Category Archives: China and the Pacific

From Outpost to Springboard

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Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar. Published in the March 2024 edition of the DSA available at the following links:

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Determinants of Security and Development

     In his opening address to the Seminar on “Security and Development of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands” held at Port Blair under the aegis of the Andaman and Nicobar Command on 04 – 05 September 2009, the then  Commander-in-Chief of the Islands, flagged four annotative perspectives for the assembly. Counseling that Security and Development were two sides of the same coin, he stated “We are aware that thus far the outlook of successive governments towards these Islands has been that of an Outpost, this to me is a strategic flaw. Rather we need to convert the Outpost to a Springboard for not just our economic but also for security aspirations” for indeed, “development without security makes the former vulnerable while security sans development is vacuous”. The second perspective was the persistent mismatch between the nation’s very obvious potential versus delivered reality. The third and fourth standpoints related directly or obliquely to the challenge posed by China’s Indo-Pacific game plan, namely, it’s “Island Chain” and “String of Pearls” strategies while all the time promoting “small groups with disproportionate powers to subvert and sabotage”.

A Quirk of History  

              Edward Penderel Moon, a former Indian Civil Service administrator in colonial India, wrote a book on the Partition of India titled “Divide and Quit” much of its contents were gleaned from a document put together under the patronage of the British India Office and edited by Moon. It was labelled ‘India: The Transfer of Power 1942-47’ and was published in 11 Volumes.  Of particular interest are the confabulations of the British Cabinet, the imperial Chiefs of Staff Committee, Cripps Mission of 1946 tasked with the transfer of power and the concomitant “Mountbatten Plan” of 1947 that outlined the Partition of India.

                 Amongst the many tangled, artful, and often contentious issues associated with decisions leading to Partition was the fate of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Possession of the Isles had, through the Second World War, changed hands between the British and the Japanese. And yet, at no time had Whitehall lost sight of the geo strategic value of the Islands. In July of 1946, the British Chiefs of Staff in India declared that “India was so internally rife with divisions that the Transfer of Power would, inevitably, lead to the intercession of the Soviets” in their quest for ‘Warm Water Access’ (ala Czar Peter!) This became a fundamental assumption for a grand strategic appreciation by the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

    The Committee argued that at stake were the lines of communication between Great Britain and its Imperial interests in the Far East. While the British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) provided stepping stones that spanned half the Indian Ocean, there was an unbridgeable gap to Malaya and further East to Australia and the other possessions. They rued the fact that Partition will breach the grand global network of maritime communications, which in time would lead to the collapse of Imperial Control. The Committee came to the conclusion that should the ‘Transfer of Power’ occur and strategic basing and logistics denied in mainland India, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands provided the only alternative. This became the case for decoupling the Islands from the transfer of power.

           Whitehall was quick to endorse this appreciation. The Secretary for Defence Mr Alexander and the Imperial Chiefs of Staff Committee exhorted the Government to retain sovereignty of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. As a result of these urgings the draft of the ‘India Independence Bill’, which made its appearance in May 1947, simply contained no reference to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands when the document came to the section on transfer of territories. The matter was leaked to the Press (source of the leak was never quite established) which on 11 June 1947 took note of the glaring omission and warned of the Bill’s imminent rejection. Mountbatten, now the Viceroy, unyieldingly cautioned London of the country-wide uncontrollable and violent ramifications of such a move.

   The Cabinet, on 17June 1947, uneasy at the already simmering reaction to Partition on mainland India, decided eventually not to progress the proposal despite the vigorous protestations of Mr Alexander, the ‘grave anxiety’ of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the rather dilatory and specious claim by Jinnah on the Islands based on the vulnerability of the sea line of communication between East and West Pakistan.

    Britain as late as 05 July 1947 could have adamantly persisted with their original decision; the Imperial Chiefs of Staff could have dug in their heels and the Cabinet could have mulishly bulldozed their verdict, but they did not through a sheer quirk of history. They had, most unexpectedly, blanched at the thought of further exasperating the very delicate nature of the Partition award and ceded the transfer of the Island territories of Andaman and Nicobar to India.

The ‘Mummified’ Outpost

           An outpost, in the military lexicon, is a far flung remote station located on or near a nation’s  frontier that is lightly garrisoned for purposes of providing a surveillance post, an armed perimeter or a ‘trip-wire’ to raise the alarm of hostile or uncharacteristic activity. During the years post-independence, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands despite its location, decidedly, did not serve India as a military outpost. On the contrary the local administration and the Central Government in their policy making and implementation were more concerned with “mummifying” its environment, which in a way was a policy of doing very little.  

