to the land. Maritime
security interests of states result in a practice consisting in projecting security beyond
their external boundary into the global maritime domain. Thus, zones of interests are

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defined, which extend beyond one‘s legal zone of competencies. In security narratives,
those maritime zones are represented as vital for one‘s security, which justifies power
projection activities. There are geopolitical forces and factors are at play when states
stress their need, or duty to ‗secure the freedom of the seas‘, to ‗police the global
commons‘, to ‗promote good governance at sea‘, or to ‗assure the steward ship of the
ocean‘, not only the ‗benign‘ intentions of these states3.

Maritime security is intrinsically geopolitical, since it is about projecting power

beyond one‘s external boundary within the global maritime domain. The geographical
and geopolitical considerations do inform states‘ maritime security objectives and goals,
although geopolitical considerations remain tacit. Not only geography does impact on the
boundary of what is possible to achieve in terms of freedom of the seas and good
governance at sea, but states have also developed maritime geopolitical visions, based on
the fact that securing adjacent and distant maritime spaces would positively impact on
one‘s security on land. Furthermore, contributing to global maritime governance may
well hide more realist policy agendas in the form of a justification for power and forces
projection beyond one‘s legal zone of competencies. In sum, maritime strategies of states
do inform the geopolitical dimension of maritime security directly or indirectly.

Geopolitics of Indian Ocean

The rationale for a study of the Indian Ocean emerges given its increasing
geopolitical significance as an oceanic basin for maritime trade, energy supplies and sea-
lane security intertwined with other traditional and non-traditional issues. The Indian
Ocean has emerged as a vital maritime space in the Indo-Pacific Region in view of the
transformed strategic, security and economic significance of the region. The IOR hedges
the industrializing developing world in as much as the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans
hedges the developed industrialized world. The Indo-Pacific region is the largest
maritime littoral space that has the concentration of the largest population, resources,
developing economies, congested sea-lanes, and contested territorial spaces and hence is
significant in a geo-political, geo-economic and geo-strategic sense. The geopolitical

3
Basil Germond, ―The Geopolitical Dimension of Maritime Security‖, Marine Policy, 6 February 2015,
p.141.

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importance of the Indian Ocean in the 21st century as the critical ocean lies in the trade
and transit of energy resources. Widely described as the energy super highway of the
world, it has played a dominant role both at the economic and political levels as a
strategic link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It accounts for the transportation
of highest tonnage of the commodities of which more than 3/4 th is of extra-regional
origin. With a massive maritime transportation system in place, energy resources are the
key strategic resources that fuel globalization and economic growth in the Indo-Pacific
littorals. So, securing energy resources and supply chains are of paramount importance as
globalization and economic interdependence has intertwined markets and supply chains.

Also, the growing trend of ‗turning towards the oceans‘ to supplement depleting
natural resources has further increased the importance of the oceans. The IOR also
signifies the paradigm shift in maritime security that came with the end of the Cold War.
Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean was largely constructed on the emphasis of Sea
Control/ Sea Denial strategies of the Mahanian Paradigm. The central issue was the
projection of power from the Land to the Sea. The post-Cold war period has signified the
reverse change that symbolizes the naval approach to the littoral as from the Sea to the
Land. According to Geoffrey Till, there are four key and interdependent attributes of sea
power: the sea as a medium for trade and as a resource, in terms of what lies within its
waters; the sea as a medium for informational and cultural exchange as well as a medium
of dominion 4 . The IOR possesses all these attributes this leads to its increasing
geopolitical significance in world politics.

Maritime Security of Indian Ocean: Traditional and Non-Traditional threats

The IOR is full of threats, but it also offers attractive opportunities for enhancing
global security. While the IOR‘s littoral zones are often divided along national
boundaries, the IOR is a huge maritime domain where no single country can guarantee
stability and where a maritime context may offer unique chances to bypass barriers
inhibiting cooperation on land. The primary threats and challenges of the IOR can be
viewed through two geographic lenses. First are the maritime concerns of those countries

4
Till, n.2, p.20.

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that have direct access to the Indian Ocean and whose trade, development and overall
economic stability are tied to the Indian Ocean. Second are the concerns of extra-regional
powers that have a specific and special stake in the IOR. These concerns revolve around
trade, SLOC security, freedom of navigation, ease of maritime trade and other related
factors.

Threats and challenges can be divided into the traditional and non-traditional.
Traditional threats and challenges are defined as the purview of militaries that take the
form of conflict between nation-states. In other words, traditional means the ‗hard‘
threats that defined conflict during much of the 20 th century. Non-traditional threats and
challenges are defined as forces that challenge the well-being of states which emerge
from non-military sources. Non-traditional threats and challenges became a priority upon
the conclusion of the Cold War and are often transnational in character and impact. The
IOR with its abundant natural resources and mineral resources and its strategic location
present the greatest challenge as well as opportunities to the IOR littorals.

Insecurity continues to plague the seas and figures prominently in the strategic
calculus of countries that use the seas for economic growth. The contemporary discourse
on maritime security of Indian Ocean is focused at three levels; first, at the state level,
there are issues related to maritime boundaries, EEZs, and freedom of navigation as
enshrined in the 1982 UNCLOS, balance of power and sphere of influence, naval build
and arms race, and issues of proliferation of WMD. Second, there are a number of threats
and challenges at sea which emanate from non-state actors such as terrorism, piracy, drug
smuggling, gun running and human smuggling. At the third level, issues of natural
disasters, sea level rise, and environmental pollution confront the international
community.

Many of the above threats and challenges are transnational in nature and require
multilateral approaches for solutions and responses. These have attracted international
attention and prominently figure in statements and speeches by the political leaderships
across the globe, during discussions in multilateral forums, and appear frequently on the
agenda of international organizations such as the UN which adopted a number of
conventions and pass resolutions. At the national level, these threats and challenges have

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been incorporated in the national security strategy documents and are addressed through
operational doctrines. International community and various stakeholders too has
responded firmly to these threats and challenges through a number of political,
diplomatic, security, legal and financial initiatives with positive results.

Maritime Security of India in the Indian Ocean: Traditional and Non-Traditional

Threats

India, after its independence has witnessed major restructuring of regional and
global environment and also a transformation in its own perception as an emerging
regional maritime power. Its own perception as a maritime power was in stark contrast to
the perceived continental mindset that it had for several years. The continental mindset
had confined India within the narrow territorial bounds of the Indian Peninsula, and this
gave primacy to land-based developments and also land-based threats. After the adoption
of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) in 1990s, while retaining its sub-
continental identity, it had acquired a new maritime perspective as well. Besides the geo-
strategic compulsions of breaking out of the sub-continental bondage, other factors like
promises of exclusive economic rights for exploitation of sea-based resources under the
term of UNCLOS III gave India‘s traditional mindset a new additional space in the seas
around it. The need for development and thereby energy resources compelled India to
look more and more towards its maritime zone. Indian Ocean, the maritime
neighbourhood of India, is a focal point of India‘s geopolitical and strategic aspirations as
it provides space for increasing its sphere of influence as well as a prime facilitator of
India‘s extended neighbourhood policy.

India is an important Indian Ocean state and the element of geography (coastline
of 7516 Kilometers and an EEZ of 2.01 two million square Kilometers) bestow it with a
number of advantages, nearly 66 per cent of the world‘s oil and gas, 50 per cent of
container traffic; and 33 per cent of cargo traffic pass close to India‘s waters through the
Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal 5. While these provide a number of opportunities for

5
G.S. Khurana, Maritime Forces in Pursuit of National Security Policy Imperatives for India, New
Delhi: Shipra Publications, 2008, p. 15.

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India to build its maritime potential, there are a number of challenges also that confront
India.

At the first level, India‘s maritime security issues arises from the presence of a
large number of navies in the Indian Ocean region; the US, European Union, and Asian
powers such as China, Japan, and Korea who have forward deployed their navies in
support of strategic, security and economic interests. In the coercive format, these are
structured for forward presence, access and expeditionary operations and are perceived as
challenging the regional security order and curtailing strategic autonomy to pursue
national interests. In the functional-operational format, these forces are engaged in
counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations which have provided the rationale for the
continued deployment. At another level, different interpretation of the law of the sea,
understanding the freedom of navigation and the right of innocent passage, scientific and
naval activities in the EEZs, movement of nuclear propelled and nuclear weapons
carrying platforms at sea, shipment of nuclear wastes through EEZ, legitimate movement
of cargo over the seas result in mistrust and suspicion. These have led India building
capabilities to protect its strategic and economic interests and ensure robust anti-access
capabilities.

However, the forward presence is also viewed positively by India and is

considered useful for promoting naval operational diplomacy in the form of joint naval
patrols, interoperability through a naval exercises, sharing of maritime intelligence,
developing humanitarian relief mission formats, capacity building, search and rescue
arrangements, response mechanisms too accidents and pollution at sea etc. There have
been positive spin offs through these interactions for India resulting in new capabilities,
common missions, joint doctrines, operational compatibility and technological
enhancement. In essence, the IOR is an area of competition and cooperation for India.

India‘s maritime security is also challenged by asymmetric threats. The attacks on

USS Cole and MV Limburg off Yemen by the Al Qaeda, the 2008 Mumbai attacks by the
Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and the 2014 attempt on Pakistan Navy ship by
the Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent (AQIS) loom large in Indian maritime security
conundrum. More recently, incidents like the ‗suspicious boat‘ incident off Porbandar in

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December 2014, seizure of a boat carrying 20 Kg of Heroin an estimated value of US
$200 million in April 2015 off Gujarat coast originating from Pakistan have made India‘s
maritime security a complex issue6. As far as piracy is concerned, Somali pirates were
successful in reaching shores of Maldives and in the vicinity of Lakshadweep Islands
thereby exposing the weaknesses of surveillance systems which necessitated greater
response from the Indian maritime security agencies through operational support and
surveillance capacity building. Since 2008, the Indian Navy continuously deployed two
to three ships for anti-piracy duties and also to escort merchant shipping through the
Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC), which is jointly conducted by the
navies of China, Japan and South Korea. India also provided operational and material
support to Indian Ocean island states (Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles and Sri Lanka) to
fight piracy.

It is fair to say that the Somali pirates have gone home, but the fourth version of
Best Management Practices (BMP-4), released in August 2011, continues to include large
sea areas in the Arabian Sea including waters close to Indian shores as High Risk Area
(HRA) causing economic pressures on the international, intra-regional and coastal
shipping destined for Indian ports including since these vessels invite extra insurance
premium and higher crew remunerations. WMD proliferation through the Indian Ocean is
also a concern to India. India has cooperated to prevent rogue states and non-state actors
from acquiring WMD. In 1999, the Indian custom authorities impounded a North Korean
vessel MV Ku Wol San at Kandla Port for carrying equipment for production of tactical
surface to surface missiles which were suspected to be bound for Pakistan and Libya 7.
Although India has not endorsed the 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), it is a
strong believer in the prevention of WMD proliferation.

The Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal are experiencing the adverse effects of
climate change. There are fears of increased frequency and intensity of extreme events
such as tropical storms, cyclones and floods in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea littoral

6
Ujjwala Nayudu, ―Two suspicious ‗Pak‘ boats with heroin seized near Gujarat‖, Indian Express, 21
April 2015.
7
V Sudharshan, ―The Ship is Loaded: How, in 99 India busted a North Korean Ship carrying Missiles‖,
Outlook, 23 October 2016.

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spaces. India has been at the forefront in HADR operations and deployed several naval
assets to respond to crisis. In the aftermath of the 26 December 2004 Tsunami in the
Indian Ocean, the Indian Navy engaged in rescue and relief missions alongside those
from the US, Japan and Australia. In subsequent years, the Indian Navy was again tasked
to Cyclone ‗Sidr‘ in Bangladesh in 2007, Cyclone ‗Nargis‘ in Myanmar in May 2008 and
in 2014 the Navy responded to Cyclone Hdhud in Bay of Bengal.

Likewise, there are signs of rising sea level, receding coastline, and high salinity
in India‘s coastal areas. These natural phenomena‘s has severe implications for
livelihoods of coastal communities. There are also fears that climate change would result
in mass human displacement from the island states which has direct impact on the
maritime political economy and adversarial consequences for maritime infrastructure. In
this context, Maldives and Bangladesh are good examples and it is believed that it would
result in climate refugees who would arrive on Indian shores as illegal migrants.

India has specific concerns in the Indian Ocean. India is depended upon its
foreign trade and associated institutions like ports and harbours, ship building and repair
yards, management of maritime affairs and related aspects of merchant marine. India‘s
energy requirements demands security of India‘s adjoining waters and SLOCs a matter of
prime national concern. India being the littoral state of the Indian Ocean has experienced
both positive as well as negative implications due to the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean.
India realized the growing importance of the Indian Ocean for its economic, security and
strategic purposes. It has adopted various mechanisms to improve its maritime security
capabilities like by improving its hard power as well as soft power capabilities. An
improved maritime capability of India has led to the increased sphere of influence in the
IOR as sphere of influence comes with the capabilities only. The IOR also provided
economic opportunities to India through increasing volume of trade and thereby helped it
to improve its economic as well as strategic relations with its extended neighbourhood as
well as with the external powers. These are the positive implications for India but apart
from the positive implications there are also negative implications. Because of the
growing strategic importance of Indian Ocean to the world, China is also establishing its
foothold in the Indian Ocean and thereby the probability of confrontation with China is

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increasing as both the Asian giants are competiting for the same space. Resource
competition is another area of confrontation between the various littorals and especially
between India and China as resources are important for the economic development of
these countries. The presence of non-traditional security threats like piracy, drug
trafficking, human trafficking, poaching etc also poses grave threats to India‘s maritime
security. The geopolitics of Indian Ocean has also made the Indian Ocean a contested
space because of the increasing presence of external players as well as the active presence
of the regional players.

In this context, this chapter highlights implications of the geopolitics of Indian

Ocean for India‘s maritime security. There are two types of implications of geopolitics of
Indian Ocean for India‘s maritime security. The negative implications include challenges
for India‘s maritime security and the positive implications include opportunities for
India‘s maritime security.

Geopolitics of Indian Ocean: Challenges for India’s Maritime Security

Geopolitics of Indian Ocean in the post-Cold War period generated a critical mass
which is leading to certain challenges or negative implications for India‘s maritime
security like increasing Sino-Indian maritime rivalry, increasing contestation in the
maritime space besides, the various non-traditional maritime threats ranging from
maritime terrorism to piracy.

Sino-Indian Maritime Rivalry- Maritime Security Threat

As both China and India has modernized their navies and extending their strategic
reach from the Malacca Strait to the Gulf of Aden, there is growing concern of a
maritime ‗great game‘ unfolding in the international waters. Given the longstanding
tensions over their disputed land border, mutual anxieties about being contained, and both
states‘ rapid expansion of blue-water naval capabilities, conditions appear ripe for Sino-
Indian competition at sea. China‘s and India‘s mounting need for resources and their vital
security interests have increasingly been shifting and increasingly overlap in maritime
Asia. In terms of the IOR, for various reasons, their needs encourage conflict at sea in
particular. Primarily, maritime Asia and its littorals are the most prominent, largest and

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strategically most crucial areas of Sino-Indian energy security intersections. As the
world‘s leading nation in trade, owning the fourth largest commercial shipping fleet, and
many of the world‘s largest deepwater ports, including Shanghai and Shenzhen, the
Chinese economy, and the imperative for Chinese leaders to sustain economic growth led
to the maritime engagement with the world. With this come great vulnerabilities and a
new dimension to China-India relations in which naval power will be paramount.
Resultantly, the naval spending in both countries has grown remarkably in the past
decades. Secondly, the IOR as compared to the mainland is the most convenient and
easiest reachable areas to deploy larger amounts of naval forces and to project maritime
power. In the past, geopolitical tensions between China and India were largely confined
to the Himalayas, where the border dispute between the two nations remains unresolved.
In contrast to their continental border disputes, territorial claim demarcations and military
presences to maintain these claims in the IOR are much less deadlocked and more prone
to changes. Today, Chinese interests and activities have expanded significantly beyond
the regions that defined China-India relations in the past. In this century, however, the
geopolitics of China-India relations is increasingly defined by the maritime domain.

Driven by the pressure of energy security concerns along with mounting power
projection ambitions in maritime Asia, both China and India have largely been expanding
their naval build-up to secure economic and strategic interests and project power in the
waters of maritime Asia between the Indian Ocean and the SCS. This has resulted in
increasing overlap between Sino-Indian interests. Although still conceived for solely
economic purposes, the location and nature of China‘s and India‘s engagement in these
waters and sensitive naval standoffs not only point to an increasing militarization of their
maritime engagement, but also to potential military Sino-Indian naval clashes sometime
in the future. Having gained stable footholds in the IOR and SCS through diplomatic
incentives and participation in infrastructure development projects, the conversion of
these economic footholds for naval and power projection purposes cannot be excluded
and would only be a next logical step to enhance their grip in maritime Asia.

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 Even though both countries on many occasions declared that they would
cooperate in the energy sector and coordinate their domestic needs, these declarations are
yet to materialize into anything more substantial than the mere issuing of memoranda of
understanding (MoU). Given the rivalry-filled relationship between the two countries,
tactical concessions are imperative given the fact that at the moment neither of the two
Asian giants is militarily strong enough to assert full control and supremacy over the
other‘s maritime backyard. Although China and India would try to limit the escalation
and scale of those conflicts in order not to risk any damage to their emerging economies,
both Beijing and New Delhi have vested energy/economic and security interests in their
claimed maritime backyards and beyond which the two countries are not likely to back
off from.

While most of the Chinese and Indian projects and activities in the IOR are still
led by economics, the diplomatic overtures and large-scale investments of the two
countries around geo-economic and geo-political strategic points in these waters presage
an increasingly fiercer maritime rivalry in the form of a race to build presence and to
secure energy stakes. On the Chinese side, this assertiveness and the PLAN‘s inclination
to military conflicts about these crucial waters is not only underlined by Beijing‘s saber-
rattling in the SCS in the form of holding joint maneuvers of the PLAN‘s three regional
naval fleets but also by China‘s asymmetric military build-up to counter foreign maritime
powers. This assertiveness has also become more vocal, with calls by the leadership in
the form of President Hu Jintao for the navy to ‗make preparations for military combat‘,
and also statements by the director of the General Logistics Department of the PLA
explaining that ‗China can no longer accept the Indian Ocean as only an ocean of the
Indians … we are taking armed conflicts in the region into account 8‘. As the power of
China continues to grow in line with increasing economic prosperity, military
capabilities, and its resource hunger, the PRC will, in line with the theoretical
assumptions, seek to preserve its resource security interests and power status and counter
any challenges.

8
David Brewster, ―China and India at Sea: A Contest of Status and Legitimacy in the Indian Ocean‖,
Australia-India Institute, September 2015, p.7.

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 There are considerable anxieties in India that the Chinese presence in and around
the IOR could in future convert into the core interests of China beyond the SCS as they
are crucial for China‘s energy security as well. As China‘s global economic footprint
increases, its Indian Ocean dependency is increasing in kind. Chinese access to vital
African resources, Persian Gulf oil and gas, and sea-borne trade with Europe all depends
on the passage of these goods across the Indian Ocean. According to the US Energy
Information Agency, roughly 80 percent of China‘s imported oil passes through the
Straits, leading President Hu Jintao to label this strategic bottle-neck the ―Malacca
Dilemma‖ in 2003. Importantly, China‘s dependence on the Indian Ocean is likely to be
long-standing. As Professor Zhang Li, in 2014 argued that, the Indian Ocean would be
the region which most of China‘s energy imports would transit for the next forty years;
also there is a very strong fear in India about China‘s intentions in the Indian Ocean 9.
According to him, frictions with India are likely to increase as China takes steps to offset
its Malacca dilemma by building both military and industrial infrastructure in the IOR.

New Delhi is increasingly reacting to the perceived dangerous Chinese diplomatic

thrust into its maritime backyard by increasing its maritime presence not only in the IOR
but also the SCS. Preparing for potential maritime clashes with China, the long-neglected
eastern naval command of the Indian Navy has grown in size in recent years and also
India‘s only aircraft carrier INS Viraat is to be assigned to the eastern command as well.
This can be illustrated by the statements of the high officials of the Indian Navy that
suggests India will certainly not sit by idly watching China‘s growing footprint and
increasing encirclement in its backyard, with Verma even hinting that the Indian Navy
would be capable of handling a military conflict with China.

In the course of these confrontational developments, there have been clear signs
in recent years that confirm the theoretical assumptions of pressure to acquire resources
beyond their own boundaries, leading to conflict between resource-competing states, and
that underline the high potential for Sino-Indian maritime clashes in the IOR and the
SCS. This can be further illustrated as bilateral suspicions between the two emerging

9
D.S. Rajan, ―China in the Indian Ocean: Competing Priorities‖, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies,
Article- 4302, February 10, 2014, at http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/china-in-the-indian-ocean-
competing-priorities-4302.html (Accessed September7, 2016).

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Asian giants have been mirrored in India‘s participation in an international naval exercise
in September 2007 and China‘s discomfort. Back then, India, US, Singapore, Australia
and Japan held the largest Malabar exercise thus far in the Bay of Bengal off the coasts of
Bangladesh and Myanmar, where China‘s diplomatic thrust in the IOR had been very
strong. While China did not publicly comment on this exercise and India assured that it
was not directed against the PRC, the location and framework of that exercise point to
Indian muscle-flexing diplomacy and Beijing was reported to be suspicious and
uncomfortable about the joint naval exercise. These suspicions continued and became
tense during a naval standoff between the Chinese and Indian navies in January 2009.
During a Chinese anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden, an Indian submarine tracking
the mission was forced by Chinese anti-submarine vessels to surface and retreat from the
area.

