Abhijit Singh

Earlier this week, amid much media attention, the Indian Navy and the U.S. Navy completed Exercise Malabar, an annual joint maritime interaction in the Bay of Bengal. As U.S. and Indian warships returned to harbor after carrying out complex naval drills at sea, the excitement in Indian strategic circles was palpable. This year's exercises were seen as an improvement from previous years'—in part due to the perceived emphasis on combat operations, but also because of the presence of the Japanese navy, which took part in an Indian Ocean iteration of Malabar for the first time in eight years. Washington's bid to raise the level of its participation by deploying an aircraft carrier and a nuclear attack submarine was matched by New Delhi, which fielded a Kilo-class submarine and long-range patrol aircraft, suggesting a possible focus on antisubmarine warfare during the exercises. The participants also conducted a series of benign exchanges—medical drills and casualty-rescue operations—to achieve greater integration on the lower end of the operational spectrum.

The raised profile of the exercises provides a valuable opportunity to reflect on the strategic fundamentals of the India-U.S. maritime partnership. The past few months have been a particularly rewarding time for bilateral naval relations. With the scope of Malabar 2015 being expanded to include high-end assets and exercises, the inking of an expansive ten-year defense framework, and a significant rise in nautical exchanges, India has strengthened its military maritime cooperation with the United States. In particular, Washington's proposal for joint development of India's next-generation aircraft carrier—especially the transfer of electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) technology—has affirmed the growing presence of strategic trust in the maritime relationship.

Developments in the geopolitical realm have been similarly encouraging. Following President Barack Obama's visit to New Delhi earlier this year and the announcement of the "Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region," India and the United States have coordinated their security approaches in the Asian commons. The appeal in the vision document to "all involved parties" in the South China Sea to avoid "use of force and pursue resolution of territorial and maritime disputes through peaceful and legal means" illustrates a mutual willingness to publicly recognize coercive threats in the Western Pacific.

Securing the Asian Commons

Not surprisingly, the United States has displayed a greater keenness to involve India in its wider project of securing the Asian commons. A few weeks ago, in an event at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, Richard Verma, the U.S. ambassador to India, underlined the importance of "protecting shared spaces." Acknowledging India's admirable contribution to a rules-based international order, he stressed the need for New Delhi to play a stronger role in preserving assured access in the regional commons. Protecting shared spaces, he suggested, would require India to make the transition from a "balancing power" to a "leading power," for which New Delhi must start "looking outwards."

The U.S. ambassador may have put it tactfully, but there is no denying a sense of wariness among maritime observers over India's continuing ambivalence toward strategic security in the nautical commons. Some U.S. analysts believe that New Delhi's persistent indecisiveness about assisting the United States in preserving the power balance in Asia is a key contributor to the perceived stasis in the maritime relationship. This interpretation is instructive because it also highlights a critical issue in the India-U.S. maritime partnership: a divergence of opinion on the strategic objectives governing joint maritime operations has resulted in a dissimilar assessment of operational imperatives in the wider Asian commons and a perception that both sides remain reluctant collaborators in areas deemed politically contentious. As a corollary, skeptics say that despite a smooth working relationship at sea, the U.S. and Indian navies have failed to leverage their combined strengths in securing the Asian commons.

Key Divergences

To understand the principal sources of disagreement in the U.S.-India maritime relationship, one must appreciate the essential nature of their strategic interaction. In an August 2014 essay in the CSIS PacNet newsletter, Sourabh Gupta, a U.S.-based defense consultant and commentator, delivered a scathing critique of the U.S.-India strategic partnership, describing it as one of the most underperforming political arrangements in the world. Gupta criticized the lazy assumption that the passing of Cold War tensions and India's economic rise would pave the way toward a convergence of U.S. and Indian national interests, founded on common democratic values and the influence of the Indian expatriate community in the United States. Shared goals would include counterterrorism, democracy-building, counteracting Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific, and safeguarding the global commons. Sadly, Gupta pointed out that in none of these areas had any substantive progress been made.

Gupta reserved special criticism for the India-U.S. maritime relationship, which he suggested was the most overrated element of the bilateral relationship. Having delivered on the civil nuclear agreement, Washington expected India to make good on a number of fronts in the nautical domain. Key among these was the expectation that India would join the democracies of the Indo-Pacific in balancing Chinese power. U.S. policymakers believed New Delhi had tacitly agreed to keep alive the possibility of “interdicting Chinese sea-bound commerce in the narrow Andaman Sea during an East Asian contingency.” Washington was even hopeful that the Indian Navy would join U.S.-led taskforces in cooperative maritime missions—with or without a UN mandate—on both sides of the Indian Ocean. Most importantly, the United States expected India to provide strategic access to U.S. military forces across its territory to deter or manage contingencies in West and East Asia. Gupta claimed that many years down the line—and after much rhetoric about a dramatic convergence of values and interests—India had failed to live up to its potential as a useful strategic partner of the United States.

