Strategic Comments

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America’s Indian Ocean Strategy

To cite this article: (2017) America’s Indian Ocean Strategy, Strategic Comments, 23:9, vi-vii, DOI:
10.1080/13567888.2017.1398535

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13567888.2017.1398535

Published online: 30 Oct 2017.

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 Strategic Comments
America’s Indian Ocean Strategy
Elements of the US government, when
referring to the Indian Ocean in policy or
strategy documents, have lately taken to
using the phrase ‘Indo-Asia-Pacific’. This
nomenclature represents the latest in a long
line of variations that either ignore the region
or combine it with something else. This
reflects Washington’s inclination to regard
the Indian Ocean region as a theatre in a
larger geostrategic struggle, or as a route to
somewhere more important. The US Navy
strike forces that ply the Indian Ocean to reach
the strategically vital Persian Gulf are the
most visible symbol of the latter. A former US
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ambassador to a country in the region called
the Indian Ocean ‘Interstate I-95’, referring
to the crowded, drab highway that courses
through the United States’ northeast corridor
– that is, an uninteresting but useful avenue to
other places vital to US interests. During the
Cold War, the Indian Ocean was just one more
theatre of confrontation with the Soviet Union
and its allies, and did not become important
until the Soviet Navy began to sail there,
or until the United States used it to channel
arms through Pakistani ports to the Afghan
mujahideen. More recently, the Indian Ocean
has been a corridor and a launching point for
tracking and attacking terrorist organisations.
In sum, apprehending the Indian Ocean
region as a distinct geostrategic whole and
establishing an integrated strategy for it has
been understandably difficult for the United
States.
Current policy statements and priorities
point to a continuation of this trend – namely,
the absence of an Indian Ocean strategy per
se, and the subsuming of strategy towards
the region into one or more higher-priority
frameworks. While Washington’s approach
has gained some coherence in the past two
decades, and the Trump administration has
yet to release its National Security Strategy
or its National Defense Strategy, a mix
of structural and policy impediments will
tend to keep the region fragmented in the
US policy lens. The US will likely continue
to see the Indian Ocean region (IOR) as part
of something larger or as a series of sub-
regions. More specifically, the United States
will use the IOR to stage counter-terrorism
efforts in and around the Persian Gulf, and
as a secondary theatre in the deepening
strategic competition with China. A third
area of priority, Iran, may also enhance
focus on the northwest corner of the region.
So near and yet so far
Even in a globalised, internet-connected
world, the Indian Ocean is as far from the
ISSN: 1356-7888
United States as one can get. The antipode
to Washington lies in the southern Indian
Ocean, far from population centres or major
shipping lanes. Even the headquarters of US
Pacific Command (PACOM) in Hawaii, which
its senior commanders consider as within the
Indo-Asia-Pacific, is physically far removed
from the region, and PACOM fixes its gaze
more regularly on the western Pacific Ocean
and the states bordering it. Even if PACOM
wanted to spearhead the development and
implementation of a coherent US strategy,
it has bureaucratic responsibility for only a
portion of the Indian Ocean and the states
on its littoral. The US government has had,
and continues to have, organisational ‘seams’
that make coherent policy and strategy
formulation for the IOR difficult. Four
different regional combatant commands –
PACOM, Central Command (CENTCOM),
European Command and Africa Command
– have portions of the Indian Ocean in their
areas of responsibility. One seam runs right
along the border between the region’s two
fiercest and most strategically critical rivals –
India and Pakistan. The US State Department
also divides up the IOR, but its organisational
allocation does not correspond to that of
the Department of Defense. Policy and
strategy coherence has therefore suffered,
and continues to do so.
Even if Washington were to reorganise
its bureaucratic frameworks for the IOR, it
might not succeed in developing a single,
coherent strategy for the simple reason that
the region itself does constitute a strategic
whole. What binds the region together are
maritime trade routes that hug the northern
littorals. While the US interest in the
unfettered flow of this trade is often cited in
policy statements and strategy documents,
the threats to that trade vary widely across
the region. Other geopolitical and security
issues, and US interests in them, vary just
as widely along the littorals. Some states are
plagued by poor governance, which spills
over into the maritime realm. Other areas are
sites of proxy wars backed by regional rivals.
Still other parts of the IOR are host to long-
standing rivalries in which the antagonists
have recently taken nuclear weapons to sea.
Elements of a strategy
Despite these impediments to strategic
coherence, it is possible to ascertain how
the United States is approaching the region