While having been silent on India‘s joining of international naval exercises in

previous years, Beijing‘s discomfort and criticism have recently become louder, such as
during India‘s participation in the US Navy-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise –
the largest maritime war game in the world – from June till August 2012. Having begun
in the early 1970s as regional joint navy exercise and focusing on training for war
scenarios in the region such as escalating hostilities with China, India‘s first-time
participation, although still low-key, indicates increasing convergence between US and
Indian interests in the Asia-Pacific and New Delhi‘s unease over China‘s maritime
preponderance. Beijing criticized India‘s participation in RIMPAC as a hostile action
against the PRC. In the SCS, China has for decades been very critical about Indian-
Vietnamese cooperation, particularly since New Delhi and Hanoi agreed on a strategic
partnership in October 2011. China has been very vocal regarding ongoing Indian-
Vietnamese joint oil explorations in the SCS, with Global Times, a newspaper close to
the Chinese government, warning India not to ‗fish in troubled waters10‘. These warning
shots and Chinese discomfort about Indian involvement in the SCS had already resulted
in an encounter between the Indian assault vessel INS Airavat and the Chinese Navy in
July 2011 off the Vietnamese coast, during which the Indian ship was warned that it was

10
Niclas D. Weimar, ―Sino-Indian power preponderance in Maritime Asia: a (re)source of conflict in the
Indian Ocean and South China Sea‖, Global Change Peace and Security, Vol. 25, Issue 1, 2013, p.23.

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cruising in Chinese maritime territory. India is, however, becoming more assertive and
committed to its objectives in the SCS, thus not only ignoring Chinese warnings but
gearing up to safeguard its stakes in the region, thus not only adding further fuel to the
already complicated and tense SCS dispute but also impairing Sino-Indian relations.

Both countries have developed initiatives to bolster infrastructure and other

connections in the region. Competition between Beijing and New Delhi is not necessarily
overt, but each country is seeking to strengthen ties with smaller regional states to secure
their respective security and economic interests. Beijing‘s regional vision, backed by $40
billion of pledged investment, outlines its OBOR plan—combining the revitalization of
ancient land-based trade routes, the SREB, with a MSR 11 . China‘s ties with regional
states have deepened, including the influx of Chinese capital into construction projects in
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Since launching counter-piracy
operations in 2009, Beijing has become increasingly active in the region. China has also
undertaken efforts to modernize its military, particularly its naval deployment capabilities
to protect overseas interests like personnel, property, and investments. Experts also argue
that Beijing‘s forays into what is at times described as India‘s neighborhood are driven by
China‘s excess capacity challenges—incentivizing Chinese firms out of domestic markets
to compete in and open new markets abroad.

Though Beijing deflects claims of hegemonic aspirations, it identifies security in

the IOR as a primary concern for Chinese ‗core interests‘. In 2015, a white paper charting
China‘s military strategy indicated a shift of PLAN to focus on both offshore water
defense and open seas protection. Chinese behavior suggests that Beijing seeks to
establish a persistent regional maritime presence. It now boasts a semi-permanent naval
presence through its counter-piracy activities in the Indian Ocean and has more
aggressively asserted itself in the Pacific with extensive patrols and land reclamation
projects in disputed waters. China‘s ambitions in the region have come to be described by
many scholars by the ‗string of pearls‘ metaphor, which holds that China is pursuing
economic and investment projects with Indian Ocean states to secure ports or places

11
Vijay Sakhuja, ―The Maritime Silk Route and the Chinese Charm Offensive‖, Institute of Peace and
Conflict Studies, 10 February 2014, p.6.

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where its military forces could set up naval facilities or at the very least, refueling and
repair stations. Chinese experts dismiss this, claiming that China seeks access, not bases,
for economic gain. For its part, India sees itself as the natural pre-eminent regional
power. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has doubled-down on fostering stronger
diplomatic, economic, and security ties with IOR maritime states as a means to
strengthen India‘s economy, establish its role a driver of regional growth, and
simultaneously diminish China‘s growing appeal. Former Indian foreign secretary Shyam
Saran stated that ―It is India‘s neighbourhood that holds the key to its emergence as a
regional and global power,‖ whereas Daniel S. Markey in a recent Contingency Planning
Memorandum argued ‗Maritime competition between China and India is still nascent and
should not be overblown,‘ but, a ‗tit-for-tat politico-military escalation‘ is possible in the
larger Indo-Pacific region12.

China-India relations are fraught, coloured by historical disputes and the

perceived threat to India of China‘s rise. Tensions have persisted despite overtures by
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Much of the
friction stems from a longstanding dispute along a 2,400-mile border in India‘s
Arunachal Pradesh and China‘s Tibet and the legacy of the 1962 Sino-Indian War along
the Himalayan border. The expansion of a Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean has
heightened India‘s concerns. Beijing says its activities are commercially motivated, but
Brahma Chellaney of the Center for Policy Research (CPR), an independent Indian think
tank, argues a ramped up Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere is
consistent with Xi Jinping‘s intention of making maritime power central to achieving
Chinese dominance in Asia13.

While China‘s aims are disputed, both sides continue to ramp up military
capabilities in the region. China continues to deploy greater numbers of naval forces to
support counter piracy operations in the western Indian Ocean, and invests and sells

12
Eleanor Albert, ―Competition in the Indian Ocean‖, Council on Foreign Relations, 19 May 2016,
Retrieved from http://www.cfr.org/regional-security/competition-indian-ocean/p37201, (Accessed on 15
March 2017).
13
―Malaysian PM‘s India Visit: A Deeper Meaning Behind the MoUs‖, Retrieved from
http://www.suryaa.com/5499-malaysian-pms-india-visit-a-deeper-meaning-behind-the-mous-
comment.html, (Accessed on 10 April 2017).

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arms, including tanks, frigates, missiles, and radar, to India‘s neighbours. Beijing is
currently restructuring its military: Xi Jinping announced in September 2015 that the
PLA would cut 300,000 of its troops to redistribute resources to sea and air capabilities.
As China adapts its military force to meet its global ambitions, its posturing has grown
bolder. In October 2015, China finalized the sale of eight submarines to Pakistan, and in
recent years, Chinese submarines have docked at the Sri Lankan port of Colombo and the
Pakistan‘s port of Karachi. More still, Beijing‘s land reclamation efforts and assertive
behaviour in the Pacific could bleed into the region; suggest the U.S. Naval War
College‘s Andrew Erickson and Kevin Bond14.

India is also reinforcing its regional maritime presence. It has vowed to spend
billions to build up its navy, including anti-submarine capabilities, has sent vessels to
visit the SCS, and called for freedom of navigation and the peaceful resolution of
territorial disputes as part of its Act East policy. The construction of military bases,
modernized equipment and fleets, new maritime assets, and the expansion of security ties
are all part of New Delhi‘s push to assert itself as the region‘s leader. In 2013, then
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that India was well positioned ‗to become
a net provider of security‘ because of its efforts to take responsibility for the IOR‘s
stability. Modi initiated the first bilateral India-Australia exercises and India participated
in multilateral naval games in the Bay of Bengal with the US, Australia, and Japan. David
Brewster of Australian National University argued that there is little doubt that despite
India‘s traditional principle of non-alignment, outreach to the US, Australia, and Japan
are calculated moves that could play a significant role in counterbalancing China.

Geopolitics is important for understanding Sino-Indian dynamics, overlapping

territory and location are at stake and space matters for them, not just contingently but
also necessarily. Agnew‘s general geopolitical sense of Great Powers‘ ―pursuit of
primacy‖ is in play between India and China, official rhetoric notwithstanding. As India‘s
former Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha admitted, China and India needed to ―try to
ensure that each has sufficient strategic space‖. However their ‗strategic space‘ is in

14
Ghias Hashmi, ―Cooperation and Competition on Arabian Sea, Indian and Pacific oceans‖, Current
Affairs, 12 July 2016, https://www.pace.pk/cooperation-and-competition-in-arabian-sea-indian-and-
pacific-oceans/, (Accessed on 15 March 2017).

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various ways the same spatial arena, i.e., Pacific Asia, South Asia, the Indian Ocean and
Central Asia. Both states are engaged in ―mastering space‖, directly and indirectly, and at
times in competition with each other. In India, successive Foreign Affairs Ministers have
used geopolitics frameworks in describing Sino-Indian relations. Jaswant Singh asked in
1999, ―How do you alter geography? We are neighbours. . . . There are difficulties‖; and
Shyam Saran considered in 2006 that it is in ―Asia, where the interests of both India and
China intersect . . . the logic of geography is unrelenting. Oceanic elements are also a
geopolitical factor in the Sino-Indian relationship, evoking Mahan and his emphasis on
―sea-power‖; his sea-power as enabling power projection and control of SLOCs. If one
looks at the Sino-Indian relationship, commentators and military figures on both sides
have evoked Mahan at various points; indeed ―Mahan seems to be alive and well and
living in Asia 15‖. Amidst these intersecting interests, something of a ‗Great Game‘ seems
at play between these two rising powers. As Chinese leaders employ the full range of the
nation‘s resources: diplomacy, financial power, engineering capabilities, and of course
the building of a substantial blue-water navy and submarine fleet, China‘s strategic
presence in the Indian Ocean will continue to grow, contributing in turn to India‘s own
emphasis on naval power. There is little doubt that sea power in this century will be
defined by the rise of the Chinese and Indian navies.

Indian Ocean: A Contested Space

The emergence of a new actor into an existing security order is bound to create
confusion and concerns amongst regional powers. While no country attempts to block
Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean or has any legitimate reason to do so, its maritime
outlook reflected through its behaviour in the South China Sea is a cause for concern.
Additionally, China‘s desire to be a great power would mean that it is looking to establish
itself as a credible security provider not only in its neighbourhood but at a global level.
Sea routes have been the backbone of global trading since ancient times. The ability of a
nation to project power far from its shores truly captures its military strength. The Indian
Ocean is quickly emerging as one of the busiest trading routes and has great strategic

15
David Scott, ―The Great Power ‗Great Game‘ between India and China: ‗The Logic of Geography‘‖,
Geopolitics, 5 May 2008, p. 8.

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significance in geopolitics. Accommodating itself into the evolving security architecture
in the Indo-Pacific would also mean that China will finally be able to secure its own
energy and commercial routes transiting through the Indian Ocean. The uncertainty
surrounding these developments is creating a sense of worry and anxiety among the
resident powers of the IOR. For India, Chinese presence closer to its maritime boundaries
significantly affects India‘s strategic interests in the Indian Ocean. For Australia, Chinese
expansion into the Indian Ocean alters the current security dynamics of the Indo-Pacific
affecting Canberra‘s security and role as a key player in the region.

