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While
to other countries the
Indian Ocean is only one of the important oceanic areas, to India it is
a vital sea. Her lifelines are concentrated in that area, her freedom
is dependent on the freedom of that water surface. No industrial
development, no commercial growth, no stable political structure is
possible for her unless her shores are protected. “History
has
shown that whatever power controls the Indian Ocean has, in the first
instance, India’s sea borne trade at her mercy and, in the
second, India’s very independence
itself.” India has moved from its past emphasis on the power
of
the argument to a new stress on the argument of power One of the key
milestones in world history has been the rise to prominence of new and
influential states in world affairs. The recent trajectories of India
suggest strongly that it will play a more powerful role,in the world in
the coming decades. One recent analysis, for example, judges that
“the likely emergence of China and India . . . as newglobal
players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the
19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th
century—will transformthe geopolitical landscape,with impacts
potentially as dramatic as those in the two previous
centuries.”
India’s rise, of course, has been heralded
before—perhaps
prematurely. However, its ascent now seems assured in light of changes
in India’s economic and political mind-set, especially the
advent
of better economic policies and a diplomacy emphasizing realism. More
fundamentally, India’s continued economic rise also is
favored by
the scale and intensity of globalization in the contemporary world.
India also is no longer geopolitically contained in South Asia, as it
was in the Cold War, when its alignment with the Soviet Union caused
the United States and China, with the help of Pakistan, to contain
India. Finally, the sea change in Indian-U.S. relations, especially
since 9/11, has made it easier for India to enter into close political
and security cooperation with America’s friends and allies in
the
Asia-Pacific Much of the literature on India has focused on its recent
economic vitality, especially its highly successful knowledge-based
industrial sector. The nature and implications of India’s
strategic goals and behavior have received somewhat
less attention.4 Those implications, however, will be felt
globally—at the United Nations, in places as distant as
Europe
and Latin America, and within international economic institutions. It
also will be manifest on the continent of Asia, from Afghanistan
through Central Asia to Japan. Finally, and most of all, the rise of
India will have consequences in the broad belt of nations from South
Africa to Australia that constitute the Indian Ocean littoral and
region. For India, this maritime and southward focus is not entirely
new. However, it has been increasing due to New Delhi’s
embrace
of globalization and of the global marketplace, the advent of a new
Indian selfconfidence emphasizing security activism over continental
self-defense, and the waning of the Pakistan problemas
India’s relative power has increased. Other, older, factors
influencing this trend are similar to
those that once conditioned British thinking about the defense of
India: the natural protection afforded the subcontinent by the
Himalayan mountain chain, and the problem confronting most would-be
invaders of long lines of communications—the latter a factor
that
certainly impeded Japan’s advance toward India in World War
II
From New Delhi’s perspective, key security considerations
include
the accessibility of the Indian Ocean to the fleets of the
world’s most powerful states; the large Islamic populations
on
the shores of the ocean and in its hinterland; the oil wealth of the
Persian Gulf; the proliferation of conventional military power and
nuclear weapons among the region’s states; the importance of
key
straits for India’s maritime security; and the historical
tendency of continental Asian peoples or powers (the Indo-Aryans,
theMongols, Russia) to spill periodically out of Inner Asia in the
direction of the Indian Ocean.11 The position of India in this
environment has sometimes been compared to that of Italy in the
Mediterranean,
only on an immense scale. To this list may be added the general
consideration that, in the words of India’s navy chief,
Indians
“live in uncertain times and in a rough
neighborhood. A
scan of the littoral shows that, with the exception of a few countries,
all others are afflicted with one or more of the ailments of poverty,
backwardness, fundamentalism, terrorism or internal insurgency. A
number of territorial and maritime disputes linger on. . . . Most of
the conflicts since the end of the Cold War have
also taken place in or around the [Indian Ocean region].Confronted by
this environment, India—like other states that are
geographically
large and also ambitious— believes that its security will be
best
guaranteed by enlarging its security perimeter and, specifically,
achieving a position of influence in the larger region that encompasses
the Indian Ocean. As one prominent American scholar recently noted,
“Especially powerful states are strongly inclined to seek
regional hegemony.”Unsurprisingly, New Delhi regards the
Indian
Ocean as its backyard and deems it both natural and desirable that
India function as, eventually, the leader and the predominant influence
in this region—the world’s only region and ocean
named
after a single state. This is what the United States set out to do in
North America and the Western Hemisphere at an early stage in
America’s “rise to power”:
“American foreign
policy throughout the nineteenth century had one overarching goal:
achieving hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.” Similarly, in
the
expansive view of many Indians, India’s security perimeter
should
extend from the Strait of Malacca to the Strait of Hormuz and from the
coast of Africa to the western shores of Australia. For some Indians,
the emphasis is on the northern Indian Ocean, but for others the realm
includes even the “Indian Ocean” coast of
Antarctica.