From an Indian perspective, the essay was revealing of U.S. misgivings about the bilateral relationship, which many U.S. analysts and policymakers clearly believe has not been truly consummated. “Far from growing into its designated role as America's deputy sheriff in the Indian Ocean region and a possible co-partner across the Indo-Pacific region,” Gupta observed, New Delhi has “double downed on its autonomist leanings”:

[India has] resisted participating in major multi-service combined exercises and high-end operational missions, stayed away from stationing personnel at U.S. combatant command headquarters, turned down a series of foundational pacts that would have enhanced logistics and battle-group networking, opted for Russian rather than U.S. high-precision, military-grade navigation signals, opted to strip out tactical interoperability aids while purchasing U.S.-origin platforms (P8I and C-130J aircraft), and even allegedly passed up the opportunity to buy a to-be decommissioned super-carrier—the USSKitty Hawk.

Whatever the merits of these arguments, they validated long-held suspicions in Indian strategic circles that the principal source of disagreement in the India-U.S. maritime relationship was India's failure to deliver on “theater access” and “military commerce”—areas that cut to the core of U.S. defense policy and statecraft. Plainly put, while India had not undermined the United States' larger cause, it had not advanced U.S. strategic and commercial interests in any significant way.

The skeptics of the India-U.S. defense relationship in New Delhi are convinced that Washington's security approach in the Indian Ocean remains an offshore balancing policy that requires India to partner with the United States in a loose alliance of democratic powers that is meant specifically to underwrite U.S. objectives in Asia. However, while the United States needs India to notionally balance China, Indian cynics claim, it would prefer New Delhi do so without resorting to hard-power measures. Such an approach has two implications: one, it results in an ipso facto suspension of India's strategic autonomy by encouraging security measures that support U.S. foreign policy objectives; and, two, it allows the United States to benefit from Indian security efforts without placing an obligation on Washington to substantively boost Indian combat capability.

The doubters in New Delhi show little empathy for the constraints U.S. policymakers face in planning maritime missions in the Indian Ocean. As an American security analyst put it, Indian observers rarely appreciate that U.S. force deployments in the region depend entirely on the “demand signal” generated by an evolving crisis. In the U.S. system, regional commanders must justify force requests by providing credible scenarios that generate a need for forces—for example, to deter use of force against Taiwan or to prevent the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. From a U.S. vantage point, the trigger for deploying additional naval forces in the eastern Indian Ocean is too weak to merit an urgent response. With Somali piracy in steady decline, the only area in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) that might require additional high-end U.S. naval forces is the Strait of Hormuz. However, senior U.S. commanders feel that is a task the U.S. military is capable of taking care of using existing resources in the IOR.

Oddly, the issue that most divides New Delhi and Washington is also a subject on which both sides seem to have a remarkable degree of consensus: Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean. While Indian and American observers agree on the inevitability of China's rise in the Indian Ocean, they differ in their appreciation of the future trajectory of Chinese naval operations in India's maritime neighborhood. For Indian analysts and policymakers, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's activities in the northwestern Indian Ocean raise the worrisome prospect of a strategic “takeover” of India's geopolitical space. The growing scope and intensity of PLA submarine operations in South Asian littorals, Indian observers point out, is a contingency that deserves focused political attention and a considered maritime response—including the possibility of greater Indian and U.S. naval presence in the IOR. More importantly, they expect more assistance from Washington in building up India's maritime combat strength, particularly undersea interdiction capability.

U.S. analysts, however, do not seem to share the dire assessments of their Indian counterparts. While American observers do not deny China's growing maritime clout in the IOR, they point to the lack of a formal logistics network as a limiting factor for the PLA Navy's Indian Ocean operations. With no Chinese supply bases in the region, they see Indian projections of Beijing's strategic domination of the Indian Ocean as being significantly overblown.