    The author in 1973 commanded an inshore patrol vessel INS Panaji (ex-Soviet Poluchat Class, commissioned in 1967) based at Port Blair. She was one of three of class that were notionally deployed for coastal defence. However rarely was there an occasion when even two were available at a time. Port facilities were restricted to a rickety commercial wharf (equipped with steam cranage) on Chatham Island which was also home to a 19th century colonial saw mill and the Western India Match Company’s pulp factory. The Haddo Wharf (concrete on piles) was still under construction. No other port in the Islands had any significant infrastructure. Inter-island passenger movement was primarily by small ferries restricted to the fair weather season. Practically all logistics would come from the mainland on a monthly basis. Road infrastructure was restricted to the South Andaman much of which had been built by the Japanese during their occupation 1942-45; other inhabited islands (37 of 572) had rudimentary roads very few of which were black-topped. Two airfields existed one at Port Blair and the Air force base at Car Nicobar. Port Blair would handle a weekly commercial flight from the mainland in the fair weather season while the Air Force had a fortnightly courier. There were no commercial refrigeration plants and power outages were common. In short there was no industry, no commerce, poor connectivity, very basic post and telecom facilities, little security and even less development.  

     Life ashore in 1973 was about survival and continuance. Sunken ships, listing derelict trawlers impounded in some distant past moored as flotsam and hulks of shipwrecks strewn across Phoenix Bay and Ranger Flat in Port Blair were reminiscent of some cast-off colonial roadstead out of the pages of a Conrad or Maugham novel! There were very few public utilities and most of the buildings and offices were log tenements sorely in need of repair. Evenings were spent at the Colonial Andaman Club where stories were traded of the wild beauty of the islands and escapades involving the indigenous tribes, while the billiards marker cum bartender, the timeworn ‘Sher Khan’, a shrivelled Pathan who had been incarcerated for serial honour killings, wafted silently in the shadows.

Formulation of a Strategy for Security and Development  

           Through the years of the Island Development Authority (1985) and the Look East Policy (1991 aimed to foster political, economic and security co-operation with ASEAN nations) there was inappreciable growth or progress to suggest a cohesive and long term blue print for the transformation of the Islands to a strategic economic and security asset, it remained about continuance and a contrary posture towards change.   

            The Security and Development Seminar of September 2009 (the former President Kalam and other national luminaries in attendance) was rounded off by a strategy statement. This Declaration (moved to the PM’s office by the Special Secretary to the PM, himself a participant) was keenly sensitive to the demands of three overarching considerations. First, interests and vulnerabilities of indigenous communities; second, climate change; and lastly the safeguard and conservation of the fragile ecology of the Islands. The approach was for building infrastructure through a combination of government investment, private entrepreneurship and establishment supervision. The sectors to be targeted were: eco-tourism, education, maritime and fishing industries, infrastructure development and security enhancements. The last included three dimensional surveillance; precision strike capabilities; intelligence sharing; capacity building for amphibious power projection in the Far East and failsafe cyber security. While each of these sectors became a subject of much greater study and discreet implementation, it is the matter of “the one big ticket project” central to the ‘strategy statement’ that will engage the remaining part of our scrutiny.

Container Trans-Shipment Port at Galatea Bay

              Great Nicobar is the southernmost and largest of the Nicobar group of islands. The land area covers 1044 sq.km but is scantily populated. The terrain is undulating and covered by rainforest and is known for its diverse wildlife. The island has four significant rivers whose course conforms to the orientation of the main range that slopes from North to South. Mount Thullier in the North is the highest peak in the Nicobar group, altitude 642 metres. The Island is home to the Great Nicobar Biosphere, Campbell Bay National Park, Galatea National Wildlife Sanctuary and Megapode Island Sanctuary. The non-Biosphere portions of the island are utilized for agriculture, forestry and settlements and are confined to the south-western and south-eastern coastal reaches.  Galatea River originates in the central region of the island and runs 25 kms southward till it drains into the Bay that carries its name. Indira Point, at the western extremity of the Bay defines the southernmost geographic point of India. The Bay is about 8 kilometres in extent in the South-North direction and 5 kms at its mouth. The Bay has navigable soundings (depths) in excess of 21 metres and is naturally protected from the south-westerly as well as the north-easterly monsoon winds that affect the region.

                What makes Galatea Bay strategically significant is its location, proximity to the one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and the nature of harbourage it can potentially provide. It is situated within 60 nautical miles (nm) from the approaches to the Malacca Straits and 40nm north of the 6 degree Channel, one of the densest shipping arteries in the world. The Channel connects the shipping routes emanating from the Persian Gulf the Red Sea and around the Cape of Good Hope transiting via the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal to the Malacca Straits and on to the South China Sea and Western Pacific Ocean. This narrow and vulnerable Waterway is crucial to the flow of global energy and trade, and is strategically and commercially significant for more than a third of humanity. It is also the shortest sea route between the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean and over one-third shorter than the closest alternative sea-based route. It also accounts for 60% of global trade. In 2021 on an average over 200 hulls passed every day through the 6 Degree Channel. The average per day composition was 44 tankers, 6 Very Large Container Ships/Ultra Large Container Vessel (VLCS/ULCV), 60 cargo ships, 86 passenger ships and 4 support ships.                   