The US maritime dominance in Asia-Pacific is increasingly challenged by the

competing resource interests and power projection ambitions of China and India. These
developments are step by step changing the balance of power in maritime Asia, with
Chinese ambitions, on the one hand, rivaling those of India and the US, which does not
want China to become the dominant power in maritime Asia-Pacific. While still not
having escalated into deadly clashes, these encounters already reflect mounting tensions
between China and India in maritime Asia and point to the potential escalation of these
tensions into warfare.

The IOR has become a growing area of competition between China and India.
The two regional powers‘ moves to exert influence in the ocean include deep-water port
development in littoral states and military patrols. Though experts say the probability of
military conflict between China and India remains low, escalated activities (such as port
development and military exercises) and rhetoric could endanger stability in a critical
region for global trade flows. But the diverse nontraditional security challenges in the
IOR also offer areas of potential collaboration for China and India, as well as other
regional actors.

China and India are dependent on energy resources transported via the secure sea
lanes in the Indian Ocean to fuel their economies. As Beijing and New Delhi press to
maintain economic growth, their dependency on the safe transport of resources will likely
intensify. China‘s growing global influence and India‘s rapid economic rise have
heightened the ocean‘s strategic value. Meanwhile, the US‘ rebalancing Asia—shifting
from a foreign policy dominated by the Middle East to one more centered on Asia—has

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also been a contributing factor elevating concern over Indian Ocean security. Diverse
security challenges affect the region ranging from natural disasters to concerns over
energy security, piracy, and military posturing.

Small regional states, such as Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Seychelles and

Sri Lanka, are recipients of both Chinese and Indian aid and investment, primarily for
transport and infrastructure development. The majority of their foreign policy ties are
determined by what deals can be made to help them meet their national development
goals16. Global powers from outside the region also have an interest in maintaining the
ocean‘s security. The US operates a naval support facility, Diego Garcia in the central
Indian Ocean, while France maintains a presence in the region from Reunion, its Indian
Ocean island outpost. Australia has a modern naval force operating in the ocean, and the
IOR is increasingly featured in defense, national security, and maritime strategies
developed in Canberra.

The most prominent traditional security risk is the possibility of strategic

competition between the US and China developing in the Indo-Pacific and spreading to
the IOR and that such a process will disrupt the economic development of regional states
and India is not an exception to it. Both states rely on the Indian Ocean as a vital conduit
for trade and a downturn in bilateral US-China relations could make the IOR a
competitive zone. For the US, the development of markets throughout South Asia, the
Gulf and eastern Africa means that more actors would be involved in the maritime
domain and new threats are likely to emerge. With the primary objective of US naval
strategy being to guarantee freedom of navigation for commercial and personal activity,
the US will deploy assets where freedom of navigation is challenged. Examples of such a
process in the waters of the Indian Ocean can be found in the creation of the
multinational Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, which was created in 2009 in response to
increased piracy in the waters surrounding the Horn of Africa in the western Indian
Ocean.

16
Albert, n.12.

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 China‘s approach to maritime issues and to the Indian Ocean in particular is a
reflection of its export-driven economy and its changing strategic assessments relating to
high seas. China‘s economy is reliant on consistent access to foreign markets, both the
developed and developing variety. High trade volumes make Chinese ships vulnerable to
various threats and which in turn encourages Chinese shipping firms and manufacturing
enterprises to pressurize the Chinese state for more comprehensive responses to protect
Chinese interests overseas. The Chinese state, for its part, primarily relies on diplomacy
like others, but PLAN is used in specific circumstances. One example is the continuous
presence of PLAN vessels independently patrolling the Horn of Africa in an effort to
combat piracy and provide encouragement to Chinese private commercial vessels.

Within the context of South Asia, China has actively engaged with South Asian
states in order to facilitate its economic national interest and to enhance specific security
concerns, particularly energy security. The Chinese efforts to increase its commercial
shipping footprint, to develop stronger partnerships and to alleviate pressures created by
natural choke points in the eastern Indian Ocean creating anxiety among the IOR littorals
especially India. Similarly, India‘s Look East Policy enhances its economic and security
position through the eastern Indian Ocean into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. India
seeks to increase security and economic cooperation with Southeast Asian states,
especially Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam. Improved relations with Japan, including
joint naval exercises, show the scope of interest India has in Asia-Pacific. Just as China
has engaged with states around India, India has done similar, though much more limited
in scope.

In addition to the US and China being active in the Indian Ocean, other extra
regional actors retain a presence or are seeking to enhance their activities. This includes
the UK, France, and other European states as well as Australia, Singapore and Japan.
Commercial activity is the key motivator for these states to position themselves, but they
are also active to combat specific threats against their national interest.

Among the nation-states of the IOR, India, Pakistan, Iran and the states
constituting the GCC are all engaged in a process of strategic calculation regarding the
Indian Ocean. The national interests of these particular actors could bring them into

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competition with one another, or further tensions previously existing. Regional
competition for influence is developing between China and India. Thus far, the
competition has revolved around a border dispute and economic competition, but the
possibility exists for the rivalry to take on a maritime dimension. India, possessing the
largest maritime force in South Asia, does influence overall maritime affairs in South
Asia. The increased presence of the PLAN could contribute to greater competition
between the two states and alter regional affairs, as South Asian states look to find a
footing in new regional dynamic.

Territorial disputes among various actors present another traditional security

challenge in the IOR and leads to the IOR as a space of contestation. At the western
reaches of the Indian Ocean, a number of islands are the subject of dispute between
France and Madagascar. Similarly, a series of small islands located at the mouth of
Persian Gulf are the subject of dispute between the Iran and UAE. India and Pakistan
disagree over the placement of the maritime boundary between them, revealing a
maritime component of the ongoing disputes between these two South Asian states.
Additionally, several states in the IOR claim maritime boundaries that diverge from
international norms. Somalia, instead of claiming the traditional 12 nautical miles of
territorial waters and 200 mile EEZ, claims a 200 nautical mile territorial water boundary
from its coastline. This interpretation has contributed to the problem of piracy near
Somalia‘s territory, as it diverges from traditional norms and creates shipping and legal
complications.

It is India‘s evolving strategic equation with the US, however, that is the most
important tool for India‘s counter-balancing of China. Both China and India have been
suspicious about the other‘s relationship with the United States, yet both have been trying
to foster a strategic relationship with Washington. India currently has the more
strategically advantageous relationship, which is a great worry for China. It is perceived
that China is being countered while India is being bolstered as the regional power. The
US is relying upon India to secure the crucial sea lanes, and has increasingly been
conceding leadership of the Indian Ocean to India. Former Secretary of State Colin

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Powell has publicly stated that ―India has the potential to keep the peace in the vast
Indian Ocean and its periphery17‖.

China‘s ability to uphold its maritime security in the region largely rests on its
ability to operate under the naval dominance of the US. Even though there have been
friendly military exchanges between the two countries, their strategic trust remains very
low. For example, China‘s reaction to the US proposal for a Global Maritime Partnership
was met with negativity and distrust. It was at first suggested that such a partnership
would make great breakthroughs in Sino-US relations, but analysts from within China
claimed that such a proposal only furthered US domination of maritime affairs at the
global level.

A defining feature of the geopolitical environment within the Asia Pacific in the
years to come will be whether or not China and India will be able to uphold their
maritime interests without unnecessary escalation or confrontation. The US is central to
this scenario, due to its role as regional hegemon and its capacity to provide India a
strategic advantage by countering Chinese naval ambitions. With the growing power and
influence of China and India, and the changing context of the relations between the three
countries, some scholars have recently identified the management of the China-India-US
triangle as the overarching challenge for Indian diplomacy.

Non-Traditional Threats and Sources

In the post-Cold War era, the IOR has become less stable because of the rivalry,
competition, and suspicion among various regional and extra-regional actors. The
maritime security environment in the Indian Ocean also underwent transformation
because of weak government and thereby limited capacity to control their maritime
domains resultantly all types of illicit activities began to flourish in many parts of the
IOR. There has been a rise in regional tensions and instabilities in some areas of maritime
interest to India, particularly the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden littoral, in recent years.
These have already had a spill-over effect from land to sea, giving rise to non-traditional

17
Nicholas Clement, ―Maritime Security: China, India and the Impact of the United States‖, 5 June 2012,
http://www.2point6billion.com/news/2012/06/05/maritime-security-china-india-and-the-impact-of-the-
united-states-11254.html, (Accessed on 15 March 2016).

210
threats and maritime security challenges, such as piracy, terrorism, and humanitarian
crises necessitating Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO). The continued
militarisation of the region and proliferation of weapons amongst non-state actors,
including private security organizations have complicated the regional maritime security
environment. Increased tension in India‘s areas of interest can adversely impact maritime
security and prosperity in those areas and adjacent waters, with consequent effect on
India‘s maritime interests.

Countering traditional maritime security threats will remain the raison d‘être of
the Indian Navy, particularly the way in which it is structured, equipped, modernised,
trained and deployed. However, in recent years non-traditional security threats have
necessitated the development of a fresh paradigm for maritime security. There has been a
steady rise in non-traditional threats, in occurrence and scale, with the lines at times
getting blurred with traditional challenges. This is especially the case where non-
traditional threats receive cooperation, support and sponsorship from traditional entities.
Changes in the nature of non-traditional threats and challenges necessitate corresponding
changes in strategies, force structures, operating methodology, training, and coordination
mechanisms. Some of the main threats are described below.

Maritime Terrorism

Terrorism, in particular, has had a major impact on India‘s maritime security. In

recent decades, there been an expansion of this threat from land to sea, and from sea
further onto land, aimed at multiple targets located off or near the coast. The targets may
include conventional military and soft non-military assets, such as commercial and
population centres, industrial centres, ports, ships, tourist centres, iconic structures, and
strategic infrastructure like offshore oil production installations and nuclear power plants.
Maritime terrorism has displayed an increasingly hybrid nature, with a characteristic of
morphing into different, deadlier forms. It is enabled by the availability of advanced
technologies, including readily available Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) equipment
to non-state actors, and niche expertise and active/ passive support provided by some
state sponsors and radicalized agencies. Maritime terrorism has evolved from indirect to

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direct actions from and at sea, and remains active in India‘s maritime security
environment18.

From the Sea: Movement of arms, explosives and terrorists by sea, for subsequently or
directly conducting terrorist attacks ashore. India has faced terrorism from the sea in both
these ways. In 1993, the seas were used to smuggle explosives for subsequently
conducting terrorist attacks in Mumbai. In 2008, this graduated to terrorists emerging
from the sea to carry out direct attacks on landing ashore.

At Sea: Terrorists used explosives and small craft in the early 2000s, to conduct attacks
against ships at sea which has recently graduated to direct weapons and rocket attacks
against ships from ashore. There were also attempted hijackings of naval ships in India‘s
neighbourhood in 2014, with the intention of attacking maritime targets using their
conventional capabilities. This represents a new genre of threat, wherein radicalised or
vulnerable state forces may be commandeered by terrorists to launch semi-conventional
attacks against other nations and populace19.

Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea

Piracy and armed robbery at sea constitute the oldest forms of maritime security
threats. These target maritime trade and, therefore, affect economies of nations. These
also put the lives of people working onboard ships at risk, and threaten freedom to use the
seas for livelihood and economic growth, affecting the maritime interests of a large
number of countries. Piracy has seen a rise in recent years in areas of maritime interest to
India. This includes the Gulf of Aden and the Somali basin, from where piracy had
spread across the Arabian Sea and to within 500 nm of the Indian mainland by 2011.
Robust action by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard pushed piracy away from India‘s
maritime zones.

The Indian Navy has also maintained a ship on patrol in the Gulf of Aden
continuously since October 2008, safely escorting more than 3,000 merchant ships and

18
P.K. Ghosh, ―Maritime Security Challenges in South Asia and the Indian Ocean: Response Strategies‖
Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Honolulu-Hawaii, January 18-20, 2004,
http://tamilnation.co/intframe/indian_ocean/pk_ghosh.pdf,(Accessed September 6, 2015).
19
Albert, n.12.

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nearly 25,000 Indian seafarers, besides other nationalities. Cooperative efforts of
international navies, adoption of BMP by transiting merchant vessels, and stabilising
actions ashore in Somalia, have all resulted in a steady reduction of Somali piracy threat
since 2012. However, till the root causes ashore are addressed, the danger of resurgence
will remain, with potential for instability in the littoral. Armed robbery in the Gulf of
Guinea and off the West coast of Africa has also increased in recent years, while there
has been periodic resurgence of piracy and armed robbery in the Malacca Strait.

Unregulated Activities at Sea

A large part of the maritime domain comprises the high seas, which are outside
the jurisdiction of any single state or authority thereby reduced scope for the monitoring
and regulation of activities at sea, especially farther away from the shore. This may also
be experienced within the EEZ, especially for nations with a large EEZ and relatively
smaller maritime forces. Unregulated activities at sea are, therefore, a historical and
continuing fact, which cover both legitimate and inimical activities. However, there is
inherent risk that unregulated activities at sea, especially by non-state actors, could turn
against good order at sea and the security interests of others, including maritime
communities and nations. Due to connectivity of the seas, these activities can also
transgress into another nation‘s maritime zones and, hence, ashore, to threaten the
security and economy of the coastal state like India.

Trafficking/ Smuggling

The use of unregulated movements at sea for seaborne trafficking in narcotics and
arms remains a constant threat to India, with the ‗Golden Crescent‘ to its West and
‗Golden Triangle‘ to its East. The modus operandi of trafficking/ smuggling by sea is
transshipment of consignments on the high seas into local craft, which then mingle with
dense fishing activity offshore and can land at any of the myriad landing points ashore.
The sea route has been in use for human trafficking/ smuggling, not only in relation to
India‘s close maritime neighbours, but also across the seas and extended maritime
neighbourhood. This places a constant demand on various maritime agencies and their
resources. The threat of nuclear material being smuggled in/ from India‘s maritime

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neighbourhood also needs to be a constant consideration, requiring monitoring of the
maritime spaces.

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUU)

IUU disregards established international and national laws on conservation and

management of living marine resources. It is a global issue, which can be a threat to
ocean ecosystems and sustainable fishing. IUU carries the risk of seriously damaging or
even destroying living resources, marine environment and bio-diversity, to the detriment
of the marine ecosystem and future livelihood of the coastal populace. This could lead to
shortages and tensions, and to further activities that increase insecurity. The advent of
piracy off Somalia has been linked to the fall in fish stocks and, hence, sustenance of
traditional fishermen, due to substantial IUU by mechanised foreign vessels. IUU also
affects India as it impacts food and related economic security, as well as the livelihood of
the Indian fishing community. In the Palk Bay, tensions between fishermen of India and
Sri Lanka have, in large part, been due to differently perceived fishing rights and
employment of different fishing methods. Transgression by fishermen between
neighbouring maritime zones, like between India and Pakistan, also renders the fishermen
liable to the other state‘s jurisdiction and actions by its maritime and law enforcement
agencies, which can aggravate sensitivities and heighten insecurities. Poaching in the
Andaman & Nicobar Islands and the Andaman Sea has been a matter of concern for India
and other littoral states.

Proliferation of Private Armed Security

There is increasing privatisation of armed security, with related concerns on the

scope for increased violence and threats from inimical elements using this mechanism to
act against state interests. Piracy off the coast of Somalia has resulted in the proliferation
of private armed guards for protection of merchant vessels transiting the piracy HRA.
This has led to large numbers of Privately Contracted Armed Security Personnel
(PCASP) being employed by Private Maritime Security Companies (PMSC), often
operating from ‗floating armouries‘ in the Arabian Sea. While the deployment of private
armed security onboard ships has been of value in countering piracy, their functioning

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can also lead to insecurity and threats especially in case of non-availability of
international regulations or non-adherence to governing standards. In particular, the
possibility of terrorists embarking merchant ships under the guise of PCASP and,
thereby, reaching within striking distance of a coastal city or offshore assets, has to be
guarded against. India‘s Ministry of Shipping and the International Maritime
Organization (IMO) have issued guidelines on the employment of PCASP, which also
bring out many related concerns.

Climate Change and Natural Disasters

Climate change has manifested in alterations of seasonal temperatures and

weather patterns the world over, with increased incidence of natural disasters. Changing
precipitation and melting snow are altering hydrological systems, causing changes in the
life pattern of terrestrial, fresh water and marine species. Climate change has, thus,
started impacting human and maritime security, with potentially major effects in the
future. These include impact on oceanic living resources due to changes in the levels of
salinity and acidity, possible inundation of low-lying coastal areas, and the loss of
national territory, which force migration. While the magnitude of change and
consequences may remain largely speculative, their impact may be suddenly experienced,
across dispersed areas. The current trends of natural disasters, which may get exacerbated
with climate change, place increased demands on capability for HADR, SAR, and aid to
civil authorities, all under the benign roles of the Indian Navy and Coast Guard20. At the
same time, in keeping with domestic laws and international trends, the need for imbibing
‗clean and green‘ marine technologies in naval projects and infrastructure, will need to be
addressed.

20
―Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy‖, Integrated Headquarters: Ministry of
Defence (Navy), 2015, https://www.indiannavy.nic.in/sites/default/files/Indian_ Maritime_Security_
Strategy_Document_25Jan16.pdf, (Accessed on 20 November 2016), pp.37-42.

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Geopolitics of Indian Ocean: Opportunities for India’s Maritime Security

Apart from the negative implications, there are positive implications also for
India‘s maritime security because of the geopolitics of Indian Ocean. First, as India is
increasingly claiming to be the leading maritime power of the Indian Ocean, IOR has
been one of the key spheres of the expansion of India‘s strategic influence over the last
two decades. India arguably has a ‗natural‘ role as a great power in the region,
particularly in the maritime security dimension. The Indian peninsular dominates the
northern Indian Ocean, and India is by far the largest and most powerful littoral state in
the region. India began to assert a leading role in the Indian Ocean in the 1970s, when it
sought to exclude or limit any military presence by extra-regional powers (principally the
US) in the region through international treaty, while also beginning to build its own
capacity to project maritime power throughout the Indian Ocean. Second, apart from
increased sphere of strategic influence of India in the maritime domain, India currently
acts as a security provider to, and even a security guarantor of, several smaller island
states in the region. India‘s ambition to be recognized as the leading Indian Ocean power
is helped by the limitations of other littoral states. Many Indian Ocean states are very
small, poor and/or have negligible military capabilities (such as most African and Indian
Ocean island states), or have largely a continental rather than a maritime strategic focus
(such as most states in the West Asia). Others traditionally have a geostrategic
perspective primarily facing the Asia Pacific, not the Indian Ocean (such as most
Southeast Asian states and Australia).

India‘s strategic ambitions in the Indian Ocean are intimately tied to its naval
capabilities and the development of a greater maritime perspective. During the Cold War,
India‘s ability to pursue its maritime ambitions was severely constrained through a
combination of superpower rivalry in the Indian Ocean and a lack of economic resources.
For decades following independence the Indian Navy was the ‗Cinderella‘ of the Indian
armed forces, while India focused on immediate security threats on its western and
northern land borders. However, since the mid-1990s, India has embarked on a major
programme to develop blue water navy involving significant increases in naval
expenditure. The proportion of the navy‘s budget allocated to capital expenditure

216
significantly exceeds the proportions allocated by the army or air force. At the same time,
the Indian Navy‘s force structure has been undergoing significant change with an
emphasis on sea control capabilities. Plans announced in 2008 call for a fleet of over 160
ships by 2022, including three aircraft carriers and 60 major combatant ships, as well as
almost 400 naval aircraft. According to Admiral Arun Prakash, the former Indian Chief
of Naval Staff, India aims to exercise selective sea control of the Indian Ocean through
task forces built around three aircraft carriers that will form the core of separate fleets in
the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea 21.

In conjunction with an increase in its naval capabilities over the last two decades,
India has been quietly expanding its sphere of influence throughout the Indian Ocean.
Although in recent years India has shown a willingness to accept a continuing US
security presence in the Indian Ocean (at least around the Persian Gulf) it is very
sensitive to a security presence of other extra-regional powers, particularly China. The
Indian Navy has actively developed security relationships with states throughout the IOR
region intended to enhance India‘s ability to project power and restrict China‘s ability to
develop similar relationships and this led to third positive implication for India as it
helped New Delhi to forge strategic partnership with other stake holders. India‘s strategic
ambitions are primarily focused on the northern Indian Ocean. In the northeast Indian
Ocean, India has developed a strong security relationship with Singapore and is in the
process of developing a security relationship with Indonesia. India has also developed a
close security relationship with the Maldives (where the Indian Navy/Air Force has been
granted use of the old British airbase on Gan island and India is building a system of
electronic monitoring facilities) and in the Persian Gulf, where the Indian Navy has
security relationships with Oman and Qatar. India has also made significant progress in
developing maritime security partnerships with island states in the southwestern Indian
Ocean including Mauritius, Seychelles, Mozambique (where the Indian Navy assists in
providing maritime security) and Madagascar (where India operates signals intelligence
facilities). Arguably these relationships form the basis for a sphere of naval influence
covering much of the Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy has also sought to institutionalize a

21
David Brewster, India as an Asia Pacific Power, Oxon: Routledge, 2012, p.35.

217
position for itself as the leading Indian Ocean power through such initiatives as
sponsoring the IONS, modeled on the US-led Western Pacific Naval Symposium
(WPNS).

India‘s rise to great power status is inevitable and would occur quickly over the
coming decades, especially while the US believes this will assist it in maintaining a
global strategic balance. This would lead to a greater projection of India‘s power outside
of its borders and especially into the IOR, which it sees as being essential for its
economic and social stability. In contrast, China and India would have increasingly
complex and intertwined relations, but the economic and strategic issues that bind them
and the evenly-matched nature of their conventional and nuclear forces are likely to
maintain relative peace and strategic stability. India sees itself as an emerging great
power in an increasingly multi-power world, and is thus maintaining a strategy of poly-
alignment. With the balance of forces developing as they are, that ambition is likely to
become a reality. Fourth, despite the rise in competition, multilateral cooperation
involving China, India, and other states, takes place on issues including piracy, disaster
relief, and drug smuggling is an another positive implication of geopolitics of Indian
Ocean.