From a U.S. standpoint, the real threat to regional peace is China's maritime aggressiveness in the Pacific Ocean. American thinkers see the rebalance to Asia as a turn to the Pacific, where China must be dealt with through a strategy of sustained counterpressure. While the United States does not expect India to join its maritime coalition in the Western Pacific, it does need the Indian Navy to subtly balance growing Chinese influence in the IOR. Consequently, Washington's security posture in the Pacific seems more robust than its maritime policy in the Indian Ocean, where U.S. policymakers feel that the tyranny of distance effectively precludes the establishment of any permanent Chinese military presence—at least in the foreseeable future.

The more material disagreement between New Delhi and Washington on the maritime front is the latter's insistence on certain foundational agreements as a prerequisite for greater strategic exchanges, especially in the transfer of high-end defense technology. As earlier stated, Washington continues to harp on the centrality of three defense pacts to actualize the strategic partnership: the Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Intelligence. The United States does not view these agreements as either infringing on India's sovereignty or providing U.S. military assets undue access to Indian maritime facilities. As in the past, many Indian analysts vehemently disagree. Not only do these pacts violate Indian autonomy and sovereign control over defense equipment, opponents claim, but they also limit Indian benefits to a small fraction of U.S. gains. In fact, skeptics portray any concessions that New Delhi might consider making as a betrayal of Indian interests.

From a U.S. perspective, India's suspicion of the foundational pacts is entirely misplaced. The real issue, American analysts point out , is that many of the United States' most capable military platforms contain subsystems of a classified nature, which cannot be transferred without a basic agreement outlining the terms and conditions of their usage. While it is true, these analysts maintain, that Washington is unwilling to jeopardize its comparative advantages in the defense industry—specifically in regard to cutting-edge technology—the United States remains serious about helping India with middle-spectrum critical expertise. However, with New Delhi still unwilling to sign the CISMOA—an agreement that applies expressly to the maritime domain—any possibility of an exchange of classified information and sensitive technologies between India and the United States is effectively forestalled. Similarly, India's steadfast belief that it is unlikely to ever directly avail of the LSA's benefits is self-defeating, as it restricts the Indian Navy's logistical options in the Indo-Pacific theater.

Advancing the Maritime Relationship

This then makes the maritime relationship even more complex. Because the United States can neither use Indian strategic bases nor facilitate the use of high-grade U.S. defense technology by India, it cannot logically rely on the latter for its security goals. Yet the United States does need the Indian Navy to assist in preserving strategic access in the wider-Asian littorals. In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, the United States is facing a crisis of resources and budgets and is seeking innovative solutions to long-standing security challenges at sea. Its emphasis on strengthening maritime partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region is aimed at a pooling of strengths and capabilities to more effectively police critical strategic spaces.

Beyond securing access in maritime Asia, however, the United States also needs New Delhi to strategically unify the southern Indian Ocean littorals through a program of robust maritime diplomatic engagement with smaller Indian Ocean states. If India can develop a strong set of nautical relationships with its neighbors it could then take the burden off the U.S. Navy in key areas of constabulary and benign security—tasks such as survey, salvage, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance, which the United States prefers to outsource to the Indian Ocean's indigenous powers.

Despite the existing wrinkles in strategic coordination, therefore, both India and the United States remain committed to the maritime relationship. A majority of Indian and U.S. policymakers today support a close working relationship at sea and greater harmonization of operational missions in the Indian Ocean. Not just at an intergovernmental level, but even among the thinking elite, there is better appreciation of each other's strategic motivations in maritime spaces and a growing willingness to accommodate individual security concerns. Encouraged by India's efforts to expand its situational awareness in the Indian Ocean, Washington has not pushed New Delhi to take greater security initiatives in the Western Pacific. For its part, the latter has heeded U.S. counsel of assuming a leadership role in the eastern Indian Ocean by upping its security involvement and investing heavily in an area-wide domain awareness plan in the subcontinental littorals.

India is also playing a greater role in integrating its maritime neighborhood. By offering assistance to smaller Indian Ocean island states in setting up coastal radar and automatic identification systems chains—aimed ultimately at establishing a regional maritime surveillance network—India is gradually assuming a key facilitating role in the Indian Ocean. Bolstering its maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and antisubmarine warfare capabilities in the South Asian littorals, the Indian Navy has been expanding its own air-surveillance effort, pushing for the delivery of four additional P-8I aircraft from the United States.

Meanwhile, there has been considerable forward movement on the issue of collaborative security operations in the Indian Ocean. With the initiation of a process to formalize Malabar into a trilateral exercise, India appears more willing than earlier to balance China's military rise in the IOR. More importantly, New Delhi is increasingly comfortable playing a part in formal collaboration networks, even though it is still reluctant to consider a revival of a maritime “quadrilateral.”