“a
rising India will
aspire to become the regional hegemon of South Asia and the Indian
Ocean Region, and an extra regional power in the Middle East, Central
Asia and Southeast Asia. India’s concern about external
powers in
the Indian Ocean mainly relates to China and the United States However,
and notwithstanding the probably episodic progress registered of
late,China and India likely will remain long-termrivals, vying for the
same strategic space in Asia. Beijing, according to former Indian
external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, is the “principal
variable in the calculus of Indian foreign and defense
policy.”21
In the words of one Indian scholar, China’s “rise
will
increasingly challenge Asian and global security. Just as India bore
the brunt of the rise of international terrorism because of its
geographical location, it will be frontally affected by the growing
power of a next door . . empire practicing classical balance
of-
power politics. Narrowing its focus to the IO, India cannot help but be
wary of the
growing capability of China’s navy and of Beijing’s
growing
maritime presence. In the Bay of Bengal
and Arabian Sea, especially, New Delhi is sensitive to a variety of
Chinese naval or maritime activities
that observers have characterized collectively as a “string
of
pearls” strategy or a
“preparation of the battlefield.”For Beijing, this
process
has entailed achieving the capability, and thereby the option, to
deploy or station naval power in this region in the future. A key focus
in this connection is Burma
(Myanmar), where Chinese engineers and military personnel have long
been engaged in airfield, road, railroad,
pipeline, and port construction aimed at better connecting China with
the Indian Ocean, both by sea and
directly overland. Some of this activity, moreover, spills over onto
Burma’s offshore
islands, including St. Matthews, near the mouth of the Malacca Strait,
and the Coco Islands (Indian until their
transfer to Burma in the 1950s), in the Bay of Bengal. On the latter,
China is suspected of maintaining a
communications monitoring facility that collects intelligence on Indian
naval operations and
missile testing. In addition to this “presence” in
Burma,
China is pursuing a variety of
infrastructure links with Southeast Asia through the Greater Mekong
Subregion program and is building container ports in
Bangladesh at Chittagong, and in Sri Lanka at
Hambantota—directly
astride the main
east-west shipping route across the Indian Ocean. Elsewhere, and
perhaps most ominously for India, China is
constructing a large new naval base for Pakistan at Gwadar. India also
remains somewhat nervous about the large U.S. military
presence in the Indian Ocean to India’s west—in the
Arabian
Sea and the Persian Gulf. the
continuing development of ties with the United States lately seems to
have moderated Indian sensitivity to the
U.S. presence in the Arabian Sea. Any decrease in the level of U.S.
involvement in the region also
would increase pressure here from China A third factor animating Indian
interest in the Indian Ocean region is
anxiety about the threat posed by Pakistan and, more broadly, Islam in
a region that is home to much of
the world’s Muslim population. Formerly this may not have
been an
important consideration. Today,
however, Islamic civilization often finds itself at odds with theWest
and with largely Hindu India, and
this conflict frequently will play out in the Indian Ocean region .
“the growing assertion of fundamentalist militancy fueled by
jihadi fervor are factors that are likely to have a long-term impact on
the overall security environment in the
[Indian Ocean region] A fourth motive for India in the Indian Ocean is
energy. As the
fourth-largest economy (in purchasingpower- parity terms) in the world,
and one almost 70 percent dependent on
foreign oil (the figure is expected to rise to 85 percent by 2020),
India has an oil stake in the
region that is significant and growing .Some Indian security analysts
foresee energy security as
India’s primary strategic concern in the next twenty-five
years
and believe it must
place itself on a virtual wartime.
footing
to address it. India
must protect its offshore oil and gas fields, ongoing deep-sea oil
drilling projects in its vast exclusive economic zone, and an extensive
infrastructure of shore and offshore oil and gas wells, pumping
stations and telemetry posts, ports and pipeline grids, and refineries.
A d d i t i o n a l l y, Indian public and private-sector oil companies
have invested several billion dollars in recent years in oil
concessions in foreign countries, many of them in the region, including
Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, and Burma. These investments are perceived to
need military protection. “the maritime arc from the Gulf
through
the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan is the equivalent of the New
Silk Route, and . . . total trade on this arc is U.S. $1,800
billion.” In addition, large numbers of overseas Indians live
in
the region—3.5 million in the Gulf and Arab countries; they,
and
their remittances, constitute a factor in Indian security thinking. In
light of these interests, India is pursuing a variety of policies aimed
at improving its strategic situation and at ensuring that its fears in
the theater are not realized. To these ends, New Delhi is forging a web
of partnerships with certain littoral states and major external powers,
according to India’s foreign secretary, to increase Indian
influence in the region, acquire “more strategic
space” and
“strategic autonomy,”and create a safety cushion
for
itself. One observer states: “To spread its leverage, from
Iran .
. . Myanmar and Vietnam, India is mixing innovative diplomatic
cocktails that blend trade agreements, direct investment, military
exercises, aid funds, energy cooperation and
infrastructurebuilding.” 34 In addition, India is developing
more
capable naval and air forces, and it is utilizing these forces
increasingly to shape India’s strategic environment.
THE
U.S.
