Category: Indo-Pacific

The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) during the COVID-19 Pandemic

ICSLeave a comment

Ananya Raj Kakoti, ResearchIntern, ICS

The new world order has been in the making for long, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only acted as a catalyst towards its formation. The axis of power of this world order is tilting toward the geopolitical and geo-economic construct of the Indo-Pacific. This has also led to the subsequent rise of the Indian Ocean Region within the larger geopolitical context. This region has already been dealing with several non-traditional security threats; COVID-19 further adds to this. COVID-19 has not only severely affected public health on a global level, deeming it to be a pandemic but has also put the economy of the world in turmoil along with various geopolitical disruptions and security considerations.

The last decade has seen a rise in regionalism and also a shift of the axis of global power from the West to the East, especially in the context of the Indo-Pacific region at large, and particularly the Indian Ocean Region. The pandemic has ensured that the world can witness this shift and balance of power within the region at an accelerated pace. A post-COVID world will require states to find new alliances and geopolitical alignments to secure their interests. The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is also witnessing a race among the rival powers to establish their authority amidst this chaos.

National interests and goals of the countries will be pivotal in determining the new geopolitical partnerships that the countries will get involved in the Indian Ocean Region to maximise their gains.

The lockdown led to an economic slowdown, which will force more countries to look for other sources of revenue outside their borders, leading to them being drawn into debt-traps. These traps will be used to their strategic advantages by the investing nations. The Indian Ocean island countries lack the capacity to take advantage of their maritime resources. They also have a hard time facing the threats of piracy, illegal drug-trafficking, and the flow of illegal migrants. The consequential socio-economic challenges put forth by the pandemic has highlighted the internal fissures, which can ultimately cause domestic political instability in a number of countries. Their economic vulnerability leads to increasing internal power conflicts, which are exploited by the external states, causing further fragmentation.

As the vaccine race takes its pace, Russia has already offered Sputnik V to UN employees for free, while China has extended its vaccine diplomacy to Indonesia. However, with its profess in vaccine development, India is on track to emerge as the leader in the new “vaccine diplomacy.” India is not only using this new tool as a way to gain strategic allies in its neighbourhood extending all over South Asia but also beyond its immediate border and all the way to Africa.

The lockdown has also come as a threat to the advancement of globalisation as the pandemic has forced the countries to look inward than outward to meet their needs. The interdependency because of globalisation also aided in forming alliances. With the Indian Ocean Region at the centre of geopolitical realignments, one must understand some important aspects while analysing these trends from the perspective of the geopolitical interests of the various stakeholders, comprising of island countries, regional power, revisionist power, and the hegemonic power. The realignments forced by COVID-19 has also threatened the idea of a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ in the Indian Ocean Region.

In the Western Indian Ocean, the inability to enforce the laws makes it vulnerable to drug smuggling, human trafficking, terror financing, and ease of terrorist and criminals movements both on land and at sea. This region has rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities as well. The pandemic is further adding to the misery of the countries in the Horn of Africa through its uncertainties as they are still struggling with issues such as food insecurities, humanitarian issues, ethnic conflicts, economic challenges, debts, and locust swarms. One can witness an increasing competition for establishing naval bases, especially in the post-COVID-19 world order, amplifying the concerns about securing navigation routes as it signifies an intense race among the stakeholders to control the choke points.  One can also witness the rise in tensions due to the ongoing conflicts which threaten the freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a critical passage in the global trade route in the Persian Gulf. The modernisation drive of the Pakistan Navy can disrupt the existing regional balance of power, especially because of China’s strong naval alliance with Pakistan. The Arabian Sea witnessed the Malabar Exercise, which saw the participation of India, the United States of America, Japan, and Australia, who form the ‘QUAD.’ This exercise concluded with the intent of sending a clear message to an expansionist China.

The Eastern Indian Oceansubregion is threatened by human trafficking, drug trafficking, piracy, and Jihadist militancy. The weaknesses of the littoral states around the Bay of Bengal acts as a catalyst to these problems. The region is also prone to extreme weather conditions, which further weakens the states. However, one can observe the changes in the Bay of Bengal region, as the naval capabilities of the littoral states are increasing. This proves that these states are becoming aware of the importance of their maritime zones, which can be observed in their capacity building operations to ensure the region’s security. The Bay of Bengal also witnessed the first phase of the Malabar Exercise involving the ‘QUAD’.

The reactive approach of the USA gives the impression that it is unlikely to play a significant role in shaping a new maritime system in the region. The existing national security perspective of America focuses largely on strengthening an advantageous political environment in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, along with managing the Chinese naval presence. Although China does not have an officially recognised policy on the Indian Ocean, the Chinese involvement in the Indian Ocean Region can lead to a change in the regional balance of power, disrupting the existing security architecture. India, on the other hand, has come up with SAGAR, “Security and growth for all in the region” policy, and the Shangri-La speech vision of India for the Indo-Pacific is rooted in the concept of a free, open, and inclusive maritime order. India has taken up the approach of becoming a “net security provider,” considering the Indian Ocean Region to be in its backyard and intending to keep the Indian Ocean as India’s Ocean’ as pointed out by KM Panikker. Under ‘Mission Sagar’, India has been assisting Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Comoros, Madagascar, and so on, with not only COVID-19 but also with dengue outbreaks. One can also observe increasing logistical and tactical interoperability of nations involved in the MALABAR series of exercises that facilitate enhanced situational awareness.