currently and how elements of its approach
might ultimately be shaped into something
like an integrated strategy. Perhaps the
most comprehensive and best developed
element of Washington’s approach to
the region, and the one with the greatest
potential to mature into a regional strategy,
is its growing relationship with India.
Washington’s strategic attitude towards
New Delhi centrally involves promoting and
supporting its rise as a net security provider
in the IOR. The Obama administration
coined this language, and it represents the
most likely and fruitful path forward in
framing the relationship. New Delhi wants
to retain autonomy in its foreign and security
policy, but desires a closer relationship with
Washington. India also views the IOR as its
strategic backyard, so it wishes to play the
predominant security role there. The United
States, for its part, would like a stronger and
more active India to take up regional security
burdens that strain or exceed limited US
capacity. This can be seen most recently in
the Trump administration’s call for India
to play a more active role in Afghanistan’s
economic development activities.
The US–India relationship may evolve
more rapidly in the near future in response
to China’s growing political, economic and
military presence in the IOR. Washington
will likely approach this as a new theatre
of competition with China, albeit with very
different characteristics from the one taking
shape in the Western Pacific. In East Asia,
Washington has treaty allies Japan and South
Korea to defend and assure; in the Indian
Ocean it merely has ‘strategic partners’,
as well as a shared interest with China – a
strategic rival – in keeping sea lanes open
for commerce. Yet both New Delhi and
Washington are concerned about China’s
growing influence and its increasingly
regular military presence in the region, in the
form of continuous navy flotillas performing
counter-piracy operations and, recently, the
opening of a permanent Chinese military
base in Djibouti. In addition, with the
China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, China
is seeking to connect China to the Indian
Ocean through Gwadar port in Pakistan’s
Balochistan province.
Even so, increased momentum
towards closer American-Indian security
ties is largely a function of New Delhi’s
policy preferences, rather than those of
Washington. In the past, India has shied
away from activities that could be seen as
signalling a US-led bilateral effort to contain
China. This reluctance may well fade if India
judges that it can keep pace with Chinese
capabilities in the region only by upgrading
its security relationship with the United
States. In this connection, Australia and
Volume 23 Comment 35 October 2017
 Japan could be important US and Indian
partners. Although New Delhi turned down
Canberra’s request to participate this year,
the United States, India and Japan last July
expanded their annual Malabar exercise in
the Indian Ocean, amid growing concerns
about Chinese activity there. Some Indian
observers surmised that Indian External
Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, in a trilateral
meeting with her American and Japanese
counterparts Rex Tillerson and Taro Kono
on the sidelines of last month’s UN General
Assembly session, would support increased
security cooperation among the US, India,
Japan and Australia – the so-called ‘Security
Diamond’. Public statements also indicated
that the three officials agreed to develop
strategically important ports and other
infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region,
presumably to balance China’s efforts to
increase its regional influence.
While Washington waits for New Delhi
to decide on the pace and scope of their
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growing security cooperation, the United
States will continue to utilise the IOR as a
platform for its global counter-terrorism
operations, in particular against the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and
al-Qaeda. In recent policy statements and
speeches, Trump has focused on striking
terrorist groups worldwide and denying
those groups safe havens in less-governed
spaces. For the United States, then, the
Indian Ocean region looms as both a location
where terrorist groups operate – ranging
from Somalia to Yemen to Afghanistan and
Pakistan – and as a place where the United
States has bases and operational access
from which to monitor and attack them.
The US priority will be to keep that access
intact, even in cases in which there is some
dissonance in its policy. One example is the
United States’ determined effort to maintain
its vital air base in Qatar, despite the Trump
administration’s disenchantment with the
policies of the Qatari government, which
supports the Muslim Brotherhood and has
established a closer relationship with Iran.
Similarly, Washington criticises Pakistan
for its role in harbouring terrorist groups,
but is also cultivating ties strong enough to
allow use of ground lines of communication
through Pakistan to bring supplies to a
growing US force presence in Afghanistan.
Finally, increased US antipathy towards
Iran could reinforce American reliance on
bases in the IOR to enable forces transiting
the region to reach locations near the Persian
Gulf. The United States has long utilised
bases and forces in the region to deter Iran
and to monitor its military and intelligence