              Hitherto, containers bound for India and exported out embarked on-board VLCS/ULCVs had to be transhipped to Colombo, Singapore or Klang since no container terminal in India can handle VLCS/ ULCV’s of draught in excess of 17 metres. Currently, these very ports outside India handle roughly 75% of the transhipped cargo from India. According to the Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways, more than 85% of this cargo is handled at Colombo, Singapore, and Port Klang, with 45% of it handled at the Colombo Port. The transit and turn around at the ‘Relay-Port’ adds substantial costs to the tune of $500 to $1000 per Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU load 28 tons) standard container. Relay-Port turn around tariffs and other services further hike-up costs.

               From the economic perspective, construction of Galatea Bay Port is expected to provide savings, foreign direct investment, higher economic activity at other Indian ports, improved logistical infrastructure, job creation, and increased revenue share. Handling transhipment goods from all the nearby ports, including domestic ones, are expected to make the Port a significant hub for Asia-African and Asia-US/European container traffic.  

The Geopolitical Impact

              The term ‘geopolitics’ has historically been employed in reference to a nation’s interests and stratagems adopted to secure them. This understanding is subjective; for it does not account for the full significance of the term and even bears negative connotations. In the run-up to the Second World War, both Germany and Japan’s expansionist policies were justified using the ‘geopolitical’ argument garbed in bizarre concepts of Lebensraum and the Greater East Co-prosperity Sphere and today it is China with its unrelenting strategic urge towards “Rejuvenation”. The study of the relationship between a nation’s geography and its politics and how the former is leveraged to advance its national interests diplomatically is a far more elegant understanding of the term.

               However, the reality of the international system is the place that power enjoys in the scheme of assuring stability in relations between nations. In the absence of a security oriented cooperative impulse, the problem with competitive and often combative national interests is blindness to recognize that, we are in fact dealing with diverse regions, fast depleting resources and sea spaces that are the busiest of all the “vast commons”. The reluctance for collaboration on mutually acceptable terms makes the potential for friction high and the only consideration that could bring about change is the ability to attain a strategic posture that serves to deter, stabilize and preserve.

The Spring Board as a Conclusion

                 Strategic interests of India and leading democracies of the world converge on many aspects in the Indo-Pacific. At its core lies maritime security. India’s Act East Policy, in addition to having economic, cultural and commercial goals, includes strategic interests. The quadrilateral security dialogue (QUAD), the Australia-UK-US alliance and Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific aim at maintaining prosperity, security and order in the Indo-Pacific.

                The large scale advancement of security measures in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and  development of Galatea Bay as a major hub for the management of container traffic, and indeed, strategic control; is a signal to China that attempts to side-line the existing rules based order and dislocate the status-quo will have consequences.     

Strategic Deception, the Chinese Way of Warfare

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Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar (To be Published)

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
                          ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Aberrant Articulation

In a recent editorial in the Global Times a rare viewpoint was published, by a director of South Asian studies at the Fudan University, expounding eloquently the merits of the current Indian trajectory  available at https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202401/1304656.shtml titled “what I feel of the Bharat Narrative in India“. Its main theme was how India had achieved outstanding results in economic development, social governance and the manner in which its ‘great’ power strategy was rapidly progressing towards fruition. From any perspective this was odd for the extent of acclaim being heaped on India, and that, coming from a mouth piece of the Chinese Communist Party.   

In another press release China’s assertion of India’s “domineering diplomacy” appeared in the Global Times in quick succession to the earlier viewpoint. The latter could erringly be mistaken for strategic envy of the “Indian way” of establishing a hegemonic sphere of influence in South-Asia. The question arises why did these two aberrant articulations make their unprecedented appearance? Was it the opening move on the chess board to project the Indian State as a worthy rival? Or was to lull New Delhi to complacency?