France is a littoral state to the Indian Ocean through its overseas territories allowing France to maintain a strong military presence in the region. Realising the importance of the construct, France announced its Indo-Pacific strategy in 2018. Although traditionally France has focused on the Western Indian Ocean, it is expanding its interest towards the Eastern front as well, while acknowledging India as a Strategic Partner in the region. For Germany, the Indian Ocean has become a “strategic and diplomatic priority” with its rising geopolitical and geo-economic significance. In November 2020, the defence minister of Germany announced their warship will patrol the Indian Ocean Region to manage China’s influence in the region.

Given the dynamic turn of events, stakeholders should move promptly to build a holistic maritime security system in the Indian Ocean. Priority should be given to strengthening maritime security and safety through capacity building and dealing with various traditional and non-traditional challenges. It is crucial to maintain stability and peace in the region, and hence, must be on the agenda of all the stakeholders involved, irrespective of their national interests. The Indian Ocean is important to India, and being located at the heart of the region, India should move beyond ‘sea denial’ to a ‘sea control’ approach and, given the present situation and opportunity, develop robust maritime diplomacy. The security dimensions in the Indian Ocean are bound to change, and it will be a deciding factor in the future of global power politics. The current world order will change, whether some like it or not, and the pace of the change has quickened surprisingly, because of a virus.

QUAD is the US “Latest Toy” to Thwart China’s Growth. But India Now More Keen to Play Along, say Chinese Experts

ICSLeave a comment

Hemant Adlakha, Honorary Fellow, ICS and Associate Professor, JNU

On 6 October, 2020, the world’s attention was focused on the rare in-person Quad foreign ministers’ meet in Tokyo. But some Chinese commentators were closely watching India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and New Delhi. Why?

                        Pompeo with Jaishankar in Tokyo                        

                        Photo: wionews.com

As was expected, not “Japan’s ‘Trump Whisperer’,” the Foreign Minister Toshitmitsu Motegi, but the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the shots in Tokyo during the Quad second ministerial talks. But some Chinese observers, as also the Chinese Foreign Ministry mandarins, had their eyes and ears set on the Indian EAM Jaishankar and on the outcome of his separate meeting with Pompeo. For as the US presidential election voting day draws closer, Pompeo’s Mission Tokyo was to use the Quadrilateral Dialogue – President Trump’s key to realizing the Indo-Pacific strategy – to remind its allies in the region to step up putting pressure on Beijing, some Chinese commentaries observed days before the curtain went up for the Quad foreign ministers’ talks. “The [Tokyo] meeting is set to be one of the highest-profile diplomatic gatherings for the Trump administration before the US presidential election, where policy toward Beijing has become a major campaign issue,” The Washington Post had stated just before the Quad meeting in Tokyo.

However, some Western strategic and security affairs critics of Trump’s foreign policy have ridiculed the President by saying he has been brandishing the term “Indo Pacific” as the US “latest toy” to checkmate a rapidly rising China. They are also quick in pointing out “Indo Pacific” is the alternative grouping Trump has found to replace his predecessor Obama’s TPP in the Asia Pacific region in which China has been excluded. While not quite subscribing to the views of the critics of “Indo Pacific” strategy, at least one Chinese analyst perceives “Indo Pacific” to be a “brilliant concept but difficult to implement.”

Interestingly, in Beijing’s view, India’s recent change in stance on QUAD from being a “geographical concept” to “good mechanism” in Asia Pacific has provided enough dynamism to the US “Indo Pacific” concept to revive up its China containment policy. Quite in tune with what at least some scholars in China have been telling us, a US commentator recently wrote of both Indo Pacific concept and Quad security dialogue: “QUAD was served up to spice up (the Indo Pacific) alphabet soup, as a new strategy to slow, if not thwart, China’s rise as the predominant economic powerhouse in Asia Pacific.”

For example, Zhang Jie, a senior researcher at the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing strongly believes the transition from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” is a prominent feature of Quadrilateral Security Mechanism dialogue. This trend highlights the importance of the Indian Ocean, the increasing connection between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and the increasing weight of India in the world, Zhang recently observed in his widely read article in Guangming Daily – China’s most influential newspaper among the urban intelligentsia.

This explains, in spite of the fact that Pompeo had told reporters before leaving for Tokyo the outcome of the talks will not be made public until after he gets a nod from the POTUS on his return to Washington, why China’s strategic affairs community was closely watching the Indian EAM Dr. Jaishankar’s tête-à-tête with Pompeo during the QUAD Tokyo Forum. Primarily due to India making a significant shift during past six months from what Prime Minister Modi had asserted at the Shangri La Security Dialogue in 2018 that “Indo-Pacific is not a strategy or a club of limited members” to New Delhi’s reticence today on the militarization of Quad.