Cooperation among the Stakeholders

Piracy has been costly to ocean-faring traders but global and regional responses
have shown success. Oceans beyond Piracy, a Colorado-based non-profit organization,
estimate that the economic cost of piracy off the Somali Coast amounted to $2.3 billion in
2014, a drop from the estimated $5.7-$6.1 billion loss two years prior. Counter-piracy
efforts near the Gulf of Aden have been the most successful manifestation of regional
cooperation. More than eighty countries, organizations, and industry groups participate in
operations in the IOR under the auspices of the ad hoc, voluntary Contact Group on
Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS), created in January 2009 in response to UN
Security Council Resolution 1851 on Somali piracy and armed robbery at sea. Since
military cooperation began, the volume of attacks has shrunk. Yet experts warn that
pirates have turned to more sophisticated equipment and if naval pressure in the western
Indian Ocean is reduced, pirate activity would rise again.

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 China and India carry out anti-piracy activities independently, deploying naval
vessels to escort merchant ships, provide protection, conduct rescue operations, and
confiscate contraband. In April 2016, China dispatched its twentieth naval escort task
force to the Gulf of Aden. Meanwhile, India has prevented forty piracy attempts and
developed an online registration service for merchants to request Indian naval escorts.

Cooperation in maritime search and rescue (MSAR) and HADR is a relatively

easy way of promoting greater interaction between armed forces without triggering
political sensitivities. The Indian Ocean is a region that is particularly susceptible to
natural disasters and has few capabilities to deal with them. This provides an opportunity
for Australia, India, US and others to establish cooperative arrangements for use of
existing capabilities to respond to natural disasters. India, US and Australia along with
Japan demonstrated the soft power benefits of HADR cooperation when they worked
together to provide relief to Indonesia and other countries following the 2004 tsunami.
MSAR is another way of promoting interaction among armed forces without major
political sensitivities. Another recent example of cooperation was the SAR effort for the
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
in March 2014. At the height of operations, twenty-six countries, including China and
India, contributed to the search mission. Wreckage believed to be from the flight was
discovered in July 2015. There is room for growth on HADR cooperation. After the 2004
Indian Ocean Tsunami, governments, including Australia, France, India, Japan, Malaysia,
New Zealand, Pakistan, the UK, and US, participated in extensive relief and
rehabilitation efforts. Separately, China disbursed more than $62.2 million in aid, shipped
supplies, and dispatched medical and rescue teams22. More than a decade later, the IOR‘s
vulnerability to natural disasters and the subsequent effects of climate change could
provide impetus for more extensive collaboration.

Consumers in Indo-Pacific countries on average obtain 20 to 50 percent of their

animal protein from fish, and industrial fishing is an important export for smaller
countries in the IOR. Regional players identify overfishing and environmental
degradation as serious risks to sustainable economic development and food security, but

22
Albert, n.12.

219
mechanisms to establish sustainable fisheries have not been effective. The Stimson
Center‘s David Michel blames challenges to cooperation on the region‘s existing security
architecture: majority of institutions, such as the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission
(IOTC), only operate at a sub-regional level or focus on specific species.

China and India have expressed eagerness to assume greater responsibility in

policing maritime global commons and to be recognized as major powers. China‘s
activities are likely to expand in conjunction with its OBOR initiative, but this does not
have to come at India‘s expense, say some experts. ‗India is going to have to come to
terms with China‘s entry into the Indian Ocean‘. New Delhi could also benefit from
partnering with Beijing to integrate the region. Broader initiatives like the Brazil, Russia,
China India and South Africa (BRICS) Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB) are also pulling India into to a larger leadership role alongside
China. The biggest challenge in creating coordinated effective action across the Indian
Ocean is the lack of institutions of governance that cover the whole space. There is a
growing need for effective regional security architecture, similar to extant mechanisms
among major powers in the East and South China seas, to address the IOR‘s diverse
challenges. Regional multilateral organizations, such as the IONS, which facilitate the
exchange of military views to enhance communication and transparency across the
region‘s naval forces, do exist. However, IOR members must undergo an extensive
region-building project for countries to be willing to act together more effectively.

Another key area for cooperation is in intelligence, surveillance and

reconnaissance (ISR) to improve maritime domain awareness. The vastness of distances
across the Indian Ocean makes tracking of vessels and aircraft a difficult task and beyond
the resources of any single country. It is a field that India has shown particular interest in
cooperating with both the US and Australia. It is also a field that probably holds less
political sensitivity for India. The recent signing of ‗white shipping‘ information sharing
agreements between India and Australia, and India and the US might be a step towards a
broader trilateral information sharing arrangement that could grow to include ‗grey
shipping‘ (i.e. naval shipping). Information sharing arrangements could be bolstered by
sharing of facilities. The finalisation of the India-US Logistics Exchange Memorandum

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of Agreement (LEMOA) may ease the way for similar facilities sharing arrangements
between Australia and India23.

India’s Emergence as a ‘Net Security Provider’

The core national interest of India is to assure and ensure the material, economic,
and societal well-being of the people of India, ensuring stability in its maritime
neighborhood is quite clearly a major national imperative. It is this requirement for
regional stability that provides the context of India being perceived — both externally
and internally a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Perhaps the
first time that such a sentiment was formally expressed on an international stage was at
the 2009 edition of the ―Shangri La Dialogue‖ organized annually in Singapore by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), wherein Robert Gates, who was then
Secretary of Defence of the US, stated, ―We look to India to be a partner and net provider
of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond24‖. This was repeated in the 2010 edition of
the ―Quadrennial Defense Review‖ of the US, which emphasized, ―as its military
capabilities grow, India will contribute to Asia as a net provider of security in the Indian
Ocean and beyond25‖. However, the most unequivocal declaration of this intent occurred
when the former Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh stated,

―We live in a difficult neighbourhood, which holds the full

range of conventional, strategic, and non-traditional
challenges. Our defense cooperation has grown and today we
have unprecedented access to high technology, capital, and
partnerships. We have also sought to assume our responsibility
for stability in the Indian Ocean Region. We are well
positioned, therefore, to become a net provider of security in
our immediate region and beyond 26‖.

Recently, the Indian Navy in its latest Maritime Military Strategy 2015 has
attempted to define what it means to be a net security provider. According to this new
23
Dinaker Peri, ―What is LEMOA?‖, The Hindu, 30 August 2016.
24
Robert Gates; ―America‘s security role in the Asia–Pacific‖; IISS Shangri-La Dialogue: 14th Asia
Security Summit; 30 May 2009; http://www.iiss.org/en/events/shangri%20la%20 dialogue/archive/
shangri-la-dialogue-2009-99ea/first-plenary-session-5080/dr-robert-gates-6609, (Accessed on 27
August 2016).
25
―Quadrennial Defense Review Report‖, Department of Defense, United States of America; February
2010; p.60.
26
―PM‘s speech at the Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony for the Indian National Defence University at
Gurgaon‖, Press Information Bureau, Government Of India, 23 May, 2013, http://pib.nic.in/
newsite/mbErel.aspx?relid=96146, (Accessed on 27 August 2016).

221
strategy, the term net security describes the state of actual security available in an area,
upon balancing against the ability to monitor, contain, and counter all of these.

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India is now breaking some long-standing
taboos in Indian foreign policy. Enhanced security cooperation was very much at the
forefront of Modi‘s 2015 visits to Seychelles and Mauritius. India has long acted as a
security provider to these islands, including fending off feared coups on several
occasions. The relationship is bolstered by their large Indian ethnic populations (some
70% of Mauritians are of Indian origin and there is a substantial Indian community in
Seychelles). For decades, India has been the major contributor of military equipment and
training to both countries. India also plans to build military facilities on the islands.
Modi‘s visit to Mauritius included an announcement that India will upgrade airfield and
port facilities at North Agalega Island, located some 1000kms northeast of Madagascar,
for use by the Indian military. This has long been discussed, but never acted upon. Using
Agalega as a staging point will substantially help India‘s maritime reconnaissance efforts
throughout the western Indian Ocean. Just as interesting is India‘s agreement with
Seychelles to develop infrastructure on the uninhabited Assumption Island near the
northern end of the Mozambique Channel. Along with the Suez Canal, the Channel is the
main route for shipping between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Control over this and
other Indian Ocean choke points has long been a key objective of the Indian Navy. The
deals giving the Indian navy access to these facilities will represent a major departure
from Indian policy that has long derided foreign military bases in the region.

His visit to Sri Lanka was the first Indian prime ministerial visit for almost 30
years, focused on rebuilding the political links between the two countries that have often
been frayed and irritated by the Tamil issue. He pledged India‘s commitment to the unity
and integrity of Sri Lanka, but also pressed Colombo to implement its promises of
devolving power to the Tamil community. In doing so, he managed to avoid the
antagonism that has previously surrounded the issue, raising hopes that India might play a
constructive role in helping to facilitate lasting national reconciliation. But Modi‘s visit to
the region also had considerable strategic significance. India is now in the process of
building a maritime security grouping among the Indian Ocean island states as part of its

222
aspirations to be a ‗net security provider‘ to the region. For several years, India, Sri
Lanka and the Maldives have been parties to a trilateral arrangement involving training
and capacity building of maritime forces, regular joint exercises and meetings of national
security advisors. In 2015, New Delhi proposed that this arrangement should be expanded
to include Mauritius and Seychelles, and potentially even other states. The proposal was
blocked by Sri Lanka‘s former President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was concerned about
the dilution of India‘s contributions to Sri Lanka (particularly in defence training).
Rajapaksa was also unhappy with Mauritius, which had boycotted the Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo in November 2013. This policy may have
now changed under Sri Lanka‘s new President, Maithripala Sirisena, who has pledged to
correct Sri Lanka‘s perceived tilt towards Beijing. An expansion of the trilateral maritime
security arrangement to include Mauritius and Seychelles is now on the cards. The initial
focus of the ‗IO-5‘ will be on capacity building, training and information sharing, and
perhaps joint exercises. Delhi is also focused on building a cooperative system of
‗maritime domain awareness‘ for tracking and identifying ships and aircraft throughout
the western and central Indian Ocean. Delhi has already installed coastal radar systems in
the Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius, which all feed information back through the
Indian Navy‘s National Command Control Communication Intelligence network.

