A“FREE AND OPEN INDO-PACIFIC”,
intended to encompass both the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, is the
hottest geopolitical slogan. Yet when strategists talk about the
Indo-Pacific they often mean just the Pacific, and then only the
far-western part, around the South China Sea and the East China Sea. It
is there that a struggle for primacy is at its fiercest between America,
dominant since the second world war, and a resurgent China. Yet the
Indian Ocean, relatively neglected until recently, is now having a
moment.
The economic dynamism of its
rim and great importance of the ocean as a hub for trade in goods and
energy has long been recognised. Now its strategic significance is
catching up. No single power holds sway in the ocean, and perhaps never
will. Yet China is making inroads into its waters and other navies also
jostle there for influence. A new oceanic era shaped by great-power
rivalry has begun. Smaller Indian Ocean countries wonder whether they
will be victims of it, or beneficiaries.
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The
Indian Ocean stretches from the southern tip of Africa to the Malacca
Strait between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia; and from the Persian
Gulf to far south-western Australia: over 80 degrees of latitude and 100
degrees of longitude (see map). It encompasses three-dozen continental
and island states accounting for 12% of world gDP. Around
its rim live more than 2.6bn people, in countries with a dizzying array
of topographies, cultures and economies. On its waters are islands such
as the Maldives at the cross-roads of strategic shipping routes. Though
tiny, they have exclusive rights to huge expanses of ocean.
Signs
of sharpening rivalry are everywhere. The navies of America, Australia,
Britain, France, India, Japan and Singapore have all patrolled in the
Indian Ocean this year. In March the navies of China, Iran and Russia
exercised there together. America, Australia and Britain
recently announced more details of a plan to base next-generation
nuclear-powered submarines in Western Australia. Last month Japan’s
prime minister, Kishida Fumio, travelled to India
to promise $75bn of investment across the Indo-Pacific. Also in India
there is wild speculation about a Chinese radar installation in nearby
Sri Lanka and a Chinese listening post on Myanmar’s Cocos Islands. Fear
of China is pushing India into a closer relationship with America.
The
transport across the Indian Ocean of oil and gas from the Middle East
is vital for the vibrant economies of East and South-East Asia. Most of
these shipments pass through at least one of three geographic choke
points. The first is the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow exit from the
Persian Gulf through which two-fifths of the world’s traded oil passes.
Another, the Bab-al-Mandab strait, lies between the Horn of Africa and
the Arabian peninsula, with Eritrea and Djibouti on one side and Yemen
on the other. It is the gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez canal. The
third area of acute concern is the Malacca Strait, the main shipping
channel between the Indian Ocean and Pacific. Just 1.7 miles (2.7km)
wide at its narrowest point at Singapore, it sees a fifth of global
maritime trade.
Any malign force
capable of throttling the choke points and other crucial entrances to
the Indian Ocean would cause immense harm. And Bab-al-Mandab and the
Strait of Hormuz are both potentially vulnerable. The Horn of Africa is
notorious for piracy and Islamist militancy. The threats to shipping are
high. As for the narrow Strait of Hormuz,
in recent years a hostile Iran has seized or attacked merchant vessels
and threatened to close the strait. The Iranian navy is converting two
merchant vessels into carriers for kamikaze drones.
Notwithstanding
its relatively lavish security, the Malacca Strait has the highest
incidence of piracy in the world. In the event of a regional conflict,
control of the strait would assume huge importance. With four-fifths of
its oil passing through it, China has for years obsessed over how easily
a hostile power such as America could close the strait and so cripple
the Chinese economy.
In this context,
states with the naval capability to ensure that choke points and
channels remain open not only protect their own legitimate interests but
provide a global good. These countries are today’s Indian Ocean powers.
And there are proliferating consequences to their growing naval
presence. Reconnaissance missions around choke points and other
vulnerable places increase awareness of what is on the water and under
it—including the submarines of potential adversaries. As a result,
strategic rivalries among naval states can sharpen even in peacetime,
while maintaining open sea-lanes is a shared naval objective. That is
happening now.
The Indian Ocean’s
Western, former colonial powers have been around longest. The tropical
island of Réunion remains an overseas department of France, which also
owns remote islands in the Mozambique Channel. They make France an
Indian Ocean power with interests to defend. Britain makes much of its
regular Indian Ocean deployments, including a new aircraft-carrier. Its
ships join French ones on patrols and exercises.