activities. The US military is now also
directly supporting Saudi Arabia and the
www.iiss.org/stratcom
Editor: Jonathan Stevenson
Volume 23 Comment 35 October 2017
United Arab Emirates in their operations
against the Iranian-backed Houthi coalition
in Yemen. The Trump administration
has signalled that it is going to confront
Iran more directly with respect to a range
of Iranian activities in the Middle East,
necessitating continuing access to bases and
use of the seas, as well as sustained support
for partners in the region. Although a more
robust anti-Iran policy is not an Indian
Ocean strategy per se, it relies on access to
and through the region to make it viable.
Constraints
The disparate elements of the United States’
largely instrumental approach to the region
are difficult to make into a coherent whole
and are likely to remain that way. Some
distinct aspects of US strategy are mutually
supportive – for instance, combatting
terrorist groups, and deterring Iran and
countering its influence in places like Yemen
and Syria – in that both require military
access and basing in the northwest corner
of the IOR. But advancing these objectives
calls for focus mainly on a sub-region of
the IOR, with the remainder of the ocean
acting largely as a thoroughfare for the
movement of forces. Furthermore, from a
narrowly logistical standpoint, the distance
of the Indian Ocean from US ports on either
the East Coast or the West Coast, and even
from forward-deployed US forces, makes
getting on station in the greater Middle
East a long sail or flight. Since the US is
looking to maintain or possibly augment
its presence in the northwest portion of the
Indian Ocean, availability for other missions
elsewhere in the region will remain spotty at
best. Carrier strike groups and amphibious
groups often make port calls and conduct
exercises on the way to or from the Persian
Gulf and Arabian Sea, with little time for
extended stays or other operations. The
two recent collisions involving US forward-
deployed surface ships in the Western Pacific
are harbingers of relative ship scarcity as
the US Navy seeks to improve safety and
readiness by increasing training, crew rest
and maintenance.
Resource limitations are the main
constraints to the US focusing its Indian
Ocean strategy on countering China’s
growing role and presence in the region.
But other factors are also important. First,
India’s growing wariness of China’s
hovering presence has yet to overcome New
Delhi’s longstanding reluctance to move
more quickly on enhancing its military-
defence relationship with Washington. In
the decade it took New Delhi to negotiate
and sign what the US considers a basic
foundational agreement on mutual logistics
© The International Institute for Strategic Studies
support, China went from possessing neither
permanent access to the Indian Ocean, nor
regular naval experience in it, to running
a sustained series of surface operations by
counter-piracy units in far-seas waters while
also opening a permanent military base in
Djibouti. If the United States is relying on
India’s cooperation for an Indian Ocean
counter-China strategy, differing views of
the threat China poses and how best to
respond to it will be a severe limitation.
Finally, the United States’ interests in
the region are competing and difficult to
harmonise. Even the slow but steadily
improving pace of defence cooperation
between the United States and India
potentially threatens Washington’s relation
with Pakistan. A more rapid or enhanced
level of cooperation to constrain China
would strain US–Pakistan ties. Yet Pakistan
is critical to Washington’s goals, both in
Afghanistan and in countering transnational
terrorist organisations. The tension between
these policy priorities – on the one hand,
constraining China, and on the other,
stabilising Afghanistan and countering
terrorism – is compounded by the fact that
India is in PACOM’s area of responsibility,
while Pakistan is in that of CENTCOM.
This raises significant coordination
challenges within the US government.
Theoretically, Washington could ease the
strategic dilemma by adopting a more
coercive approach to Pakistan in advancing
its goals in Afghanistan and vis-à-vis
terrorist groups. Recent US pronouncements
indicate that Washington is leaning that
way. But practically speaking, Pakistan’s
indispensability to the overall effort limits
Washington’s leverage. Furthermore, a closer
US–India strategic relationship could induce
China to ramp up its support for Pakistan
and its presence in the region, stretching US
resources and forcing India to divert time
and attention to an emboldened Pakistan.
Outlook
Pulling the various threads of US interests in
the region together, overcoming dilemmas,
solving resource scarcity issues, and
working through competing bureaucratic
approaches and imperatives would be
required to develop a coherent, holistic US
strategy for the IOR. The fact that the US
administration – which has been slow to
form a fully staffed and cohesive foreign and
defence policy team – faces a raft of urgent
policy issues in other parts of the world
makes this unlikely in the near-to-medium
term. As a result, US strategy toward the
Indian Ocean will remain one that treats
the IOR as a fragmented regional theatre
subordinate to more global priorities.
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