Not surprisingly, India's maritime exercises with the United States have seen low-end naval drills (e.g., search and rescue and constabulary duties) being replaced by higher-spectrum combat exercises (e.g., antisubmarine, anti-surface, and air defense). While differences still exist in a few critical areas, the bilateral maritime relationship seems to be approaching a critical mass of strategic interactions. It is no coincidence that since President Obama's January visit to New Delhi, maritime security has topped the agenda in every high-level summit involving the United States and India. In the first-ever India-Japan-U.S. trilateral ministerial meeting in New York last month, freedom of navigation, commercial access, and peaceful settlement of maritime disputes were again prime items of discussion.

The recent momentum in political relations has generated new optimism for the India-U.S. defense relationship. With the transformative Defense Technology and Trade Initiative in place, there is renewed hope that India might be willing to accept the United States' foundational pacts. The Pentagon has already submitted revised drafts of the CISMOA and the LSA for New Delhi's consideration. With U.S. defense secretary Ashton Carter personally invested in expanding bilateral military ties, many in India are hoping the new submissions will be more imaginative than earlier proposals.

Importantly, the United States is demonstrating patience and a strategic empathy that had eluded the bilateral relationship earlier. U.S. policymakers have been displaying greater sensitivity for India's strategic DNA, recognizing New Delhi's fiercely independent streak that forbids it from entering into a formal alliance. While continuing to seek a more comprehensive partnership with India, the United States is more conscious of the limits of strategic maritime cooperation. Indian analysts are also not shy of admitting Washington's important role in New Delhi's putative reorientation to adapt to the new realities of Asia. Unlike in the past, New Delhi is prepared to play a more active part in preserving the balance of maritime power in the Indo-Pacific littoral, which is why many in India openly acknowledge the growing strategic synergies between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Act East policy and the U.S. rebalance to Asia.

Despite irritants, then, the India-U.S. maritime partnership remains on an upward trajectory. This has been a few years in the making, but the broad convergence of values and interests between India and the United States has coalesced into a strong consensus on strategic principles. Now more than ever, there is a sense of common purpose and shared destiny in the Asian commons. The leading maritime power in South Asia and the preeminent power in the Indian Ocean have moved to forge a maritime pact to protect themselves from the high winds gathering in the east.

The views expressed are those of the author.

This article was originally published in The National Bureau of Asian Research

• Published: 22 October, 2015

The fractious nature of maritime relations in the Asia-Pacific region is a recognisable feature of international geopolitics today. Following China’s massive reclamation and ‘island-building’ project in the South China Sea recently, many Pacific states have moved to bolster their maritime postures. While Japan has sought legislative amendments to liberate its maritime posture from post-war passivism, Vietnam and the Philippines have been building stronger navies aimed at countering China’s hostile moves in the South China Sea.

• Published: October 2015
• Journal of Defence Studies

Nothing conveys strategic intent as effectively as the large conventional warship whose mere presence can provide a decisive psychological advantage in strategic scenarios.

• Published: October 09, 2015
• IDSA Comments

India’s maritime diplomacy is most often associated with its naval outreach to East Asia. With an increase in naval ship visits to South East Asia in recent years, and attendant media speculation over New Delhi’s supposed Pacific ambitions, the impression has been created that East Asia remains the ultimate destination of the Indian Navy’s diplomatic endeavours. By contrast, New Delhi’s nautical diplomacy in the Indian Ocean has seemed relatively modest. Despite its considerable contribution to sea-lanes security and counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, in the popular imagination, the Indian Navy’s security efforts in the Indian Ocean region have remained confined to the level of constabulary and benign presence.

Developments in the past few months, however, have shown that India’s attention remains squarely focused on the Indian Ocean. Since February this year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Mauritius, making it clear the Indian Ocean littorals remained India’s top priority, New Delhi has actively nurtured relationships with its maritime neighbours. Having improved the texture of its diplomatic ties, India has also sought to undertake joint developmental projects and strengthen a maritime security trilateral with Sri Lanka and Maldives through the inclusion of Seychelles.

