Ministry of External Affairs Government of India

India's maritime security challenges as a part of its overall national security.

• 

  By: Amb (Retd) Yogendra Kumar
  Venue: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati
  Date: April 02, 2018
  

Salutations.

India’s national security context.Our national security context, like any other country, generates a certain dynamics which determine the policy choices our leaders are required to make to secure our way of life and to pursue national progress. Geopolitical and geo-strategic factors, their ebbs and flows conditioned by changing international environment, and the domestic circumstances combine to create this dynamics which the national leaders aim to get the better of as they work out the best policy choices for the country: and, no less importantly, this dynamics is also driven by national capacities. The Ministry of Defence’s Annual Report (2016-17) states, "the current international security environment can be categorised as one of rapid change, continued volatility and persistence of vast swathes of instability, compounded by uncertainty about the policies and approaches of major powers.”Whilst the threat of military conflict has been present since our independence, new factors have emerged which complicate the security milieu. Here, our land-based security challenges remain our constant, ever-present preoccupations even as we try to work around them in pursuit of national objectives. They also impose constraints on India’s growth and development of friendly relations with countries befitting India’s stature in world affairs.

• In our north, relations with Pakistan are hostile on account of its constant activity of cross-border terrorism, by acquisition of greater military capability, including a lower threshold for nuclear weapons in the form of tactical ones with the declared objective of using them in conventional conflict; this activity is most menacing in the state of Jammu and Kashmir where there is also a situation of domestic turbulence.
• With China, the relationship remains fraught on account of divergent geopolitical ambitions as well as the unsettled boundary question becoming a lever in the hands of the Chinese leadership to pursue its diplomatic objectives vis-a-vis India; nevertheless, there is a fairly active dialogue mechanism as well as a useful CBM mechanism for the management of tension on the border.
• India’s relations with Myanmar are friendly and warm. Yet, the lack of state capacity there translates into a degree of vulnerability for India on its eastern borders on account of the insurgent groups being active in the territory under the loose control of the central Myanmar authorities.
• The land-based volatility also increases the vulnerability of India to externally inspired Jihadi terrorism which grows on account of state sponsorship; state fragilityaggravates the conditions for terrorism and extremism to thrive. Afghanistan’s fragility as well as unsettled conditions in the Af-Pak region create environment of uncertainty about South Asia’s future direction.
• The Ministry of Defence above-mentioned report assesses the situation in India’s immediate South Asian neighbourhood as "difficult, with the overall security and political context in most neighbouring states continue to remain volatile.” The state fragility or uncertainty in the states in our immediate neighbourhood also becomes a source of all kind of criminal activities, smuggling et cetera which creates a major security challenge for India; and, it also makes the states vulnerable to external manipulation, including on the part of countries in adversarial relationship with India. Some of this fragility is evident in Myanmar. Such type of fragility –or domestic turbulence – also puts limits in terms of the growth of robust bilateral relations between India and the countries concerned.

India’s maritime security dynamics.India also has maritime neighbours in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Maldives. The related activities and developments in the domestic and external spheres of these countries also have a direct bearing on India’s security milieu. Yet, the maritime domain offers for India a major opportunity - by overcoming the land-based constraints- to sustain a higher rate of economic as well as technological growth. The significance of the maritime domain – and, hence maritime challenges – has grown especially after 1991 with the onset of globalisation and its concomitant maritime dimension: this phenomenon also coincided with the economic liberalisation in India and the opening of a new trajectory for faster economic growth and enabling a significant reworking of its external linkages. In this era of globalisation, the world trade has been growing faster than world output: maritime transport handles 78% of global trade by volume and over 70% by value. India’s seaborne trade is 90% of total by volume and 70% of value.