RELATIONSHIP
The
relationship with the
United States is intended to enhance and magnify India’s own
power, and it constitutes perhaps the most important measure that is
intended, inter alia, to promote the realization of India’s
agenda in the Indian Ocean. The United States, of course, is the key
external actor in the IO and has a more significant military presence
there—in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, Pakistan, east and
northeast Africa, Singapore, and Diego Garcia—than it did
even a
few years ago. Thus,America’s raw power in the region has
made it
imperative that New Delhi, if it is to achieve its own regional goals,
court the United States—at least for some time. The U.S.
connection, of course, also promotes Indian goals unrelated to the
Indian Ocean. This developing relationship has been abetted by common
concerns about international terrorism, religious extremism, and the
rise of China. It also is a fundamental departure from the past pattern
of Indian foreign policy. Since PresidentWilliam Clinton’s
visit
to India in 2000 (the first visit by a president in decades) and, more
recently, the realization by the GeorgeW. Bush administration of the
importance of a rising India, as well as the 11 September 2001
terrorist attack on the United States, the two nations have embarked on
a broad program of cooperation in a variety of fields, especially
security. This cooperation has included Indian naval protection of U.S.
shipping in the Malacca Strait in 2002, a close partnership in
responding to the 2004 tsunami, combined military exercises, U.S.
warship visits to
India, a dialogue on missile defense, American approval of
India’s acquisition of Israeli-built Phalcon airborne warning
and
control systems, and an offer to sell India a variety of military
hardware, including fighter aircraft and P-3 maritime patrol planes.
Indo-U.S. ties recently have advanced with particular speed. InMarch
2005, notably, an American government spokesman stated that
Washington’s “goal is to help India become a
majorworld
power in the 21st century.We understand fully the implications,
including military implications, of that statement.”35 This
declaration was followed, in June 2005, by a bilateral accord, a
ten-year “New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense
Relationship,”
that strongly implies increasing levels of cooperation in defense
trade, including coproduction of military equipment,
cooperation
on missile defense, the lifting of U.S. export controls on many
sensitive military technologies, and joint monitoring and
protection of critical sea lanes. George Bush hosted a summit with
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005, promising to strive for
full civil nuclear cooperation with India. In effect, the president
recognized India as a de facto, if not de jure, nuclear-weapon state
and placed New Delhi on the same platform as other nuclear-weapon
states. India, reciprocating, agreed to assume the same
responsibilities and practices as any other country with advanced
nuclear technology. These include separating military and civilian
nuclear reactors and placing all civilian nuclear facilities under
International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards; implementing the
Additional Protocol (which supplements the foregoing safeguards) with
respect to civilian nuclear facilities; continuing India’s
unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing; working with the United
States for the implementation of a multilateral Fissile Material
Cut-Off Treaty; placing sensitive goods and technologies under export
controls; and adhering to the Missile Technology Control Regime and to
Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines. The American and Indian delegations
also agreed to further measures to combat terrorism and deepen
bilateral economic relations through greater trade, investment, and
technology collaboration. The United States and India also signed a
Science and Technology Framework Agreement and agreed to build closer
ties in space exploration, satellite navigation, and other areas in the
commercial space arena. Notwithstanding this dramatic advance in
relations, which—assuming eventual congressional approval of
implementing legislation—establishes a very close United
States–India strategic relationship, some bilateral problems
will
persist. One is Pakistan. The U.S. administration’s policy
now is
to expand relations with both India and Pakistan but to do so along
distinct tracks and in differentiated ways, one matching their
respective geostrategic weights. From New Delhi’s
perspective,
this is a distinct advance. Nonetheless, there will remain a residual
Indian suspicion that any American efforts to assist Pakistan to become
a successful state will represent means, potential or actual, of
limiting Indian power
in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Such concerns have been
diminishing; nonetheless, New Delhi will try to weaken or modify U.S.
policies intended to strengthen United States–Pakistan ties,
including continuing plans to sell the latter a large package of
military equipment. Other lingering problems in Indo-U.S. relations
include New Delhi’s close ties to Iran, apparently continuing
Indian reservations about the large U.S. Military presence in Southwest
Asia and the Persian Gulf, India’s pronounced emphasis on
preserving its “strategic autonomy,” and a
persistent
disinclination on India’s part to ally itself with American
purposes. In the latter regard, India, like China, Russia, and the
European Union, will remain uncomfortable with a unipolar world and
will do what it can to promote amultipolar order—in which it
is
one of the poles.39 New Delhi, therefore, will need to proceed adeptly
to ensure that ties with the United States continue to develop and
expand in such a way that its own policies and ambitions in the Indian
Ocean are buttressed and advanced.
TOWARD
THE
ARABIAN SEAS AND THE AFRICAN LITTORAL
In
addition to the U.S.
relationship,New Delhi is seeking to increase India’s profile
almost omnidirectionally from India’s shores. These efforts
are
intended to advance broad economic or security interests, including the
“security” of the various
“gates” to the Indian
Ocean, and to cultivate ties with the nations adjacent to these choke
points: the Strait of Hormuz (Iran), the Bab elMandeb (Djibouti and
Eritrea), the Cape of Good Hope and the Mozambique Channel (South
Africa andMozambique), and the Singapore andMalacca straits (Singapore
and Thailand), among others. Certain Indian strategic and diplomatic
initiatives also are aimed at gaining partners or client states once
having strong ties with colonial or precolonial India..