New Delhi’s maritime diplomatic efforts haven’t remained limited to the cultivation of political relationships. In April this year, the Indian Navy scored one of its biggest diplomatic successes when it evacuated over 4000 Indians and 900 foreign nationals from war?torn Yemen. Operation Rahat was seen as a credible illustration of the India’s maritime peacekeeping and benign potential, more so because it was conducted amid an active conflict, amidst an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

The most significant dimension of India’s Indian Ocean diplomacy, however, has been the outreach to Arab Gulf states, where the Indian Navy has embarked on program of sustained capacity building and security collaboration. Earlier this month, four Indian Naval ships – Trishul, Tabar, Deepak and Delhi – departed on a month-long deployment to the Arabian Gulf. After a three-day stopover at Dubai (UAE) the ships branched out into two groups. INS Delhi and INS Trishul proceeded to Al-Jubail (Saudi Arabia) and Doha (Qatar) where they engaged in coordinated drills with host navies. Meanwhile, INS Tabar and INS Deepak reached Doha after a brief visit to Kuwait, whereupon the combined contingent of four ships proceeded to Muscat for a final stop-over before returning to Mumbai.

It is a little known fact that the Indian Navy’s Western outreach predates its diplomatic turn to the East. Since 2008, the Indian Navy has been partnering regional maritime forces in anti-piracy duties, providing critical support and training to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) navies. Through defence cooperation memorandums and joint committees on defence cooperation, it has substantially enhanced its operational synergy with Arab Gulf navies – many of them members of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), an initiative pioneered by the Indian Navy.

The naval engagement with Oman has been most notable. While India and Oman entered into a “strategic partnership” in 2008, naval cooperation has been on since 1993 in the form of a biennial exercise, Naseem Al-Bahr. India has provided naval training and hydrographic support to Oman, while Omani ships have been regular visitors at Indian ports. More significantly, Oman has played a key role in sustaining India’s security efforts in the Gulf of Aden by offering berthing and replenishment facilities to Indian naval ships, and hosting a crucial Indian listening post in the Western Indian Ocean. With a new super-port project at Duqm nearing completion, Oman is poised to transform the maritime geopolitics of the Arabian Sea. An appreciation of its strategic potential has led New Delhi to cultivate stronger maritime ties with Muscat.

Importantly for India, the ongoing engagement with Arab navies hasn’t been to the exclusion of a maritime relationship with Iran. A week prior to the ongoing tour of GCC countries, two Indian naval ships, Betwa and Beas, visited Bandar-e-Abbas. The Iranian Navy, which has long suffered from a “siege” mindset in the Arabian Gulf, is in the throes of a radical psychological transformation. Having acquired critical war-fighting capabilities, it has been gaining the confidence of a regional maritime power. Emboldened by their county’s recent nuclear deal with the West, the Iranian naval leadership has also been on the look-out for new partners to support its naval agenda of establishing control over the Western approaches to the Arabian Gulf. India offers the most potential for such a partnership.

For maritime watchers, India’s Arabian Gulf maritime strategy seems driven by two essential considerations. The waterways of the Northern Indian Ocean are among the most important in the world, facilitating the export of large volumes of goods, oil and natural gas. India is a principal beneficiary of the trade and energy flows through the West Asian littorals. The Middle East is also home to nearly 7 million Indians, whose remittances contribute significantly to India’s economy. The sheer weight of market interaction and commercial exchanges with the Arab Gulf region amplifies its political significant, creating an urgent need for a greater Indian naval presence in the region.

Influence in the IOR

The more determinative factor is the preservation of India’s strategic stakes in the Indian Ocean. With China continuing to make military inroads, the past few years have witnessed a shrinking of Indian geopolitical influence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Reports of a new Chinese naval base in Djibouti, growing submarine visits, and a spurt in Beijing’s maritime military activities in the Western Indian Ocean have created concern among India’s security establishment. The nature of the recent submarine forays by the People’s Liberation Army Navy suggests an aspiration for a standing security presence in the IOR. For the Indian Navy, therefore, interaction with Gulf navies is a strategic measure aimed at retaining Indian influence in the IOR.

India’s “Look West” diplomacy, however, is not all about Indian interests. The tour by Indian naval ships to the region came only a few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Abu Dhabi, the first by an Indian premier in 30 years. As India and the UAE announced a strategic partnership, many of the themes reflected upon in their joint statement were an expression of India’s solidarity with the UAE (and more broadly Arab Gulf states). Prominent among these were human security, counter-terrorism, and regional defence. But the GCC’s central concern still remains the security of energy shipments through regional chokepoints. With political tensions heightening the vulnerability of the Gulf’s vital waterways, the joint statement affirmed India’s commitment to strengthening maritime security in the Northern Indian Ocean.