The immediate explanation for these moves is India‘s growing strategic

competition with China. Delhi is seeking to preempt China‘s perceived attempts to build
its own strategic relationships in the region. China has longstanding security relationships
with Pakistan and several other Indian Ocean littorals. Some highly unusual port visits by
a Chinese submarine to Colombo in 2015 prompted significant concerns in Delhi that Sri
Lanka may be moving to align itself with Beijing and provide access to the Chinese
PLAN. As nascent and aspirational as India‘s initiatives in the Indian Ocean may be, they
represent important steps in giving substance to its claims to be a net security provider to
the region. A grouping with the island states may represent the beginnings of a new
multilateral alignment in the Indian Ocean, with India at the centre. For India it would
represent an important psychological step beyond its traditional adherence to
nonalignment, which could have much broader implications. In sum, there is no doubt
that the present government has embarked on a more ambitious foreign policy in the

223
Indian Ocean. New Delhi is determined to build on India‘s natural geographic advantages
in the littoral. Now, India is no longer hesitant about taking a larger responsibility for
securing the Indian Ocean and promoting regional mechanisms for collective security and
economic integration. It is confident enough to collaborate with the United States in self-
interest and engage China on maritime issues with greater self-assurance. Yet it is
important to remember that the vision of the present government is only the first step
towards rejuvenating New Delhi‘s Indian Ocean strategy. Modi‘s policy will face the
familiar test of implementation where New Delhi has had multiple problems in the past.

A critical success in India‘s regional endeavors has been the creation of the IONS.
IONS is the current century‘s first (and to date the only) robust and inclusive regional
maritime-security organizational structure within the Indian Ocean. It was launched by
New Delhi in 2008 with active participation of very nearly all 37 littoral nations of the
IOR at the level of their respective Chiefs of Navy/Heads of national maritime forces. It
is broadly modeled upon the WPNS and has gained impressive traction over the past
eight years27. Its inclusiveness is evident from the fact that both India and Pakistan, often
associated with being arch rivals and even spoilers, at times, are active and enthusiastic
members. For the moment, suffice to say that it represents a unique opportunity to
progress common responses to common regional threats. Indeed, the current and future
maritime plans and processes through which India can translate this statement of intent
into tangible reality lie at the core of India‘s willingness to be a net security-provider.

India’s enhanced Sphere of Influence in the Indian Ocean

Tanham‘s study of India‘s strategic culture in the early 1990s characterized Indian
strategic thinking as being ―defensive‖ and having a ―lack of an expansionist military
tradition28‖. Certainly, any affirmation of an Indian security sphere beyond South Asia
largely ceased following independence. After 1947, India effectively withdrew to the
Indian subcontinent and asserted ‗India‘s Monroe Doctrine‘ according to which India
would not permit any intervention by any external power in India‘s immediate

27
Pradeep Chauhan, ―India as a Net Security Provider in the Indian Ocean and Beyond‖, Center for
International Maritime Security, 29 April 2016.
28
George Tanham, Indian Strategic Thought, Washington DC: RAND, 1992, p.50.

224
neighbours in South Asia and related islands. While India‘s attempts to exclude other
powers from South Asia had only limited success, India‘s Monroe Doctrine was used to
justify military interventions in Sri Lanka and Maldives in the 1980s.

Since the end of the Cold War there has been a revival in discussion in India
about a ―natural‖ sphere of influence extending well beyond South Asia. This is related to
a desire to move beyond India‘s traditional strategic preoccupations in South Asia and re-
engage with its extended neighbourhood—to rectify what Foreign Minister Jaswant
Singh called India‘s unnecessary acceptance of ―the post-Partition limits geography
imposed on policy‖. Even before India‘s independence, K. M. Panikkar, argued that the
Indian Ocean must remain ―truly Indian‖, advocating the creation of a ―steel ring‖ around
India through the establishment of forward naval bases in Singapore, Mauritius, Yemen
(Socatra) and Sri Lanka29.

Indian Navy has taken a cooperative approach in developing security

relationships, an approach that has been relatively successful. The failure of India to
project military power beyond the limits of South Asia during the Cold War has placed
India in good stead in much of the IOR. India has a noticeable lack of historical baggage
in many of its dealings in the region, with the exception of the Islamic factor arising from
the Pakistan conflict. India is often perceived as essentially a benign power and not a
would-be hegemon. While India is not in a position to exert significant power through
military predominance or ideological means, it may be able to do so as a provider of
public goods. This is certainly the current approach of the Indian Navy, which
emphasises its ability to provide maritime policing, antipiracy and anti-terrorism
functions. However, there are sometimes also noticeable overtones of hierarchy in India‘s
dealings with the region, particularly in India‘s overt opposition to regional relationships
with China.

From a geopolitical perspective, spheres of influence are seen as a normal part of

ordering the international system. According to Cohen: ―spheres of influence are essential
to the preservation of national and regional expression … the alternative is either a

29
K.M. Panikkar, India and the Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History,
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1945, p.45.

225
monolithic world system or utter chaos 30 ‖. Certainly many would see a sphere of
influence as a natural appurtenance of great power status. One study of India‘s regional
plans concluded that: a rising India will try to establish regional hegemony in South Asia
and the IOR just like all the other rising powers have since Napoleonic times, with the
long term goal of achieving great power status on an Asian and perhaps even global
scale. The key feature of a sphere of influence is not just the ability to project power, but
an acknowledgement of a hierarchical relationship in which the great power provides
security to lesser powers in return for an acknowledgement of a leadership role.

China also provides good defensive reasons for the development of a sphere of
influence. Many Indian strategists see China‘s political and security relationships in
South Asia and its String of Pearls strategy as part of a cohesive policy of ―encirclement‖
or ―containment‖ of India that justifies the development of a ―defensive‖ sphere of
influence by India. As Admiral Prakash, commented that ―the appropriate counter to
China‘s encirclement of India is to build our own relations, particularly in our
neighbourhood, on the basis of our national interests and magnanimity towards smaller
neighbours31‖.

As it expands its influence in the Indian Ocean region India also has had to accept
the continuing role of the US in the region. The US, particularly with its base at Diego
Garcia and its naval facilities in Singapore and the Gulf, seems likely to remain the
predominant naval power in the IOR for many years to come. However there are
indications that the US is willing to cede—and indeed encourage—a major regional naval
role for India, particularly in the northeast Indian Ocean. For its part, India‘s willingness
to cooperate with the US in achieving its ambitions is not as paradoxical as it may seem.
As the former US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, once conceded, the US in
developing its sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere in the nineteenth century
relied on Britain, the then superpower, to enforce the Monroe Doctrine until the US was
sufficiently strong to do so itself. Similarly, India may have good reason to cooperate

30
Saul Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided, New York: Oxford University Press, (Second
Edition) 1973, p. 8.
31
Arun Prakash, ―China and the Indian Ocean Region‖, Indian Defence Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (October –
December 2006), p. 11.

226
with the US while it builds its national power32. However, with the exception of the US,
India will likely wish to cooperate with extra-regional navies in the Indian Ocean only as
long as they recognize India‘s leading regional role. The apparent willingness of Japan to
recognize India‘s role as the ―leading‖ maritime security provider west of the Malacca
Strait forms a significant element in the developing India-Japan security relationship.

Maritime strategy is playing an ever greater role in Indian strategic thinking. As

India competes for great power status, it is increasingly turning to the Indian Ocean as a
means to expand its strategic space. Although it currently operates in cooperation with
the US, India has long-term aspirations towards attaining naval predominance throughout
much of the Indian Ocean. In conjunction with an expansion of India‘s naval capabilities,
there has been a significant extension of India‘s maritime security relationships
throughout the region. Much of the emphasis has been in developing relationships with
small states at or near the key points of entry into the Indian Ocean (including, Mauritius,
Seychelles, Oman, Qatar and Singapore). Arguably, the extreme asymmetries in size
have made the development of such relationships relatively easy—there is no question of
competition or rivalry for example. Some of these states have long seen India as a benign
security provider and have maritime policing needs that India can usefully fulfill. In some
cases, India may not only be a cooperative security provider, but may also effectively act
as a security guarantor, as is arguably the case with Mauritius and the Maldives.

In the longer term, India‘s role in the Indian Ocean will likely be determined and
limited by the extent to which India‘s naval expansion plans come to fruition. It should be
noted that the potential for an Indian sphere of influence in the Indian Ocean are also
subject to some important caveats: although India has ambitions to expand its strategic
space in the Indian Ocean, there are real questions as to whether these aspirations will be
achieved. India has a long history of its strategic ambitions surpassing its capabilities, of
strategic goals and military expansion plans going unfulfilled. The planned expansion of
India‘s naval capabilities is some decades away from being achieved and is highly
contingent on India‘s economic development. India‘s security partners in the Indian
Ocean (with the possible exception of the Maldives) will likely maintain other important

32
Dean G. Acheson, A Democrat Looks at his Party, New York: Harper, 1955, p. 64.

227
security relationships and will not easily grant an exclusive security role for India. Most
importantly, the US has every reason to maintain a major regional security presence,
particularly in the northwest Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, India‘s aspirations to expand its
strategic space in the IOR are clearly related to its broader ambitions to be recognized as
a great power.

Maritime Strategic Partnership with other Stakeholders

Asian countries that until just a few years ago were willing to bet on China‘s
peaceful rise are now preparing to hedge in the face of China‘s increasingly coercive
behaviour against Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. To insulate themselves from the
risks of strategic competition or collusion between China and the US, Asia‘s diverse
‗powers in the middle‘ – including India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia,
Vietnam and other ASEAN countries – are adopting a range of strategies. For India in
particular, growing Chinese engagements with Indian Ocean littorals is a major concern.
While Japan is engaged with China in a dispute in the East China Sea, Canberra has
articulated the concept of the Indo-Pacific as the security environment in both the Pacific
and the Indian Ocean affect Australia‘s strategic interests directly. Indonesia on the other
hand could emerge as a critical swing state in the evolving security architecture given its
geographic location straddling the Malacca Strait, while Vietnam is keen on a stronger
maritime cooperation with most navies of the region. Strikingly, these nations are looking
beyond formal regional multilateral institutions, alliance with the US, and traditional
postures of non-alignment to cooperate with each other. The middle powers may not be
ready for a single middle power coalition, but they are developing overlapping
arrangements.

The rise of China and the US re-balancing Asia strategy has stirred geopolitical
changes which are now disturbing the existing security order in the Indo-Pacific.
Incidentally, this development is creating a space for collaboration among countries in
the region both at bilateral and multilateral levels. Although the US is a bigger military
power in global terms, and its technological edge will likely endure for many years,
Beijing has begun to alter the regional military balance. If Chinese force modernization
continues apace it will eventually tilt the US-China bilateral military balance in the

228
Western Pacific in Beijing‘s favour. This will undermine the credibility of US alliances
and more broadly raise doubts about Washington‘s ability to forestall Chinese pre-
eminence in Asia.