As a result in security terms, different aspects of the maritime domain for India have assumed salience which was not there in the earlier, pre-liberalisation phase of India’s post-Independence history. The Indian coastline is around 7570 kmswith many islands surrounding the country’s peninsular configuration. India’s maritime geographical position is both an advantage as well as the challenge. The peninsular configuration, along with the island chains of Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep and Minicoy, gives it the ‘platform’ to dominate the Indian Ocean through the projection of its naval power. The close proximity of international shipping lanes to India’s coasts attracts other powerful countries too to try to dominate and, thus, create a potential situation of confrontation with India. Since the maritime domain has assumed a major aspect in India’s endeavour for socio-economic progress, the imperative of maintaining good order at sea has become a vital necessity in terms of safety for the sea lines of communications (SLOCs), activities of navies in the waters of strategic interest to India, activities like drugs/human trafficking, movement of terrorists, and illegal,unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU fishing). India’s strategic interests, on account of its growing international role, make it pay attention to waters beyond its immediate proximity. The connected issues include developments with regard to balance of naval power, safety of movement through the oceanic chokepoints as well as the possible opening of naval bases by foreign powers.

The enhanced emphasis on maritime security entails protection and surveillance of its exclusive economic zone, its coastal waters as well as the condition of the oceans beyond the maritime zones of India in terms of the prevailing conditions, on the ecological sustainability as well as on the capacity to take stock of the resources of the ocean available for exploitation.

Apart from harnessing the potential wealth in the oceans, these ecological sustainability aspects are important for their huge security implications for India because of the threat of climate change in the form of extreme weather events, sea-level rise and resultant conditions for the littoral regions hosting large populations and industrial centres.Such ‘non-traditional’ security challenges are disruptive for the affected communities, for diminishing the institutional capacity to respond to natural disasters and, even, fordestabilising states; the latter phenomenon has an important maritime dimension because many of the failing states are on oceanic chokepoints having implications for the freedom of navigation.

As the maritime salience grows in contemporary geopolitics and geoeconomics, analysts are also paying attention to trends in technology and the nature of warfare which will shape the security environment in the foreseeable future. These trends are shaping both the ‘traditional’ as well as ‘non-traditional’ threats to the maritime order. These are stealth and deception weapons and platforms, cyber weapons, space control, precision weapons et cetera which lead to the creation of asymmetric warfare environment and the empowering of non-state actors in such conflicts. Already, there are concerns about NBC weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.

These trends make it difficult to adequately analyse developing scenarios even as the geopolitical and geo-economics shift is taking place towards Asia raising the prospect of conflict due to inadequacy of global institutions which were created in 1945 in a situation of different balance of power. Both India and China want the institutions to be modified but this success has been limited. Rather, the modification is reflecting, to an extent, the shifting balance of power rather than the big power realisationof its necessity so as to invest their functioning with greater degree of legitimacy. But, these geopolitical shifts have led to great power contestation at sea, generating various maritime flashpoints in different waters, naval rivalries and buildup and more aggressive naval war fighting doctrines. The gamut of naval modernisation includes capabilities for asymmetric warfare, amphibious warfare, pressure on chokepoints and second submarine-based nuclear strike capability.

Prevailing maritime security scenario. All of this is being accompanied by greater great power tension between China and US or between US and Russia creating conditions of instability in different regions, such as the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the northern Atlantic. India’s ambit of strategic interests is also expanding concomitant with its growing role in the regional and international affairs and, hence, its diplomatic engagements, including maritime, to monitor and, where possible, to counter negative trends from its point of view.

Indian Ocean security milieu and recent developments. The Indian Ocean remains largely placid in comparison to the adjacent waters, namely, the South China Sea and the Mediterranean. Yet, the risks of these tensions spilling over into the Indian Ocean are steadily growing, thereby, bringing into question the stability of the current, US-backed maritime system as well as the effectiveness of the prevailing governance mechanisms. The Indian Ocean also has an unstable littoral and a northern and western periphery comprising countries experiencing conflict/near-conflict situations. From India’s point of view, the growing cooperation between the Pakistani and the Chinese navies is a matter requiring serious attention; Pakistan’s declared intention to put its nuclear weapons at sea raises the prospect of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Jihadis, a prospect frighteningly brought closer home when a recent Al Qaeda attempt to capture the Pakistani naval ship PNS Zulfikaralmost succeeded.