Having
neglected the waters of the Indian Ocean for years, the American navy
is now upping its presence. It has increased “freedom of navigation
exercises” in the region. It conducts additional exercises there with,
among others, Australia, India and Japan, fellow members of the “Quad”
security grouping intended to counter Chinese power
in the Indo-Pacific. America’s navy intends to resurrect its First
Fleet, which was disbanded half a century ago, and base it in the Indian
Ocean.
Although India sees its chief
threats, Pakistan and China, as mainly land-based, it has the strongest
naval presence in the northern part of the Indian Ocean. It has
increased naval co-operation with America because of concerns about
China’s growing clout in the region. It is also striving to fix many
gaps in its naval capacity.
Australia
has been an Indian Ocean power at least since it opened a submarine base
in Fremantle during the second world war. Its presence is about to get a
huge boost from AUKUS, a defence-technology pact between
America, Australia and Britain that will see next-generation
nuclear-powered submarines based near the same port-city. AUKUS
is meant to counter Chinese military expansion in the Indian Ocean as
well as the Pacific. Singapore, despite being a small city-state, packs a
naval punch, too. In tiny Djibouti no fewer than eight outside powers
maintain naval bases, above all America, France, Japan and, since 2017,
China.
China is the new kid on the
Indian Ocean block, with Djibouti its first ever overseas military base.
China’s naval capabilities have grown fast. Gordon Flake of the Perth
USAsia Centre, a think-tank, says it came as a shock to Australia when
in 2014 a self-sustaining Chinese naval force appeared in the southern
Indian Ocean to help search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight
370. China’s navy has since become the largest in the world by vessel
numbers. In Beijing, a debate about establishing an Indian Ocean fleet
is under way.
China wants more and more
distant bases for support and resupply. Yet, Djibouti aside, it has
been slow to secure them. Persistent rumours that the Chinese navy is
establishing bases in Hambantota port in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in
Pakistan have not been substantiated. China’s plans for a commercial
port at Bagamoyo in Tanzania are sparking speculation about a naval base
there, too. According to Kate O’Shaughnessy, a former Australian high
commissioner to Mauritius, “It is in really out-of-the-way places where
China is playing a long game in building up its core infrastructure and
access to the Indian Ocean.”
The
smaller countries of the Indian Ocean view renewed interest by stronger
powers with both satisfaction and alarm. On the one hand, they suffer
more than anyone from the instability caused by rogue-state or non-state
actors (such as pirates, Islamists and drug smugglers) and so welcome
naval patrols. Growing strategic rivalry is also to their advantage when
countries woo them with development goodies, such as infrastructure
projects.
But, as Darshana Baruah of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank in
Washington, points out, small states fear being suborned by big ones for
use in projecting power—as happened during the cold war. Strategic
rivalry between an American-led camp and China, if it does not take into
account the interests of small countries, would be disastrous, says
Abdulla Shahid, foreign minister of the Maldives. “That would seriously
undermine our security and our prospects.”
Conceivably,
rivalry between the West and China could badly complicate smaller
countries’ relationships with both camps, especially if big powers
ignore the fundamentally different security priorities of smaller
countries. They care much less about military competition than about
climate change; illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU)
fishing; plastics pollution; and oil spills threatening tourism. In an
era of great-power rivalry, small states, Mr Shahid concludes, must
avoid being tied down. That will mean doing business with China even if
America and its allies disapprove.
There
are plenty of things Western powers—and India—can do to counter China’s
advances in the Indian Ocean besides deploying hard naval power. Most
involve recognising small countries’ distinct security priorities. On
climate, rich countries have promised cash and other help in adapting to
rising seas and more extreme weather. But most small states have yet to
see it. Helping small-island (but large-ocean) states protect their
fisheries from the IUU scourge, including by Chinese
vessels, would be another easy win. Relatively small steps by big
countries can be big wins for small ones.
The
ever increasing rivalry in the Indian Ocean does not preclude
surprising areas of partnership. The navies of America and China
co-operate in patrolling sea lines of communication off the Horn of
Africa, for example. Still, the regional security dynamic is growing
more complex, multilayered and prone to miscalculations. That is the
Indian Ocean’s fast emerging new reality. ■