The Soporific Jingle

 Hindi Chini bhai-bhai was a jingle popularised by Nehru after his first meeting with Zhou-Enlai in the run-up to the summit with Mao Zedong. It had a delusional quality that was further exacerbated after Mao met Nehru in Beijing in October 1954. China, having just fought the United States to a stalemate in the Korean War, was upbeat about the future. Mao perceived imperialism, at least the American brand of it, to be weak and in retreat. “Historically, all of us, people of the East, have been bullied by western imperialist powers,” he told Nehru. “The imperialist still looks down upon us,” this declaration was intended to forge an “instinctive feeling of solidarity” between the two; it did not fail. China and India, the two leaders seemed to be saying, would lead the developing world to a brighter future. Nehru went on to suggest that “big power status could well be handed over to the two” (!). The air during their summit was suffused, on the one side, by utopian thoughts such as “war was no longer a useable instrument for achieving policy goals”; while on the other were realpolitik assertions “that tension awakens people to revolution;” and that “war had a numbing and enervating effect on growth and progress.” But, “relations between China and India were sans tension “almost as if to allay any fears that India may have of China’s intentions (all the while not only had Tibet been invaded but the Aksai Chin region of northern Ladakh was being gnawed away).

The facts did not deter Nehru in his pursuit of an alternative bloc to the ‘cold warriors’ led by principles rather than power. He set about on a quest to band together like minded Afro-Asian nations that culminated in the Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Sino-Indian declaration of the Panchsheel Agreement, (Premier Zhou proposed Panchsheel and its principles of peaceful co-existence and mutual non-interference in 1953).

India nurtured a misshapen hope that non-alignment would bloom into a pan Afro-Asian movement based on common experience of colonialism. Moral power, spear-headed by the two most populace and indeed impoverished nations, it was hoped would reshape the international system where righteousness would overpower the balance of terror. However, Mao and Nehru had very different ideas about what that future might bring. Nehru wanted the developing nations to follow India’s lead in staying out of the ideological quarrels of the Cold War. Mao, by contrast, perceived the Third World as central to the coming global revolution, which China would stimulate and eventually lead. From start, China and India were engaged on “parallel tracks” for influence.

Rude Awakening

Following China’s invasion of Tibet in 1951 and the sustained injustices inflicted on the Tibetan people leading to the brutal suppression of an uprising in 1959, thousands of Tibetans, and their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, sought asylum in India. From there, the Chinese government alleged, the expatriates continued to instigate rebellion, moving across the border to carry out subversion and sabotage. The Chinese responded by increasing their military presence in the border area, which in August and October 1959 led to a series of escalating armed skirmishes along the erstwhile Indo-Tibetan border.

As China and India faced off across the Himalayas, India made a startling but cruel discovery that they had an armed conflict brewing over territory, which to this day remains unresolved. It did not take long before the dreamy vision of Sino-Indian solidarity and resurgence gave way to loss and great rancour.

Price of Complacency

The lack of either nuclear capability or significant conventional power exposed India’s status as a minor power of little strategic importance. China sensing the moment of India’s despondency and vulnerabilities to have arrived, leveraged these frailties in the 1962 war. In the ensuing conflict an ill prepared India suffered a humiliating drubbing; leadership was found wanting in resolve and morale of the nation was broken. China on her part was successful in achieving three objectives; firstly delegitimizing the McMahon Line, secondly consolidating their sovereignty over Tibet and lastly to establish that the great Asian resurgence had space for only one and that was not for an ideologically muddled India. China had so comprehensively lulled the Indian leadership into a strategic torpor that the war was lost before the fighting began.

Deception as the Key Principle of ‘War-with-Chinese-Characteristics’

In Chinese strategic parlance to attain shi, is to bring about the alignment of opportunities and manipulate forces such that they stimulate favourable circumstances to strike or make the potential adversary bend to ones will. In short it is to “shape a strategic situation” through patience, deception, intelligence and intuitive-acumen of impending events. Clearly Beijing attained shi in their war against the USA in Korea when they waited till American forces crossed the Yalu river before they struck; they attained it before the border war with India; and in the 1970s they manipulated Nixon and the USA to counter balance the USSR and feed their dazzling growth, four decades later they put themselves in a position to challenge America for global leadership. Chairman Mao was known to be fond of not just citing shi but invoking it in his international dealings.

 We began on a note of consternation over the view point of the Chinese scholar Dr Zhiang Jiadong expressed in his article on the “Bharat Narrative”. While it may have just been an academic’s feature of acclaim, it may also be false encomium as a first step in attaining shi for intentions that can only be mala fide. Planners will do well to analyse such opinions for cognizable patterns, for is there a shi zealot lurking in Premier Xi?

After all, it was Sun Tzu who suggested that “all warfare was based on deception”.