The Indian Navy’s burgeoning ties with Arab Gulf navies demonstrate the utility of maritime power as a foreign policy tool. New Delhi’s Indian Ocean diplomacy has shown that the political role of sea power remains as important as its wartime uses. While “hard-power” projection remains effective, the modern exercise of “soft power” through “hardware” has no credible substitute. Through its Arabian Gulf initiatives, the Indian Navy has positioned itself as a reliable and supportive partner, forged lasting relationships, and helped shape the Indian Ocean’s strategic environment.

More importantly, the Indian Navy has successfully created a durable template of maritime relations in the Western Indian Ocean. Its reassuring presence has validated India’s capacity to protect Indian and regional interests, and provided evidence of a productive and dynamic maritime vision. In many ways, India’s “Look-West” maritime diplomacy has been critical in rebalancing the Indian Ocean’s emerging strategic narrative from “political contestation” to “collaborative development.”

This article was originally published in The Diplomat.

• Published: 4 October, 2015

On 11 September the Indian Navy (IN) embarked on a week-long maritime engagement with the Royal Australian Navy in the Bay of Bengal. AUSINDEX-15 is being seen as a milestone of sorts, as it is the first time India and Australia have met for a bilateral naval exercise in the Indian Ocean. However, the composition of the participating contingents has led to speculation about the real intention behind the exercise.

As RAN ships arrived in Visakhapatnam to participate in the exercises, media reports surmised that the presence of a Collins class submarine, a P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft and an Indian P-8I maritime patrol aircraft indicated an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) focus, revealing a shared anxiety over Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean. What is more, commentators suggested that the engagement was a precursor to closer naval interaction between India, Australia, Japan and the US.

These suggestions are fueled not just by AUSINDEX-15 but other recent and upcoming exercises. The Indian navy is scheduled to hold the Malabar series of exercises with the US Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) in October. And Australia hosted the Talisman Saber exercise involving Japan and the US in July.

Claims of an emerging 'security quartet' in the Indo-Pacific also gained credibility after the visit of then Australian defence minister Kevin Andrews to New Delhi early this month. Speaking at a Defence Studies and Analyses event on 2 September, Andrews said that the Australian Government was open to participating in a four-way security initiative with the US, Japan and India, provided it were invited by New Delhi to do so. In response to a question about Canberra's past reservations over multilateral naval exercises involving India, he said the Rudd Government's decision in 2008 to withdraw from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue had been a mistake.

While Andrews' admission is commendably candid, it needs to be viewed with a degree of circumspection. Given Australia's commitment to defence ties with India, the reference to quadrilateral naval exercises is more an act of political signaling than a call for concerted action against China.

Canberra is looking for maritime partners in the Indian Ocean, and New Delhi is an obvious choice. Andrews' references to 'nautical norms' and a 'rules-based global order' are an appeal to Indian sensitivities beset by anxiety over the PLA Navy's expanding footprint in the Indian Ocean. But equally, the message appeared directed at an audience back home that has been keenly focused on Australia's evolving strategic posture and a new defence white paper, which is expected to take a hard line against China.

The political context of Andrews' views, however, must not dilute the strategic content of his message. Regardless of where India and Australia stand politically on the issue of multilateral maritime cooperation, they are operationally on the same page. In recent days, media reports have suggested that the focus of forthcoming exercises will be on littoral defence, reflecting a growing regional consensus on the threat posed by Chinese undersea operations in the Asian littorals.

PLA Navy submarine operations in the Indian Ocean have been the cause of much Indian angst lately.

Since May, when a Chinese Yuan class submarine visited Karachi, there has been growing unease in New Delhi over the possibility of greater Chinese submarine presence in India's maritime neighbourhood. The sudden rise in submarine visits suggests a larger game-plan for the expansion of China's naval footprint in the Indian Ocean. In the garb of anti-piracy operations, Indian analysts aver, Chinese submarines have been performing missions intended to lay the groundwork for a rotating but permanent deployment in the Indian Ocean.

More importantly, the pattern of recent undersea deployments reveals a Chinese strategy to carve out controlled spaces in the Indian Ocean. Observers point to a submarine deployment at Colombo last year, when the visiting Song class docked at a harbour built and administered by a Chinese construction company. The docking was in seeming violation of protocols which mandate that a foreign naval vessel dock in Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) berths. Local authorities explained the anomaly by citing operational exigencies, validating suspicions that Colombo was under some pressure to accommodate Chinese submarines at an exclusive facility. At Karachi in May, the Chinese Yuan class deployment was conducted in such secrecy that its details weren't revealed in the media until weeks later. Meanwhile, Chinese maritime planners have been raising the complexity of their undersea missions — the Yuan class deployment at Karachi signaled an improvement over the mission at Colombo, where the Song class submarine was accompanied by a support vessel.