Highlighting the fact, an Indian national English language daily, The Hindu in its editorial on the eve of the Tokyo talks cited the country’s powerful Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) – believed to be close to PM Modi – as having stated “India believes the Quad would be a good mechanism to ensure Freedom of Navigation Operations in the Indian Ocean and surrounding oceans including the Indo Pacific.”

“Quad” – Background and Past Trajectory

While a handful of commentators first explained the origin of the US, Japan, India and Australia quadrilateral grouping at the initiative of Prime Minister Abe at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila in May 2007, when Abe advocated the “Broader East Asia” or “Greater Asia” concept. They also pointed out the US multilateral security interaction was launched following a series of bilateral and trilateral meetings between and among the present-day Quad four countries. But due to several uncertainties then prevailing both in some of the Quad countries and also in the world, the “Greater Asia” concept along with the US, Japan, India and Australia security grouping – also dubbed by some in Beijing as the “Asian NATO,” failed to see the light of day.

In the words of widely respected Professor Zhang Li of Academy of Ocean of China (AOC), some key factors which led to premature death of the so-called Quad or the Asian NATO were, namely Abe’s sudden resignation on health grounds, the refusal of the then newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the Labour Party to join any multilateral grouping targeting China and the impending global financial crisis. Besides, Zhang Li also attributes full credit to the “alert” Chinese diplomacy in sounding death knell for the quadrilateral security grouping when Rudd visited Beijing soon after he assumed the post of Australian Prime Minister in late 2007 and unilaterally declared withdrawal of Australia from the quadrilateral security dialogue.

From Quad to Quad 2.0 – India a Key Factor since 2006

Irrespective of whatever happened to the fate of Quad 1.0 and contrary to what is generally believed both in India and among strategic affairs community in the US, Japan and Australia, Beijing has been closely monitoring India’s growing importance in quadrilateral security dialogue for over a decade and a half now. According to Professor Cu Caiyun of Institute of Asia Pacific and Global Strategic Research at the Beijing’s prestigious China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), with the rapid and powerful rise of China since the unfolding of the 21st century, the US, Japan, India and Australia have drawn closer to each other.

“Held together by the outdated Cold War mentality of yesteryears, the four nations have been sticking together under the so-called bogey of common values and have formed groupings such as Democratic Alliance or a quasi-alliance with a singular aim to carry out their China containment design,” Professor Caiyun recently wrote in a widely influential research paper. Interestingly, Caiyun’s paper, entitled “A Rising China and Formation of Four Nation Democratic Alliance comprising of the US, Japan, Australia and India” was not published in the CASS journal, but it appeared in the flagship bimonthly Global Review of the Shanghai Institute of International Studies (SIIS) – both SIIS and GR enjoy a good rapport with the central authorities in Beijing.

Quad 2.0 – “Beggar’s Club” and Empty Rhetoric

Dismissive of President Trump’s initial desperate efforts to revive Quadrilateral Security Mechanism three years ago, scholars in China had called Trump’s “anti-China” move as “a meeting of four poor beggars” in the Indo-Pacific region. Long Kaifeng, a former PLA navy senior officer who now writes syndicated columns on military affairs, points out several inherent contradictions in Quad’s conceptual framework. First, the “negative” premise on which the concept is conceived, that is to treat China as an antithesis or an imaginary enemy. Second, the US alone does not have the wherewithal to carry out its China containment policy. This is because within Quad, it is only the US which thinks it is in its national interest to implement China containment policy. Third, closely linked to the second factor above, it is true that Japan, Australia and India (notwithstanding ongoing border tension between India and China), given their respective economic compulsions, are least willing to or prepared for directly confronting China.

Perhaps aware of what China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Japan’s national broadcaster NHK last week (the NHK reported a possibility that Wang Yi may also visit Tokyo this month): Quad is a “headline-grabbing idea,” Professor Wang Zheng of Dr. Sun Yat-sen University in Canton, unlike most other Chinese analysts, scornfully dismissed the Quad grouping as “empty rhetoric.” With sarcasm in tone, Wang Zheng recently wrote: “Let the four countries first come up with their top leaders’ summit meeting or set up an institutional arrangement.”      

Finally, scholars in China are confident that in the post COVID world, the continuing decline of the United States – both economically and as the world’s dominant power – is inexorable. Hence, Beijing is in no doubt, Washington’s China containment policy is in need of New Wine in a New Bottle. Meanwhile, the Indian EAM Jaishankar’s remarks after the Quad talks in Tokyo that “it’s a matter of satisfaction that Indo-Pacific concept has gained increasingly wider acceptance” might have only further strengthened what the Chinese scholars have maintained all these years. Therefore, Beijing was least amused in what was one of India’s several “independent” TV news channels’ lead headlines hours before the Tokyo talks: “Quad FMs Meet in Tokyo as India Looks to Unite Allies against Aggressive China.” Undeterred, Beijing continues to closely watch which way Quad headwinds will be blowing in the Indian capital!

Originally published as Is QUAD the US “Latest Toy” to Thwart China’s Growth? by Nepal Institute of International Cooperation and Engagement (NIICE), Kathmandu on 6 October, 2020.