Geopolitics of Securing the Maritime Environment

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Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

(The article has been published in the December 2023 issue of the DSA and is available at the following link https://www.dsalert.org/DSA-Editions/2023/December-2023_Vice_Admiral_%28retd%29_Vijay_Shankar%2C.pdf )

Understanding Geopolitics: A New Slant

The term ‘geopolitics’ has historically been employed in reference to a nation’s interests and stratagems adopted to secure them. This understanding is subjective; for  it does not account for the full significance of the term and even bears negative connotations. In the run-up to the Second World War, both Germany and Japan’s expansionist policies were justified using the ‘geopolitical’ argument garbed in bizarre concepts of Lebensraum and the Greater East Co-prosperity Sphere . More recently In the post-war era, America saw in its strategic doctrine of ‘Containment’ an instrument that assured its geopolitical dominance in world affairs.

In the 21st century, geopolitics aims at explaining how geography can impact politics and how states try to mitigate these effects.  Geography, in other words, contributes to defining the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in international relations along with economic and security advantages that may be leveraged. China In its South China Sea policy has shown just how ‘creatively’ this can be achieved.  

Integration of Maritime Power with Geopolitics: Survey of the Domain  

Thucydides, in the 4th century Bce, chronicled events of the Peloponnesian War (431-404Bce).  Aggressive moves by Athens to establish empire and control the geopolitics of the Mediterranean caused fear in Sparta and provoked war. The conflict bears so many similarities to wars waged through the ages across both the maritime and continental dimensions that it offers lessons to this day. Athens forged a maritime alliances, while Sparta led a coalition of continental powers. The years of fighting depleted manpower and financial resources on both sides. Eventually, the Spartans destroyed the Athenian fleet, leading to capitulation of an exhausted Athens. Three significant lessons emerge:

  • Wars of attrition between balanced alliances do not yield spectacular victories, rather, exhaustion and a blurring of lines between victor and vanquished.
  • Maritime superiority by itself does not win a war that is fought for influence over land.
  • Wars stimulated by overconfidence leave much to chance.

Towards the end of the 19th century it was thinkers like Mahan and Julian Corbett who set ablaze the maritime spirit of the new century. They saw the maritime domain as a medium through which a nation could not just project power, but also control the strategic direction of any conflict. In The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Mahan analysed the use of British naval forces to demonstrate that nations that exercised control of important parts of the maritime domain, dominate history. More specifically, it was the effect of sea power upon wealth and prosperity of nations that moulded the course of history and gave to Britain the heft to achieve global pre-eminence. Mahan’s significance was twofold: first, in the realm of grand strategy he asserted that power came from integration of maritime activities with geopolitics and colonial-economics. Second, command and decision making in war from a position of naval superiority gives to the advocate both a logistical highway and a flexible ‘avenue of approach and exit’. He emphasized that sea power was about commercial use of the domain in peace and its control in war; about profits and power projection. Mahan’s theory remains persuasive, in part, to this day.

Corbett, on the other hand, believed naval influence on the maritime domain to be a part of national policy which had sway over the non-military elements of state power. He saw the fleet not merely an instrument of control but as an accompaniment to assuring the “act of passage on the sea.” It was from this critical tenet that concepts of Sea Denial, Sea Control and Power Projection evolved. Perhaps his abiding legacy to contemporary maritime thought was the idea that “freedom of the seas was an irreducible factor” for the sea was not territory for conquest; nor the oceans defensible. What it constituted was a substantial determinant in the growth of a nation and prosecution of war (Corbett Julian, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Longmans, 1911).

Language of War

Within an international system that hovers between order and anarchy, differentiated pace of growth among states engenders rivalry over resources, technology, commerce and markets. Realists of the early 20th century, such as Halford Mackinder and Friedrich Ratzel suggested how power may transcend geographic realities making the threat of armed conflict a general reality. At the same time, abstractions of national honour, prestige and other national interests that often separate the state from its citizenry are at odds with the violence of, as Clausewitz phrased it, the “Language” of War. In this fray experience of wars of the second half of the twentieth century suggests that people faced with the “language” of war, prevail. Add to this the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction with their intrinsic menace of ending political purpose and we have the coming of indirect, relatively scaled down version of conventional wars albeit with high destructive potential fought in the penumbric shadows of a nuclear holocaust.

Rise and Fall of Powers: A Familiar Cadence

There is empirical evidence to suggest that the global economic crisis of the 1930s that in part set off the Second World War was responsible for thrusting the US into astonishingly favourable strategic circumstances. This situation not only triggered the Cold War but ultimately in the late 1980s, forced the melt-down of the Soviet Union and set into motion another ‘fall and rise’ in the global power structure. The characteristics of the economic crisis of the thirties rings a cadence now familiar to contemporary conditions – discontent as the basis that govern international economic systems, protectionism, unfair trade practices, one-sided competition, restricted access to resources, creation of proprietary mercantile routes and nationalistic policies; all in contradiction to the demands of an increasingly globalised world. Ironically they also characterize ‘Strategic Competitiveness’. And as long as it transpires within an international order that is influenced by uneven growth and shrinking natural resources; the quest for power will invariably be linked to the generation of military capabilities that can secure domination.