China's emphasis on undersea operations in the Indian Ocean underscores the growing importance of the concept of littoral dominance in contemporary maritime doctrine, which deems 'access to contested spaces' as an operational imperative. The recalibration of China's maritime posture towards greater 'open-seas' presence, as outlined in Beijing's 2015 defence white paper, appears intended to expand the PLA Navy's access to the Asian littorals. India's Andaman and Nicobar Command is reported to have detected an alarming rise in attempts by Chinese naval ships to get close to Indian territorial waters.

In China's new doctrine of maritime operations, submarines are likely to play an increasingly vital role. Apart from defending tactical maritime space and gathering critical intelligence, Chinese submarines will be crucial in nullifying India's strategic advantages in the Indian Ocean. Submerged in the depths of the Indian Ocean, PLA Navy submarines could evade Indian surveillance and even facilitate attacks on Indian shores. To reinforce the message, Beijing has been deploying nuclear submarines to the Indian Ocean, highlighting growing Chinese confidence in maintaining a standing presence there.

Equally significant are the PLA Navy's growing amphibious warfare capabilities. Since the announcement of China's defence white paper in May 2015, its naval exercises have had an amphibious component, including ground assault drills by marine forces. The PLA Navy has conducted a series of island defence exercises, deploying dedicated amphibious task forces to the western and far-eastern Pacific. China's penchant for expeditionary operations can be discerned from the fact that during the recently concluded Sino-Russian maritime exercises in the Sea of Japan, it deployed a contingent of 200 marines to stage a joint amphibious and airborne landing.

India's forthcoming naval interactions with Pacific powers, therefore, are likely to focus on contingencies arising from greater Chinese naval presence in Asia's littorals. According to media reports, the India-US Malabar naval exercises later this month will go beyond the traditional ambit of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to also include anti-air and anti-submarine warfare operations. The fact that New Delhi has extended an invitation to the Japanese navy to participate in these exercises reveals a willingness to expand the framework of maritime engagements.

As India, Australia, Japan and the US reorient their maritime postures to cater to the new realities of Asia, there is a shared realisation that regional maritime stability is increasingly susceptible to growing power imbalances. India's forthcoming naval exercises are part of a broader regional attempt to preserve the balance of maritime power in the Indo-Pacific littorals.

This article was originally published in The Interpreter

• Published: 25 September, 2015

By engaging GCC navies through joint exercises, port calls, and training programmes, the Navy has successfully created a durable template of maritime relations in the Western Indian Ocean.

• Published: September 24, 2015
• IDSA Comments

As India and Australia prepare to embark on their first-ever bilateral naval interaction in the Bay of Bengal this month, reports suggest the exercises will focus on anti-submarine warfare (ASW). This is being seen as evidence of a growing regional consensus on the threat posed by Chinese undersea operations in the Asian littorals. Australia is reported to be sending a Lockheed Martin’s P-3 anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft, a Collins-class submarine, and ASW frigates, while India will be deploying a P-8 long-range anti-submarine aircraft, along with other surface assets.

Over the past two years, China’s submarine deployments in the Indian Ocean have been a source of worry for Indian analysts. Since May this year, when a Chinese Yuan-class submarine visited Karachi, there has been growing unease in New Delhi over the possibility of greater Chinese submarine presence in India’s maritime neighborhood. Indian analysts say the sudden rise in submarine visits suggests a larger game-plan for the expansion of the PLA-N’s operational footprint in the Indian Ocean. In the garb of anti-piracy operations, Chinese submarines have been performing specific stand-alone missions – a process, China skeptics contend, meant to lay the groundwork for a rotating but permanent deployment in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

The pattern of recent PLA-N undersea deployments reveals a strategy to carve out controlled spaces in the Indian Ocean. Observers point to a Chinese Song-class visit to Colombo port in October last year, when the submarine docked at a harbor built and administered by a Chinese construction company. This was a violation of existing protocols which mandate that a foreign naval vessel dock in Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) berths. Yet local authorities explained the anomaly by citing operational exigencies, almost as if they were under compulsion to accommodate Chinese submarines at an exclusive facility. At Karachi too, the PLA-N pulled of a clandestine one-week deployment that was revealed in the media weeks after it was completed.