Indo-Pakistani
relations have
improved since early 2003, when PrimeMinister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
extended a “hand of friendship” to Pakistan; in
January
2004, the two sides launched a peace process. India’s aims in
the
current diplomatic interchange are to lessen the likelihood of an
Indo-Pakistani military conflict, reduce pressure in Kashmir,
and—especially—increase India’s freedom
to pursue
great-power status and to maneuver elsewhere in South Asia, the region,
and the world. India does not expect an end, for a very long time at
best, to difficulties in its relations with Pakistan. It is hoping,
however, to manipulate the relationship in a manner that will leave
India stronger and Pakistan weaker at the end of the day. As India is
inherently the stronger party, any “closer”
relationship
between India and Pakistan will, in the long run, increase Indian
leverage with respect to Pakistan and decrease Islamabad’s
ability to disregard Indian interests. As one Indian observer recently
said, “India’s long-term interest lies in changing
Pakistan’s behavior.” The termination of support
for
anti-Indian terrorism and more restraint in Islamabad’s
embrace
of China, and eventually even the United States, are among
India’s goals. Elsewhere in the Arabian Sea, India already
has
enjoyed considerable success in wooing Iran. That state, with its
Islamic government, seems a strange partner for democratic India, but
the two lands have long influenced each other in culture, language, and
other fields, especially when the Mughals ruled India. India and Iran
also shared a border until 1947. Iran sees India as a strong partner
that will help Tehran avoid strategic isolation. In addition, economic
cooperation with New Delhi (and Beijing) dovetails with
Iran’s
own policy of shifting its oil and gas trade to the Asian region so as
to reduce its market dependence on the West. For India, the
relationship is part of a broader long-term effort, involving various
diplomatic and other measures in Afghanistan and Central Asia, to
encircle and contain Pakistan. Obviously,New Delhi also regards the
Iranian connection as helping with its own energy needs. Deepening ties
have been reflected in the growth of trade and particularly in a
January 2005 deal with the National Iranian Oil Company to import five
million tons of liquefied gas annually for twenty-five years. An Indian
company will get a 20 percent share in the development of
Iran’s
biggest onshore oil field, Yadavaran,which is operated by
China’s
state oil company, as well as 100 percent rights in the Juefeir oil
field. India and Iran also have been cooperating on the North-South
Transportation Corridor, a project to link Mumbai— via Bandar
Abbas—with Europe. There also is discussion of the
development of
a land corridor that would allow goods to move from India’s
Punjab through Pakistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan, then on to Europe.43
India and Iran also have been pursuing an ambitious project to build a
2,700-kilometer pipeline from Iran through Pakistan to India that would
allow New Delhi to import liquefied natural gas. If finalized soon, the
pipeline would be operational by 2010.44 (The United States has warned
India and Pakistan that the project could violate the Iran and Libya
Sanctions Act of 1996.). Security ties with Iran have been advancing as
well. The parties have forged an accord that gives Iran some access to
Indian military technology. There are reports—officially
denied—that it also gives India access to Iranian military
bases
in the event of war with Pakistan. Other recent developments include
the first Indo-Iranian combined naval exercises and an Indian effort to
upgrade the Iranian port of Chahbahar, a move that could foreshadow its
use eventually by the IndianNavy. This latter initiative presumably
also responds to China’s development, noted above, of a
Pakistani
port and naval base at Gwadar, a hundred miles east of Chahbahar The
Indo-Iranian relationship is not without problems. Iran, of course, has
never been happy about India’s close ties with Israel.Most
recently, Iran also was angered by a 24 September 2005 vote cast by
India in support of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
resolution that potentially refers the Iranian nuclear weapons issue to
the United Nations Security Council. The IAEA vote— passed
despite. one “no” vote and abstentions
from Russia,
China, and Pakistan, among others—follows several earlier
hostile
comments from India on the Iranian nuclear issue, including one calling
on Tehran to “honor the obligations and agreements to which
it is
a party.” The Indian vote was a blow to New Delhi’s
relations with Tehran. However, while it may augur a more circumscribed
future for this connection, it is more likely that the long-term
effects of India’s vote will be limited. The bilateral
relationship is too important for both parties, and New Delhi and
Tehran will do their best to ensure that ties remain on an even keel.
India, however, recently has tried to reduce its vulnerabilities in the
oil-rich but unstable Persian Gulf by moving beyond Iran and attempting
to cultivate a broader and more diverse set of relationships there. The
most significant recent development has been the new warmth in New
Delhi’s ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s traditional
foe in
the Gulf and India’s largest source of petroleum imports.
Reflecting the change in the temper of Indo-Saudi ties, the new Saudi
king was scheduled to be the main guest inNew Delhi at the January 2006
Republic Day celebration. This is a measure of the importance India
attaches to its developing connection to Riyadh and an initiative
undoubtedly noticed by the leadership in Iran. Moving farther westward,
another key nexus is with Israel.While formal diplomatic ties date only
from1992, the two states have had important connections at least since
the early 1980s. In recent years, numerous senior Israeli and Indian
officials have exchanged visits, and military relations have become so
close as to be tantamount to a military alliance. In 2003, following
Pakistan’s shoot-down of an “Indian”
unmanned
aircraft manufactured (and perhaps operated) by Israel, President
Pervez Musharraf complained “that the cooperation between
India
and Israel not only relates to Pakistan, but the Middle East region as
a whole.” Israel is now India’s second-largest arms
supplier after Russia, and India is Israel’s largest defense
market and second-largest Asian trading partner (after Japan).