The Fragility of Power-Balances in the International System

The ultimate reality of the international system is the place that power enjoys in the scheme of assuring stability in relations between nations. Uncertainty in relations queers the pitch, in view of the expanded space for forces that can disrupt the status quo. For example, China has unambiguously articulated three canons that make for its strategic objective of ‘Rejuvenation’; revision of the existing order, sustained growth at any cost and by any means and regional pre-eminence. In the absence of a security oriented cooperative impulse, the problem with such sweeping strategies is its blindness to recognize that, we are in fact dealing with diverse regions, fast depleting resources and sea spaces that are the busiest of all the “vast commons”. The reluctance for collaboration on mutually acceptable terms makes the potential for friction high and the only consideration that could bring about change is the ability to attain a strategic posture that serves to deter and stabilize. Availability of full-spectrum military forces becomes central to any power equation and in consequence provides the foundation for order.

So, in our assessment of current geopolitics we note, the extinction of the “Cold War” was a temporary hiatus that after three decades has morphed the communist bloc to an autocratic and nationalistic faction comprising China and Russia that seek revision of world order on its terms. This refrain brings them in direct conflict with believers of unrestricted economic activity. At the same time the vision of unrestricted global economic activity has proven so fragile and subject to the many nuances of politics that, power deficient nations are left out.

The Challenge of China

Since inception in 1949, China’s strategic focus has shifted from ‘revolution-survival-recovery’ to an emphasis on ‘rejuvenation’. Both internal and external factors have shaped this vision. Internally the “century of humiliation” has given primacy to regime survival as the leading strategic goal, while rejuvenation expresses a quest for pre-eminence in world affairs on China’s terms. And thus, externally it has led to tensions over its revisionist and expansionist policies that have characterized its rise.

Militarily securing China’s overseas interests has increasingly become a part of its strategy, as articulated in their 2019 Chinese defence white paper . In the South China Sea Beijing is threatening control all within what it calls its “9 Dash Line”, which in 2016, the International Court of Arbitration at the Hague had unequivocally rejected.

The enigma of ‘the China-approach’ is that, having greatly benefitted from international systems, it has deliberately undermined the very same system by not fully supporting its governing elements; whether WTO, UN, IMF or the World Bank. Past complacency about Beijing’s predatory economic, military and ideological intentions have today crystallised to a danger that is real and may trigger an avoidable conflict. Even without war, tensions in the Indo-Pacific, along India’s northern borders and the slow weaning away from dependency on supply chains emanating from China have caused huge economic costs and deepened the chasm between the two blocs. An assessment of not just China’s strengths, but also of its vulnerabilities is, therefore of direct strategic consequence.

China, after four decades of military modernisation, has transformed to a formidable offensive force. With 2 million personnel and an annual budget of $225bn, it has the world’s biggest army, air force, navy and a vast missile force. By 2030 it could have 1,000 nuclear warheads. China believes it will have the capacity to invade Taiwan by 2027, at a time when their power projection ability extends to the Second Island Chain. Within the Tokyo-Guam-Philippines-Western New Guinea chain, China believes its strategic Anti-Access Area Denial (A2/AD) forces will be in a position to impede the movement of enemy forces while compelling them to operate further away from this protective Chain. It is strategies such as A2/AD that continue to intimidate global order by threats of control of the South China Sea.

China’s military has evolved from its roots in Soviet doctrines to a modern war machine capable (by its own assessment) of combined operations under conditions of intense cyber and information warfare. In philosophy, there has also been a shift from “Mass to Precision”. Recruitment is, however, hard ever since the one-child policy was enforced (1980-2016) and dazzling growth made the military a not so attractive career proposition. The PLA struggles to hire skilled technical manpower to man their modern platforms, maintain high-tech equipment and fight a technological war. And to top it all they are woefully lacking in combat experience. Although China has made scientific leaps, from hypersonic missiles to stealth fighters, its military-industrial complex trails behind in areas such as metallurgy, engines, design abilities and still relies on foreign fundamental research. Embargoes on semiconductors and components have made it harder to catch up with global scientific frontiers. Despite Mr Xi’s endless purges, corruption appears to be pervasive. It may explain why General Li Shang Fu was sacked as China’s defence minister this year after only a few months in the job.

China’s military infirmities exist alongside its deepening economic woes. A property crunch and the Communist Party’s growing hostility towards the private sector and foreign capital are impeding growth. China’s GDP will drop to 3.5% by 2028, projects the IMF. Investment by multinational firms into China has currently turned negative for the first time since records began in 1998, suggesting foreign companies are not reinvesting their profits in China, and rather they are moving money out of the country. China’s $18trn economy has slowed, perhaps irreversibly.