There have been some portentous developments affecting the existing maritime system in the Indian Ocean region.The Persian Gulf is witnessing these on account of growing tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran and a stronger US approach to Iran unlike that of the previous, administration. Similarly, the conflict in Yemen is generating tension in the Horn of Africa where the various Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, and Iran are on opposing sides. One outcome of this is the growing number of naval bases being created on the Horn of Africa littoral which have a direct bearing on the safety of sea lines of communication in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, including the Suez Canal. The other negative trends are illegal human trafficking, movement of goods and weapons, movement of Jihadi terrorists as well as human and refugee movement in different parts of the Indian Ocean region reflecting the unsettled conditions in their littoral hinterlands. Yet another, potential threat to the existing maritime system and the balance of power in the Indian Ocean is the possible ‘disruptive’ entry of the Chinese navy whichcould also make the maritime system unviable. The possible Chinese intentions as regards the movement of its naval ships and submarines as well as the ‘Belt-and-Road-Initiative’ (BRI) and Maritime Silk Road (MSR) projects in different regions and their potential ‘dual’ use can be a challenge not only to India but also the US and other countries. Of particular concern is the nature of the China-Pakistan corridor, (CPEC) which can also potentially alter the balance of power in the area of the Persian Gulf apart from its impact on the balance of power in South Asia itself. The tensions on land, between different countries, can spill over onto the waters to destabilise the existing maritime system which includes the broader fraught relationship between India and China, particularly after the Doklam stand-off. The Bay of Bengal remains largely peaceful where the Indian Navy is the predominant power to keep it this way. However, with the ‘opening up’ of Myanmar and the various infrastructure projects, carrying oil and gas to China, and the special economic zones have also led to a modest naval buildup through acquisition from China by various countries such as Bangladesh and Thailand; Myanmar has also expressed interest in acquiring submarines.

Diverse governance mechanisms in the Indian Ocean.These types of maritime challenges, inevitably, draw attention to the governance mechanisms which exist currently to maintain the maritime order. In the Indian Ocean region, certainly, the challenge really is to prevent it from being overwhelmed by the growing tensions and the strategic flux in evidence today. This water body does not have an overarching security architecture although the presence of the US Navy, be it the PACOM, or CENTCOM or, even, the AFRICOM, has underpinned the existing order in the Indian Ocean. However, the focus of US strength is more in maintaining a certain strategic framework in the Persian Gulf and the northern Arabian Sea as well as the Horn of Africa region. The pan-Indian Ocean mechanism, really, is the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) which is also involved with, inter-alia, the issues of maritime security. The other organisationbringing together the navies of interested countries, especially, the littoral countries, is the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) which focuses on different aspects of developing norms for the operations to maintain a certain kind of good order. The important point to remember is that these organisations have not yet developed a sufficient degree of institutional capability to either develop the norms for use of the Indian Ocean or to enforce norms for good order at sea. In addition, the Indian Navy’s as well as the Coast Guard’s strengthening capabilities of the littoral navies and coast guards through collaborative diplomatic interaction as well as the developing of maritime domain awareness,where Indian Navy is playing an important role, are some of the efforts currently underway. At the same time, these norms need to be such that they lead to the creation of strategic trust amongst the various countries as envisaged by the Prime Minister, in his speech in Mauritius on March 12, 2015, called ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’ (SAGAR) which addresses this issue as well as the issue of integration of regional economies with emphasis on Ocean economy.

Concluding remarks.The current maritime security situation in the Indian Ocean still offers a prospect for development of credible norms to shape an open, inclusive and resilient maritime system to substitute the existing US Navy-underpinned one to cope with the existing and emergent challenges. For sure, the Malabar series of exercises, jointly held between India, US and Japan, signify convergent strategic interests between them in maintaining the existing system until further modifications to it can be achieved. The current strategic flux, which characterises the global situation today, makes it imperative that India engages in more proactive diplomacy, including naval, to realise the objectives of Prime Minister’s SAGAR vision in the interest of the people of India, the region – and, of the world at large. It is also the way out of the straitjacket of our enduring land-based security challenges.

This, in short, is the maritime security dynamics for India. There are a lot of ‘moving parts’, with their uncertainties and strategic fluidity. There are always possibilities of a ‘Black Swan’ event or events, which demand capacity building to try to stay on top of this dynamics. The complexity of coping with this dynamics requires both neutralising and cooperating with one’s adversaries at the same time or in close sequential order. Still, this activity is to be driven by a consciousness that a window of opportunity to turn this dynamics to our advantage exists – if not, for ever.