According to one estimate, India will purchase some fifteen billion
dollars’ worth of Israeli arms over the next few years. The
two
sides recently agreed to a combined air exercise pitting Israeli F-16s
against Indian Su-30MKIs (an advanced derivative of the Soviet Su-27
Flanker). Israel possesses an Indian Ocean footprint that apparently
encompasses the Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern entrance to the Red Sea and
a key choke point, and probably points beyond.52 India’s aim
here
is to link itself with another powerful state whose sphere thus
intersects its own. At the same
time,New Delhi also seeks the advanced military equipment, training,
and other help—probably including technology and advice on
nuclear weapons and missiles—that Israel can sell or provide.
The
official publication of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs,World
Affairs, claims that India is acquiring technology from Israel for its
Agni-III missile as well as for a miniature nuclear warhead—
which India would need were it to deploy a sea-based (i.e., Indian
Ocean–based) strategic nuclear deterrent. Elsewhere in the
western Indian Ocean, India forged its first military relationship with
a Gulf state in 2002 when New Delhi and Oman agreed to hold regular
combined exercises and cooperate in training
and defense production. They also initiated a regular strategic
dialogue and, in 2003, signed a defense cooperation pact. The pact
provides for the export and import of weapons, military training, and
coordination of security-related issues. India and the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) also have signed a Framework Agreement for Economic
Cooperation and have begun negotiations on a free trade pact. New
Delhi’s connections with Oman and the five other GCC states,
however, still are relatively undeveloped. As one Indian observer noted
recently, “With our growing dependence on imported oil and
gas,
stability in this region is crucial for our welfare and well-being.
Around 3.7 million Indian
nationals live in the six GCC countries. They remit around $8 billion
annually. . . . The time has,perhaps, come for us to fashion a new and
more proactive ‘Look West’ policy to deal with the
challenges that we now face to our west.”A month earlier,
India’s commerce minister offered the same view:
“India has
successfully pursued a ‘look-east’ policy to come
closer to
countries in Southeast Asia. We must similarly come closer to our
western neighbors in the Gulf.” Farther afield,
India’s
ties with the states of Africa’s Indian Ocean coast still are
limited but are expanding. Reminiscent of India’s precolonial
relationship with coastal Africa, New Delhi’s key connections
today are with some of the states in the Horn of Africa, South
Africa,Tanzania,Mozambique, and especially the so-called African
Islands, including Mauritius and the Seychelles. In the Horn, India is
providing the force commander and the largest contingent of troops in
the UN mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea. India also just concluded
significant naval maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden, featuring drills with
allied Task Force Horn of Africa units and a port call in Djibouti. At
the other end of the continent, a noteworthy connection is developing
with South Africa, through bilateral arrangements and a trilateral
(India– Brazil–South Africa)
relationship.Developments in
the security arena are striking and were underscored in late 2004 when
the Indian Air Force conducted a combined air-defense exercise with its
South African counterpart (and with participating American, German, and
British elements)—the first combined air exercise ever
conducted
by India on the African continent. The participating Indian Mirage 2000
fighters deployed fromnorth central India and flew— with help
from newly acquired Il-78 aerial tankers—to South
Africa via
Mauritius.55 India and South Africa conducted combined naval drills off
the African coast even more recently, in June 2005. New
Delhi’s
links with the African Islands also are deepening. Since early 2003,
India has been patrolling the exclusive economic zone of Mauritius, and
it is negotiating a “comprehensive economic cooperation and
partnership” agreement with what an Indian spokesperson calls
this “gateway to the African continent.”57 In an
April 2005
state visit, the Indian prime minister also reiterated
India’s
commitment to “the defense, security and sovereignty of
Mauritius.” India also has initialed a memorandum of
understanding with the Seychelles on defense cooperation: patrols of
that nation’s territorial waters, training of Seychelles
military
personnel, and— in early 2005—Indian donation of a
patrol
vessel to help with coastal defense. India, finally, has been very
active in forging a close relationship with the Maldives, a connection
undoubtedly reinforced by India’s considerable material and
other
assistance in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami. These
island-nation initiatives were strengthened in September 2005 by the
creation of a new defense ministry office headed by a two-star admiral
charged with assisting such states. According to the Indian naval
chief, these are “vital to India” and
“friendly and
well disposed,” but their security remains fragile, and
therefore
India cannot afford to see any hostile or inimical power threaten
them.
IN
THE BAY
OF BENGAL AND “FURTHER INDIA”
Complementing
its westward
orientation, India also has been diligent in cultivating closer
relations with a variety of states in the Bay of Bengal and in
Southeast Asia, often under the aegis of New Delhi’s
“Look
East” policy. That approach, initiated in the early 1990s
against
the backdrop of a struggling Indian economy and the sudden
disappearance of the Cold War framework, has been a stunning diplomatic
success. As a consequence, India’s ties with most of the
states
of the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia, except possibly Bangladesh,
are better than they were only a few years ago. India has built a
strong relationship with its immediate neighbor to the south, Sri
Lanka. “India and Sri Lanka have forged new, close bonds.