Behind China’s military and economic stutter lies a third, and deeper problem – an autocratic dominance of a system that no longer allows serious internal policy debate. Economists and technocrats have been side lined in favour of party loyalists. Given Premier Xi’s style of functioning there is real danger of strategic miscalculations; for, China is challenging not just today’s economic orthodoxy, but the world’s political and security framework as well without bringing about a change within her own political morphology.

Defining Strategic Space and Intent  

With uncertainty driving geopolitical dynamics, the first imperative for India is to bring about policy coherence between strategic space and security interests. It begins by defining the geographical contours within which a strategy can be developed to contend with challenges identified. The broad parameters of this definition must factor in the regions from where trade originates, logistic supply chains traverse, energy lines run, sea lines of communication span, narrows therein and potential allies with who mutuality exists. In this context the sea space encompassing the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific provides the canvas within which our strategic interests will play out. This Oceanic body is dominated by ten important choke points and narrows. In essence the theatre gives to global trade efficient maritime routes that power the region’s growth. It accounts for over 70% of global trade, 60% of energy flow and is home to more than 50% of the world’s population; it also provides the context within which Indian maritime strategy must operate with the intent of assuring order, deterring upheavals and promoting mutuality. While our logistic chains traverse areas outside the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific these will need to be secured through partnerships, diplomacy and cooperative security measures.

Strategic Competitiveness   

The phrase “Strategic Competitiveness” mentioned earlier, first made its appearance in the 2018 National Defence Strategy of the USA . The document identified the revisionist states of China and Russia as strategic competitors. China for using “predatory economics” to intimidate lesser endowed nations while militarizing and persisting with its illegal claims in the South China Sea; and Russia as an “autocratic nationalistic state that eschewed the economic, diplomatic, and security aspirations of its erstwhile bloc”.

Strategic competitiveness has become one of the central preoccupations of governments. National wealth and economic prosperity are to some extent inherited but, in the main, created by the innovativeness of people. In this milieu the role played by the individual nation and partnerships in international relations have become more rather than less critical. Yet for all the writing on the topic, there is no theory nor is there an accepted definition of the term. It is amply clear that competitiveness amongst states develop when the existing status-quo is challenged, or indeed when a state or an alliance contests an emerging challenge. The tools of the contest are the combined “comprehensive national power” of one or more states pitted against the other.

Contestant Groupings

Ironically, Beijing’s recent White Paper titled “National Defence in a New Era” outlined its territorial ambitions in the South and East China Seas, Yellow Sea, Taiwan and Ladakh. It has warned regional powers of its willingness to use force and use it first if its ambitions are threatened. On cue, in response to China’s aggressive manoeuvres; the formation of a trilateral alliance between Australia, UK and the US (AUKUS) and the continuing Strategic Security Dialogue between Japan, Australia, India and the US (Quad) have made it amply clear that “countering China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific” is number one priority. AUKUS’s mission is complemented by the Quad; the latter presenting a new security architecture that combines both military and economic prowess amongst nations that share a common vision of a free and rule-based order. The resolve to strategic confrontation against revisionism is thus emphasised. Such a visible demonstration of collective resolve is, perhaps, the only way to dampen Beijing’s aggressive expansionism, for through the waters of the Indo-Pacific over 70% of China’s energy flow and 60% of trade ply. It is China’s “growth-jugular” and it is here that like-minded states must develop strategies that potentially signal the ability to stymie Xi’s dream of “rejuvenation.” 

That these initiatives have made China “edgy” is clear from their declarations that “China will certainly punish Australia with no mercy”. Fearing forced unification, Taiwan is tightening its ties to the U.S.; Japan, is engaged in its largest military build-up since the Cold War; India is readying forces along its borders, developing strategies to occlude vital sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and has engaged partnerships that threaten China’s vulnerabilities; Australia is opening up its northern coast to U.S. forces. France, Germany, and the UK are sending warships into the Indo-Pacific to assert their rights. Clearly,  nations have become less enthused by China’s market and more worried about its disturbing intent.  

 Challenges in the Maritime Domain

China’s rising comprehensive power has generated an internal impulse to military growth and an external push for unilateral expansionism in the South and East China Seas and its extended regions of economic interests. It has developed strategies that target the maritime domain to assure a favourable outcome to what it perceives to be a ‘strategic competition’ for resources and control of the seaways.