Against this backdrop, both the US and its allies are looking to diversify their
security partnerships. For decades the US had relied on formal bilateral alliances and
special relationships in Asia. Now Washington is broadening the base in multiple ways.
Even as it strengthens traditional alliances (Australia, Japan, South Korea, Philippines,
and Thailand) and long-standing partnerships (Singapore), Washington is seeking to
deepen defence relationships with India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Washington
is also encouraging its allies to work with each other. The past few years have brought a
rapid expansion of bilateral security cooperation agreements across Asia. US allies and
partners are expanding their own bilateral defence ties with each other as well as third
parties. Consider, for example, Japan‘s growing defence engagement with Australia,
India and the ASEAN nations, involving high level dialogue, information sharing,
capacity building and defence exports. Tokyo‘s security partnership with Canberra now
appears poised for a significant expansion following prime ministerial visits in both
directions in May and July 2014 33.

Since the middle of the last decade, when Japan announced the launch of a
strategic partnership with India, security cooperation between the two has grown to cover
a range of activities including regular military exercises and combined ‗2+2‘ talks among
senior foreign and defence ministry officials. The two sides are also exploring industrial
collaboration, beginning with transfer and production in India of a Japanese amphibious
aircraft. In the last few years, Japan has also devoted special attention to developing
defence and security cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, notably Vietnam and
the Philippines. Japan has also stepped up its activism in the various ASEAN forums.
Another US ally, South Korea, has traditionally focused on its alliance with the US and
the security threats from the North, yet it too has made defence cooperation a major
priority for its engagement with other countries in Asia. Although Seoul‘s current

33
Darshana M. Baruah, ―Growing maritime linkages in Indo-Pacific: Indo-US-Japan, 10 November, 2015,
www.offiziere.ch/?p=24569, (Accessed on 12 February 2017).

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relations with Tokyo are strained, it has expanded its defence diplomacy with Australia,
India and some Southeast Asian countries, notably Indonesia, and is seeking to combine
this with defence technology links.

No US ally sees its new regional partnerships as a substitute for an alliance with
America but rather as a useful complement. In fact, America‘s own quest to build new
defence partnerships in the region has made it easier for allies to do the same. This
widening of the network of defence cooperation has also included trilateral arrangements.
Notable among these are the Australia-US-Japan trilateral security dialogue – which has
translated into military exercises and the building of interoperability – and a more modest
India-Japan-US trilateral dialogue, as well as the frequent involvement of Japanese
warships in India-US ‗Malabar‘ exercises.

The changing regional scenario is also encouraging Asia‘s non-aligned countries

to discard their traditional military isolationism and expand security cooperation with
their fellow Asian countries and the US. During the Cold War, both the US and the
Soviet Union were distant powers. It was relatively easy to stake out a neutral or non-
aligned position between them. Dealing with US-China rivalry poses more difficult
challenges for the large non-aligned countries in the region such as India and Indonesia.
China is an Asian power gives Beijing the advantage of emphasizing inherited regional
traditions of Asian solidarity and opposition to Western dominance, appealing to sections
of some Asian political elites. Yet this card has its limits. The slogan ‗Asia for Asians‘
has less appeal now that many of China‘s neighbours see a threat to their interests
emanating from China rather than from former colonial powers. Those countries facing
territorial claims from China – Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and India – have no
difficulty seeing through Beijing‘s recent rhetoric about a new framework for Asian
security.

The governments of Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam have become

increasingly explicit in warning about the risks they see in Chinese power. In most other
regional countries however, especially those with traditions of non-alignment, there
remains a reluctance to be forthright about such questions, amid significant domestic
opposition to any arrangement that would look like an alliance with Washington to

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balance Beijing. Expanding defence cooperation with America short of a formal alliance
has become an important objective of states such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia
and Singapore. These countries are conscious, however, that they cannot rely on the US
alone to guarantee their security. Expanding defence cooperation with other regional
powers has, therefore, become a major feature of regional security politics. India, which
limited its defence engagement with even closest partners such as the Soviet Union in the
Cold War, has significantly expanded defence partnerships with a range of countries over
the last decade and more. The rise of China and its growing military profile in the
Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean have intensified India‘s quest to consolidate its
traditional security partnerships in the region as well as build new ones. If India‘s new
defence diplomacy has little resemblance to the past politics of non-alignment, the
situation is similar with other countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar, which are
all discarding post-colonial military isolationism34.

The naval exercise between India and Australia is testimony of increasing

maritime collaborations in the Indo-Pacific. Ausindex is the first ever bilateral exercise
that took place from September 11-19, 2015 off the East Coast of India. The exercise was
conducted on the Framework for Security Cooperation between the two countries and
aims to strengthen interoperability between the two navies and contribute to maritime
security in the Indo-Pacific. The first of this biennial exercise was a successful event
building on a stronger relationship between the two nations. Although New Delhi and
Canberra share a common vision on enhanced maritime security, it is truly the changing
power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific which is facilitating maritime cooperation between
navies of the region. Stability and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific features high on
Australian foreign policy agenda at bilateral and regional levels and achieving this
stability, cooperation with India is vital for Australia. New Delhi too is now looking to
build its maritime ties with other navies of the region in effect to strengthen its overall
maritime strategy and presence. The rise of China and its naval expansion into the Indian
Ocean is an underlying factor in both Australia‘s concerns over managing the Indo-
Pacific and in India‘s need to strengthening its maritime links. Maritime security can

34
Rory Medcalf and C. Raja Mohan, ―Responding to Indo-Pacific rivalry: Australia, India and middle
power coalitions‖, Lowy Institute, August 2014, p.11.

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emerge as a crucial area for cooperation in India-Australia ties and has the potential to
elevate this bilateral relationship into a strong partnership. Australia must play an active
role in molding the relationship and promoting India‘s regional role in the Indian Ocean
as a complement to that of the US.

Japan‘s participation in the 2015 edition of Malabar exercise is a reflection of two

crucial developments in Asia‘s waters. One, it is clear that there is a shift in New Delhi‘s
maritime policy, however small it may be. Two, multilateral framework is emerging as
the most preferred model for maritime engagement between the navies of the region.
Japan‘s participation in Malabar for the second time in a row is indication of New Delhi‘s
willingness to move beyond concerns and intimidation from China if needed, to secure its
own strategic interests. This is also somewhere reflective of growing importance of
maritime security in Indian foreign policy. Following protests from China post the 2007
Malabar exercises; India had been conscious of keeping the Malabar exercises at a
bilateral level. Washington however has remained consistently keen on expanding the
scope of the Malabar exercises into a trilateral under a broader multilateral framework. If
Japan‘s participation in the 2014 edition of Malabar was a positive step from India, the
decision to re-invite Tokyo for the 2015 edition was a bold one, marking the security
developments in the Indo-Pacific. The participation of the Japan MSDF in Malabar 2015
is also a result of strengthening Indo-US ties35.

One of the major concerns in the region currently is the freedom to use the seas as
well as freedom of military navigation. China‘s construction of artificial islands and an
aggressive stance to defend what it claims as its own in the SCS undermines international
law and understanding between nations to come together to work on a common agenda.
Based on Chinese behaviour in the Western Pacific the countries of the IOR too are
sceptical about Beijing‘s expanding ambitions in the Indian Ocean. While one cannot
point toward China as the sole reason for the changes in the maritime domain, Beijing is
one of the driving factors in the evolving security architecture.

35
Darshana M. Baruah, ―Growing maritime linkages in Indo-Pacific: India and Australia‖, 15 October,
2015, www.offiziere.ch/?p=24569, (Accessed on 12 February 2017).

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Conclusion

The Indian Ocean is witnessing a change in power dynamics which is fairly a new
phenomenon for the region. Therefore, in the absence of a sustainable framework to
diffuse tension, a network of coalition between the middle powers of the region will be
the most favoured model in maintaining peace and security in the region. The
developments in the maritime domain of Asia can broadly be divided into the SCS and
the IOR where as the SCS is already enmeshed in conflicts and confrontations, the IOR is
gearing up to avoid tensions and to maintain the current security order. The rise of China
plays a crucial role in both the theatres which combined forms the Indo-Pacific. Rapid
developments in the Indo-Pacific are creating the space for navies of the region to come
together on issues of common concern. At this point of time, the main security issue in
the IOR is to sustain the current security order. China‘s expansion into the Indian Ocean
is of a concern to India and New Delhi is choosing to enter into multilateral frameworks
to secure its strategic interests in the region. India has and will continue to maintain a safe
distance from alliances and containments policies. However, the changing geo-strategic
landscape is working in India‘s favour to strengthen its ties with the other regional actors.
While India has always been a significant security actor in the IOR, the need to adopt a
sharper and concrete Indian Ocean policy is on the cards. New Delhi is addressing this by
engaging with the like-minded navies on both traditional and non-traditional security
issues.

For India, building Indo-Pacific coalitions of middle powers could well become a
critical element of a strategy to cope with the power shift in Asia and the uncertain
evolution of US-China relations. This would help Delhi relieve the tension in its policy
between seeking to balance a rising China while avoiding an entangling alliance with the
US. Building middle power coalitions, as a complement to engaging China and
deepening strategic partnership with America, would enjoy domestic political support
while creating the basis for expanding India‘s role in Asian security. India‘s strategic
cooperation with the middle powers of Asia is likely to win greater domestic support than
a strategy based mainly around partnership with the US. It will also be less vulnerable to
Chinese propaganda that regional security cooperation is nothing more than a part of

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Washington‘s effort to contain Beijing. Such an approach will help Delhi break free of
the tension between strategic balancing and the legacy of non-alignment. India should
continue its relationship with US to deepen their IOR strategic partnership, especially in
the realm of maritime security. This could certainly have a positive effect on China‘s
perception of India in the IOR, forcing her to put a check on her bold military presence in
the region. A friendly relationship with US could compel China‘s maritime strategy along
a moderate path. Indian private sectors can continue to do business in China. This
prompts a track-II diplomatic strategy to engage China economically, which in turn sends
a message that China is not excluded.

As the geo-politics continue to evolve, tension, threats and the risk of an armed
conflict will rise and fall with these changes. With increasing competition, the scope for
cooperation is also high on the agenda for most nations in the IOR. As the security
architecture of the Indo-Pacific evolves, the best way forward is to continue engaging at a
multilateral level to deter unilateral actions and sustain the current peace and order in the
Indian Ocean region. At this point of time, the middle powers of the region can play a
crucial role in carving the way ahead for the region. Most initiatives put forth by either
China or the US is viewed with suspicion challenging the potential of collaborations in
the region. However engagement amongst nations such as — but not limited to — Japan,
India, Australia and Indonesia at the both bilateral and multilateral levels will
demonstrate a coalition of network committed toward keeping the region free of conflict.
From an Indian perspective, at the crux of New Delhi‘s growing maritime linkages with
the navies of the region is the expansion of Chinese ambitions into the Indian Ocean.
While it may be unfair to underline China as the only reason for India‘s shifting maritime
policy, it would be foolish not to acknowledge the changes brought about by India‘s
maritime ambitions. A lot of the changes that are witnessing now may have had its
foundations laid over the years. However, a rapid change in the Asian maritime security
framework is forcing the present government to materialise some of the old initiatives
and create new ones.

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