There
is a new respect for India,” according to one Sri Lankan
observer. This “respect,” moreover, is sometimes
reflected
in reluctance in Colombo to challenge New Delhi, even on
issues,
such as the Sethusamudram Canal project, that could adversely affect
important Sri Lankan interests. The Indo–Sri Lankan
connection
was solidified most recently by disaster relief in the aftermath of the
2004 tsunami, but a string of developments had already promoted close
relations. A free trade agreement that came into force in 2000 has
doubled bilateral commerce and increased significantly
India’s
share of Sri Lanka’s trade. In addition, the two neighbors
are
moving steadily
toward a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). A defense
cooperation agreement will soon expand Indian training programs for Sri
Lankan troops, strengthen intelligence sharing, supply defense
equipment (including transport helicopters) to Colombo, and refit a Sri
Lankan warship. These states’ first combined military
exercise,
EKSATH, took place in December 2004 and involved the Indian Coast Guard
and Sri Lankan Navy. (New Delhi, however, has apparently rejected a Sri
Lankan request for combined naval patrols against the Tamil
“Sea Tigers.”) A memorandum provides for Indian
help in
reconstructing the vital Palaly airstrip on the Jaffna Peninsula in
northern Sri Lanka. Colombo has rebuffed an Indian request that the
field be reserved for use solely by Sri Lanka and India; however, taken
in conjunction with a recent maritime surveillance pact, the accord
could imply Indian utilization of that base eventually.62 New Delhi
also has agreed to build a modern highway between Trincomalee, a
Sinhalese pocket in the Tamil north and east, and Anuradhapura, in the
Sinhalese heartland. It will be named after former Indian prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed by a suicide bomber of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1991. India likely also is
contemplating the possibility of eventually using
Trincomalee’s
legendary harbor. In a quiet deal in 2002, the Lanka Indian Oil
Corporation, a wholly owned Indian government subsidiary in Sri Lanka,
was granted a thirtyfive- year lease of the China Bay tank farm
at Trincomalee as part of its plan to develop petroleum
storage
there. Also suggestive of wider Indian aims is the possible
construction of a Trincomalee offshoot of the proposed pipeline between
the southern Indian cities of Chennai and Madurai and Sri
Lanka’s
capital, Colombo. Another of India’s immediate neighbors is
Bangladesh. The relationship has long been strained by such issues as
illegal Bangladeshi migration, trade, and water use (notably New
Delhi’s “River-Linking Project”), but
some
improvement may be under way. Agreement by India and Bangladesh in
January 2005 to move forward with an “Eastern Corridor
Pipeline” to bring gas from Burmese fields through Bangladesh
to
India now appears to have been shelved. Notwithstanding this setback,
Indian prime ministerManmohan Singh visited Dhaka in conjunction with
the thirteenth summit of the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation in November 2005 and has invited
Bangladeshi prime minister Kaleda Zia to visit India. One Bangladesh
newspaper observed that “an improvement in the bilateral ties
is
seemingly an important foreign policy . . . [goal] that New Delhi
wishes to achieve. . . . If India could put confidence building
measures in place with Pakistan, its nuclear rival, we see no reason
why Bangladesh’s outstanding problems with India cannot be
put
behind.” The “Look East” policy also has
produced
gains with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). India
became a sectoral partner in 1991, a full dialogue partner in 1995, and
a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1996. In late 2004 India and
ten ASEAN countries—meeting at the tenth summit in
Vientiane—signed a historic pact for peace, progress, and
shared
prosperity. They also pledged to cooperate in fighting international
terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The
four-page accord and ninepage action plan envisage cooperation in
multilateral fora, particularly the World Trade Organization; in
addressing the challenges of economic, food,human, and energy security;
and in boosting trade, investment, tourism, culture, sports, and
people-to-people contacts. The pact commits India to creating a free
trade area by 2011 with Brunei, Indonesia,Malaysia, Thailand, and
Singapore, and by 2016 with the rest of ASEAN—the
Philippines,
Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam. Within ASEAN, India has focused
particularly on developing close ties with Burma,
Singapore, and, most recently, Thailand. Progress with Burma has been
significant since New Delhi began to engage that nation about a decade
ago, partly fromconcern about Chinese influence there. The emphasis
now, however, is not mainly defensive but reflects India’s
regional ambitions, desire to use Rangoon from which to compete with
China farther afield in Southeast Asia (including the South China Sea),
and interest in Burmese energy resources, as well as its need to
consolidate control in its own remote northeastern provinces.
Most recently, India’s position in Burma was strengthened
when
strongman Khin Nyunt, known for pro-China inclinations, was deposed in
October
2004 and placed under house arrest. Less than a week later, Than Shwe,
head of Burma’s ruling military junta, visited India and
signed
three agreements, including a “Memorandum of
Understanding
on Cooperation in the Field of Non-Traditional Security
Issues.”
The general also assured New Delhi that Burma would not permit its
territory to be used by any hostile element to harm Indian interests.
Soon thereafter, India and Burma launched coordinated military
operations against Manipuri and Naga rebels along the frontier.
Indo-Burmese ties also are advanced by both countries’
membership
in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and
Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), the first setting in which two ASEAN
members have come together with three countries in South Asia for
economic cooperation. Significantly, neither China nor Pakistan is part
of this grouping. These steps and others—resumption of arms
shipments to Burma, New Delhi’s acquisition of an equity
stake in
a natural gas field off Burma’s coast, the proposed India-
Burma
Gas Pipeline, the reopening of the Indian and Burmese consulates in
Mandalay and Kolkata, and a recent India-Burma naval
exercise—all
reflect a significant deepening in Indo-Burmese relations in recent
years. Burma ties as well into larger Indian agendas, to which eastward
transportation is vital.New Delhi is building a road—the
India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway, a portion of the projected
Asian Highway—connecting Calcutta via Burma with Bangkok.