The consequences of China activating artifices such as the Anti-Access and Area Denial strategy, unilateral Air Defence Identification Zones and geo-political manoeuvres to collar sources of raw materials, ports of dispatch and control of routes euphemistically called the maritime silk route and the establishing the String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean Region are clear to see. Debt traps that have been set by China to inveigle some of the hapless littorals of the Indian Ocean of their maritime facilities are symptomatic of a new form of colonial adventure. The paradoxical effects of China’s contrivances are to undermine its own strategic standing, hasten counter balancing alignments and urge a global logic of cooperative politics over imperial strategies.

The Maritime Environment: Considerations

In today’s context there emerges an all-encompassing concept of what is implied by “securing the maritime environment” and how it brings to play the comprehensive national power of a State particularly to forge partnerships and be willing to back consensual policies with military power. The safety and economic security of the nation depends upon the secure use of the near and far oceans in times of peace, tensions and during conflict. In order to develop a Strategy to secure the domain the need is to persistently integrate and synchronize existing means. Challenges in the maritime environment are centred on the following three considerations:

• Domain awareness through maritime Intelligence Integration.

• Operational Threat Response founded on wide area coordination strategies.

• Maritime Commerce Security Plan.

The quest for strategic leverage in domain is founded on an oceanic vision backed by the development of a posture that characterizes our resolve to fulfil the quest. Inspiration may take the form of a policy declaration in relation to a geographic region such as the ‘Act East Policy’, the ‘India Africa Forum Summit’, alliances and partnerships; or indeed the emergence of a power that threatens to revise the status-quo. Policy provides a frame of reference that not only has wide-ranging application but will remain central for purposes of force planning to develop posture.

Current membership of the original ten ASEAN grouping plus 6 is symptomatic of the shifting centre of gravity of geopolitics to the East. From a security angle, the inclusion of India, USA, Russia, Japan and South Korea in addition to China provides the rationale for strategic equilibrium. India and China along with ASEAN are set to become the world’s largest economic bloc. The grouping is expected to account for about 27 per cent of Global GDP. The buoyancy of the Indo-ASEAN relationship is backed by surging trade figures which is slated to hit USD 100 billion in the current year. With such burgeoning stakes strategic rebalancing in the region comes as a natural consequence. The expansion of the ASEAN and the creation of the ASEAN Regional Forum are suggestive of the littoral’s aspirations to counter balance the looming presence of China. Having thus brought about a modicum of coherence between security dynamics, strategic space and growth, we have the makings of a template to contend with the challenges that are present particularly the emerging unrelenting thrust by China for an exceptionable proprietary mercantile empire stretching across the region.

Force Planning to Secure the Maritime Environment

A fourfold classification of maritime forces has dominated contemporary naval thought. The grouping is largely functional and task oriented. It comprises of aircraft carriers, denial forces (including surface, air and sub-surface strike units), escorts and surveillance elements. Auxiliaries including logistic and other support ships and tenders provide distant and indirect support. While the ready availability of out-of-area bases, intelligence and strike elements become an imperative when devising cooperative operations.  In addition current thought has given strategic nuclear forces a restraining role to define and demarcate the limits within which conventional forces operate.

The make-up of the fleet must logically be a material and technological articulation of strategic concepts that prevail. India has for long aspired to attain a strategic maritime posture that would permit control and make safe oceanic spaces that serve to promote its national interests. And in times of hostility, influence the course of conflict. Partnerships such as the QUAD and the AUKUS provide the much needed basis for domain awareness, wide area strategic response and control mechanisms.

In this perspective, the fundamental obligation in times of tensions is therefore to activate means to first deter and if deterrence fails, to seize and exercise control over the ‘strategic space’ (it must come as no surprise that China develops forces necessary to realize its A2/AD policy). Pursuing this line of argument, it is the Aircraft Carrier Group and its intrinsic air power assisted by strike, surveillance and denial forces that sea control and security of control can be achieved. It is here that the true impact of the Aircraft Carrier is felt. Control and security of control is the relationship that operationally links all maritime forces with the Aircraft Carrier. In the absence of the latter, naval operations are reduced to a series of denial actions limited in time, space and restricted to littoral waters with little impact on the progress of operations on land. It is also for this reason that the Indian aircraft carrier programme today envisages a minimum force level of three Fleet Carriers at all times in order to meet the diverse tasks that the Navy may be charged with across geographically separated areas of interest under circumstances of change and uncertainty.

To Navigate the Crisis Ridden Stream

Bismarck suggested that great powers travel on the “Stream of Time” which they can neither create nor direct but upon which they can “steer with more or less skill”. How they emerge from that voyage depends to a large degree upon the wisdom of leadership. Bismarck’s sombre thoughts lead us back to our fundamental inquiry – whether the quest to secure the maritime environment lies in the turbulence of the ‘Stream of Time’  is a moot question, but how India navigates the crisis ridden stream is what leadership will have to contend with.