Significantly, Chinese maritime planners have been raising the complexity of the undersea missions. The Yuan-class deployment at Karachi signaled an improvement over the visit to Colombo, where the Song-class submarine needed the reassuring presence of a support vessel. Employing the Yuan-335-class – equipped with air-independent propulsion (AIP) and increased under-sea endurance – in latter missions suggests Beijing is now preparing to upgrade its submarine operations in the Indian Ocean. Accordingly, the PLA-N has been fine-tuning its standard operating procedures, gaining critical undersea experience, as well as securing vital hydrological and bathymetric data to maintain a sustained presence in the IOR.

For some, the PLA-N’s emphasis on undersea operations in the IOR has been surprising, given that China has no territorial claims in the region. A closer examination of the recent deployments, however, makes the underlying logic clear. The evolving nature of contemporary maritime operations – where littoral-dominance is deemed an operational imperative – makes it incumbent on Beijing to devise a strategy that secures access to contested spaces. The Chinese navy seems to have modeled its template of operations in the IOR on the U.S. Navy’s maritime doctrine that predicates naval missions on “freedom of movement and maneuver” in the high seas. The recalibration of the China’s essential maritime posture towards greater “open-seas” presence is outlined in Beijing’s new defense white paper on “maritime strategy.”

In the PLA-N’s new framework of operations, submarines are likely to play an increasingly vital role. Apart from defending tactical maritime space and gathering of critical intelligence, China’s submarines could evade detection and target Indian submarines in the Indian Ocean. More crucially, their presence could render India’s interdiction capabilities in the IOR redundant. Submerged in the depths of the Indian Ocean, PLA-N subs could evade comprehensive surveillance measures by India, facilitating hostile attacks on Indian shores. To drive home the point, Beijing has been deploying nuclear submarines (SSNs) to the Indian Ocean, presumably to highlight growing Chinese confidence in maintaining a standing presence in the Indian Ocean Region, and India’s inability to defend its strategic littorals.

The defining shift in Chinese maritime strategy to a new “littoral” framework is best illustrated by the growing importance of the Yuan-class submarine in the PLA-N’s overseas operations. As a small, quiet, slow-moving anti-surface warfare platform, the Yuan plays a key role in littoral settings. Not only is it capable of traditional sub-surface killer (SSK) mission roles such as intelligence-gathering and coastal defense, its innovative design gives it an anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) and land attack capability – an attribute deemed critical for the projection of combat power.

From an Indian perspective, it is the evolving China-Pakistan nexus that raises the most anxiety. Since February 2013, when a Chinese company took-over management of the Gwadar port, Pakistan’s naval engagement with China has grown significantly. This includes regular bilateral and multilateral exercises, including growing PLA-N presence in the “Aman” series of exercises in the Western Indian Ocean. China has also been assisting Pakistan with its naval modernization program, including a proposed sale of eight Yuan-class submarines, four improved F-22P frigates, and six Type-022 Houbei stealth catamaran missile boats. These deals, Indian analysts point out, have the potential to wreak the sub-continent’s maritime balance.

More importantly for India, Pakistan’s naval partnership with China could help extend the PLA-N’s operational reach beyond East Asia into what China calls the “far-seas.” Beyond facilitating regular missions – such as protecting the sea lines of communications, providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and conducting naval diplomacy – the Pakistan navy could provide vital assistance to the PLA-N in projecting hard-power in the South Asian littorals. The rise in China’s near-coast submarine operations in the Indian Ocean, as well as a growing deployment of amphibious landing ships, certainly points to a propensity for greater maritime posturing in the IOR.

India’s forthcoming naval interactions are, therefore, likely to focus on contingencies arising from greater Chinese naval presence in the Asian littorals. If media reports are to be believed, the India-U.S. Malabar naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal later this month will move beyond the traditional focus of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations to also include anti-air and anti-submarine warfare operations. New Delhi has also dropped its customary insistence for a bilateral template of operations in the Indian Ocean and extended an invitation to the Japanese navy to participate in the exercises. Meanwhile, Canberra has expressed its willingness to partner India, Japan and the U.S. in “quadrilateral” exchanges that emphasize a “rules-based” maritime order in the Asia-Pacific.

As India and Australia reorient their maritime postures to cater to the new realities, there is a shared realization that strategic stability in maritime Asia can no longer be taken for granted. Both sides remain acutely aware that the preservation of maritime good order will require greater collective efforts by regional navies. The forthcoming exercises need to be seen as part of a broader regional attempt to preserve the balance of maritime power in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

This article was originally published in The Diplomat

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