India
also is building roads to connectMizoram with Mandalay and has extended
a fifty-six-million-dollar line of credit to Burma to modernize the
Mandalay-Rangoon railroad.65 New Delhi is likely also to carry out port
and transportation improvements at the mouth of the Kaladan River (the
Kaladan Multi-modal Transport Project) in western Burma, opening trade
opportunities with Burma and Thailand and expanding access to
India’s northeast. In addition, New Delhi has begun to study
the
feasibility of building a deep-water seaport at Dawei (Tavoy), on the
Burmese coast, possibly allowing access from the Middle East, Europe,
and Africa to East Asian markets without transiting the Malacca
Straits. Taken together, these eastward transportation plans will give
India an alternative route to theMalacca Straits subregion as well as
land access to the South China Sea. They reflect a land-sea strategy
for projecting Indian influence to the east—a
strategy
intended to counter China’s strategic ambitions in Southeast
Asia
and toward the Indian Ocean. India’s perceived need to
compete
with China in Southeast Asia, particularly in its littoral nations, has
helped produce a courtship of Singapore. It also underscores the
importance India attaches to key choke points—that it may
need to
block a Chinese move toward or into the Indian Ocean (the principal
mission of the Indian bases in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands).
Singapore is ideally situated to supplement the infrastructure in the
Andamans; facilities there could, by the same token, allow India to
project power into the South China Sea and against China. The Singapore
relationship is modest but deepening. Trade has been growing rapidly,
surging by nearly 50 percent in 2004; a Comprehensive Economic
Cooperation Agreement in June 2005 should boost trade further. In
addition, a security pact in 2003 extended an existing program of
combined naval exercises to encompass air and ground maneuvers and
initiated a high-level security dialogue and intelligence exchange.
Singapore and India held their first air exercise late in 2004 and
their first ground exercises from February to April 2005, in India.66
Notably, in February and March 2005 their annual naval maneuvers took
place for the first time in the South China Sea (vice
“Indian” waters). New Delhi also has stated
willingness—in principle—to allow the Singapore Air
Force
to use Indian ranges on an extended basis. The developing Indian
relationship with Thailand, finally, is a recent one and has been fed
by, among other factors, Bangkok’s growing concern with
Islamic
militants in Thailand’s south: “The Thais know they
are in
a difficult situation and are looking left, right and center to see who
is in the game on their side.” A team of Indian intelligence
officials visited Bangkok in November 2004; Thailand’s
National
Security Council chief reciprocated the following month. In addition,
India’s military has been coordinating closely with
Thailand’s navy and coast guard in and near the Malacca
Strait,
signing a memorandum of understanding inMay 2005. Thailand also has
been cooperating more than previously on matters related to the various
insurgencies in India’s northeast. More broadly, Bangkok
welcomes
the “rise of India,” given Thailand’s
historical
preference that no single power—not Britain or France in the
nineteenth century, and not China today—achieve hegemony in
its
neighborhood. In any case, says one Thai pundit, “Our
ancestors
taught us to enjoy noodles as well as curry dishes.”68 To
this
end,Bangkok is pursuing what it calls a “Look
West”policy,
and Thai officials have welcomed the Indian efforts to cultivate
influence—potentially at China’s
expense—in
Burma.
STRENGTHENING
AND USING INDIA’S ARMED FORCES
Supplementing
its diplomatic
and political initiatives, India is shaping its growing military
capability. These forces should be able, should the need arise, to:
keep China’s navy out of the Indian Ocean; enter the South
China
Sea and project military power directly against the Chinese homeland;
project military power elsewhere in the Indian Ocean—at key
choke
points, on vital islands, around the littoral, and along key sea
routes; and—in a presumably altered strategic
environment—pose an important potential constraint on the
ability
of the U.S.Navy to operate in the IO. At present, the overall thrust is
to get weapons to project power, especially systems with greater
lethality and reach. To this end, India
ordered $5.7 billion in weapons in 2004, overtaking China and Saudi
Arabia and becoming the developingworld’s leadingweapons
buyer.
Likewise, India stands as the developing world’s biggest
arms buyer for the eight-year period up to 2004.69 The drive
toward improved military capabilities is reflected in a variety of
ongoing developments.70 The most significant development will be a
strengthened nuclear-weapon strike capability relevant to the Indian
Ocean as a whole. While landbased missiles may yet assume significance
in this regard,New Delhi mainly is focused on equipping its navy and
air force with nuclear capabilities that could be employed in a
contingency “Military Diplomacy” Supplementing the
foregoing new weapons and military infrastructure advances, New Delhi
also will use India’s navy and air force, through
“military
diplomacy,” to advance the Indian agenda in the Indian Ocean.
India’s new Maritime Doctrine declares, “Navies are
characterized by the degree to which they can exercise presence, and
the efficacy of a navy is determined by the ability of the political
establishment of the state to harness this naval presence in the
pursuit of larger national objectives.” To this end,
“the
Indian maritime vision for the first quarter of the 21st century must
look at the arc from the PersianGulf to the Straits of
Malacca as
a legitimate area of interest.” India’s navy and
air force
were indeed utilized in this manner in response to the December 2004
tsunami, perhaps the world’s first global natural disaster.
India
was quick to extend help to Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and
Indonesia. Indian relief operations were fully under way in Sri Lanka
and theMaldives by day three of the tsunami (28 December), and the
Indian military reached Indonesia by
day four. The subsequent relief operation was the largest ever mounted
by New Delhi, involving approximately sixteen thousand troops,
thirty-two naval ships, forty-one aircraft, several
medical. teams, and a mobile hospital. Other recent instances
of
Indian military diplomacy include a continuing program of coordinated
patrols with Indonesia in theMalacca Strait, naval
surveillance
of theMauritius exclusive economic zone since mid-2003, and patrols off
the African coast in connection with two international conferences
in Maputo,Mozambique—the African Union summit in 2003 and
theWorld Economic Forumconference the next year.An IndianNavy spokesman
asserted that in these patrols the “Indian warships [were]
demonstrating the Navy’s emergence as a competent, confident,
and
operationally viable and regionally visible maritime power.”
The
Indian military also has been very active in pursuing combined
exercises with a variety of IO partners. These maneuvers underscore the
new flexibility and reach of Indian military forces. A
Chinese newspaper, for example, commented that in one two-month period
early in 2004 New Delhi conducted seven consecutive and quite effective
combined exercises: “The scale, scope, subjects and goals of
the
exercises are unprecedented and have attracted extensive concern from
the international community.” That instance was not unique;
the
Indian Navy conducted simultaneous combined exercises with Singapore in
the South China Sea and with France in the Arabian Sea in late February
and early March 2005. All this was followed immediately by a
multiservice, combined planning exercise with the United Kingdom in
Hyderabad; a naval exercise with South Africa and a port call by
warships in Vietnam in June; and the deployment of a large flotilla to
Southeast Asian waters in July. The agenda for late 2005 included naval
maneuvers with the United States in the Arabian Sea in September, with
Russia in the Bay of Bengal in October, and with France in the Gulf of
Aden in November. In addition, New Delhi partnered with Russia in a
combined air-land exercise near the Pakistan border in October, and
with the United States in November in a COPE INDIA air exercise (that
latter in a location that clearly suggests mutual strategic
concern about China). New Delhi, moreover, is expecting the advent of
combined exercises with
Japan’s navy in the Sea of Japan and the Bay of Bengal In the
not-too-distant future.
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT OF
INDIA IN THE INDIAN
OCEAN?
Over
the past few years, India
has placed itself on a path to achieve,
potentially, the regional influence in the Indian Ocean to which it has
aspired. To this end, New Delhi has
raised its profile and strengthened its position in a variety of
nations on the littoral,
especially Iran, Sri Lanka, Burma, Singapore, Thailand, and most of the
ocean’s small island
nations. India also has become a more palpable presence in key maritime
zones, particularly the Bay of Bengal
and the Andaman Sea. Of equal or greater importance, India’s
links with the most
important external actors in the Indian Ocean— the United
States,
Japan, Israel, and France— also have been
strengthened. These are significant achievements, and they derive from
India’s growing economic clout
and from a surer hand visible today in Indian diplomacy. Gaps
inevitably remain in India’s
strategic posture. New Delhi will need to strengthen further its hand
in coastal Africa and the Arabian
Peninsula. More work also will be required to upgrade still somewhat
distant relationships with Australia and
Indonesia.94 At the same time, India will need to be more skillful than
it has been in cultivating—or
“compelling”—better relations with, and
an
environment more attuned to Indian interests in, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. Further, much will depend on the performance of the Indian
economy and on India’s
ability to avoid domestic communal
discord. Another variable will be the extent to which other
states—particularly China and the United States but also
Pakistan
and others in southern Asia—are willing
or able to offer serious resistance to India’s ambitions. The
future of political Islam is another
wild card. However, barring a halt to globalization—one of
the
megatrends of the contemporary
world—the rise of India in the IO is fairly certain. That
will
have a transforming effect in the Indian Ocean basin
and eventually the world. In the region, the rise of India will play a
key role in the gradual
integration of the various lands and peoples of this basin.Whether in
the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal, this
trend—while still nascent—is.already evident. The
long-termresultwill be amore prosperous and globally more influential
region. India’s rise in the Indian Ocean also will have
important
implications for the West and China. Perhaps most significantly, New
Delhi’s ascent suggests strongly that the ongoing reordering
of
the asymmetric relationship between the West and Asia will be centered
as much in the Indian Ocean as in East Asia. It was in the IO,moreover,
that the effects of Western power first made themselves manifest in the
centuries after 1500. On one hand, it would therefore not be surprising
if it were here that the Western tide first receded. On the other,
India’s role will for a long time to come be no longer in
opposition to the United States but in cooperation with it. Moreover,
its rise will be welcomed by the United States and other
“Western
states” to the extent that it counteracts the challenge posed
by
China, the world’s other salient rising power. Seen from
Beijing,
the rise of India in the Indian Ocean will be an opportunity but, even
more, a challenge. A strong and influential India will mean
amoremultipolar world, and this is consistent with Chinese interests.
Nonetheless, as China increasingly regards India— not
Japan—as its main Asian rival, India’s rise in the
Indian
Ocean also will be disturbing. As has been the case with virtually all
great powers, an India that has consolidated power in its own region
will be tempted to exercise power farther afield, including East Asia.
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