The Indian Ocean As A New Political and Security Region: Frédéric Grare Jean-Loup Samaan

The Indian Ocean
as a New Political
and Security Region
Frédéric Grare · Jean-Loup Samaan

The Indian Ocean as a New Political and Security
Region
Frédéric Grare · Jean-Loup Samaan
The Indian Ocean

as a New Political
and Security Region
Frédéric Grare Jean-Loup Samaan
European Council on Foreign Middle East Institute, National
Relations University of Singapore
Paris, France Singapore, Singapore
ISBN 978-3-030-91796-8 ISBN 978-3-030-91797-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91797-5
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Acknowledgments
This book is the outcome of a long process initiated a decade and a half
ago when we met and worked together at the Directorate for Strategic
Affairs of the French Ministry of Defense. Both of us already had a famil-
iarity with parts of the Indian Ocean region, but interestingly, not the
same ones. We started by editing a special issue of the French geopolitical
journal Hérodote dedicated to the Indian Ocean that came out in 2011.
In the following years, this first experience led to a series of publications,
never together, never from the same perspective, before each of us went
his own way and deepened his understanding of the region.
Several years later, while one of us was leaving Washington and the
other one moving to Abu Dhabi, we decided to join forces to produce a
book on the entire Indian Ocean region. Over these years we have tried to
complement our respective perspectives on the region, constantly working
from geographically very distant locations.
In the meantime, the Indian Ocean region has considerably evolved,
both under the influence of internal and external factors. These Indian
Ocean dynamics, by no means a finished process, constitute the object
of the present volume. Like the region, our understanding of the region
is still developing. We have tried to capture the said dynamics without
pretending to have always done justice to all of them and we confess that
we are still students of the region.
Like every book, this one owes a debt of intellectual gratitude to many
friends, colleagues and various interlocutors met in seminars or informal
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
meetings, who have inspired the authors, through their publications,

public interventions, but often just by the sheer value of their conver-
sations. We would like to thank in particular, David Brewster, Abhijit
Singh, Darshana Baruah, Jane Chan, Collin Koh, Nathalie Shambi, Raja
Mohan, Shivshankar Menon, Jonathan Fulton, Chris Colley, Mara Karlin,
Abraham Denmark, Toshi Yoshihara and Nilanthi Samaranayake.
To all of them many thanks for their ideas and perspectives. Many of
the ideas expressed in the book were theirs. The writing though was ours
and with it the potential flaws of this book.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Advent of China’s Indian Ocean Strategy 15
3 Between East and West, India’s Revived Engagements 43
4 The US, the Reluctant Offshore Balancer of the Indian
Ocean Rivalries 71
5 The UK and France: An European Struggle
for Regional Influence 99
6 The Gulf Arab Monarchies: From Gateways to Strategic
Players in the Indian Ocean? 125
7 Australia and the ASEAN Member States: From
Interest to Commitment? 151
8 Indian Ocean Africa, from Mere Stakeholder to Future
Power Broker? 179
9 Rethinking the Indian Ocean Security Architecture 205
Index 227
vii
About the Authors
Frédéric Grare is Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on

Foreign Relations (ECFR) where he works on Indo-Pacific issues, and
Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. At Carnegie, his research focusses on Indo-Pacific dynamics, the
search for a security architecture and South Asia Security issues. Prior to
joining Carnegie, Grare served as Advisor at the Center for Analysis, fore-
casting and strategy of the French ministry of foreign affairs, and as head
of the Asia bureau at the Directorate for Strategic Affairs in the French
Ministry of Defense. He also served at the French embassy in Pakistan
and, from 1999 to 2003, as director of the Centre for Social Sciences
and Humanities in New Delhi. Grare has written extensively on security
issues in Asia, in particular South Asia. His most recent books include
India Turns East: International Engagement and US-China Rivalry.
Jean-Loup Samaan is a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute

of the National University of Singapore as well as an associate research
fellow with the French Institute of International Relations. He is also an
adjunct lecturer at Yale-NUS College. His research focusses on Middle
Eastern strategic affairs, in particular Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and the
evolution of the Gulf security system.
Prior to that, Jean-Loup Samaan was a policy analyst at the Directorate
for Strategic Affairs in the French Ministry of Defense (2008–2011),
ix
x ABOUT THE AUTHORS
research advisor at the NATO Defense College (2011–2016), and asso-

ciate professor in strategic studies detached by the US Near East South
Asia Center to the UAE National Defense College (2016–2021). Samaan
has authored four other books and several articles and monographs for
various academic and policy journals such as Survival, Orbis, Comparative
Strategy, Parameters, Politique Etrangère and The International Spectator.
Abbreviations
AFRICOM US Africa Command

ALINDIEN Amiral Commandant de la Zone Maritime de l’océan Indien
(Commander of the Maritime Zone for the Indian Ocean)
APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
AWACS Airborne Warning and Control System
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
CENTCOM US Central Command
CSIS Center for Strategic and International Studies
EEZZ Economic Exclusive Zone
EU European Union
FAZSOI Forces Armées de la zone sud de l’océan Indien (French Forces
in the Southern Indian Ocean Zone)
FDPA Five Power Defence Arrangements
FFDJ Forces Françaises stationnées à Djibouti (French Forces in
Djibouti)
GCC Gulf Cooperation Council
IISS International Institute for Strategic Studies
IMF International Monetary Fund
INDOPACOM US Indo-Pacific Command
IOC Indian Ocean Commission
IONS Indian Ocean Naval Symposium
IOR Indian Ocean Region
IORA Indian Ocean Rim Association
IRGC Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
LNG Liquefied Natural Gas
xi
xii ABBREVIATIONS
MoU Memorandum of Understanding

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PLA People’s Liberation Army
QUAD Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
RCEP Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
SABIC Saudi Basic Industries Corporation
SARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
UAE United Arab Emirates
UK United Kingdom
US United States
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The Indian Ocean has long been this “neglected ocean”, almost marginal
compared to the global centres of powers in the East and the West
(Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 2010: 1). For a long time, it
was hardly perceived as strategically relevant, and the region attracted
only limited attention from scholars and policymakers in contrast to the
Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The region was politically fragmented, with
no common threat capable of mobilizing the littoral states around a few
significant poles.
The expression “Indian Ocean” is said to appear in the early sixteenth
century and derives from the Roman translation of “region of the Indus
River” (Alpers, 2014: 4–5). Noticeably, ancient Greece called it the
Erythraean Sea (Casson, 1989). In the modern era, the terminology led
scholars and practitioners to emphasize the link between the Ocean and
India. In his book India and the Indian Ocean, published in 1945, K.M.
Panikkar, an influential Indian scholar turned diplomat, claimed that India
was shaping the character of the Indian Ocean.
Panikkar established the idea of the Ocean as an extension of the coun-
try’s interests: “the future of India has been determined not on the land
frontiers, but on the oceanic expanse which washes the three sides of
India” (Panikkar, 1945: 7). Today, Panikkar’s belief has become salient in
Indian strategic circles but for a long time, this link between India and its
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
F. Grare and J.-L. Samaan, The Indian Ocean as a New Political
and Security Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91797-5_1
2 F. GRARE AND J.-L. SAMAAN
Ocean was purely symbolic and hid a surprising neglect from the author-
ities in Delhi regarding issues of maritime trade and sea power (Berlin,
2006; Brewster, 2010, 2014).
In fact, the idea of conceptualizing the Indian Ocean region (IOR) as
a geopolitical space, has usually been dismissed by scholars such as Pierre
Chaunu who debunked “the false concept of unity in the Indian Ocean”
(Chaunu, 1979: 218). In 1966, Alastair Buchan, the then-director of
the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote that
“the Indian Ocean is from the strategist’s point of view simply a body of
water surrounded by land, and not a strategic nexus” (Buchan, 1966:
186). The IOR would be too broad and its political entities too different
to fall under a unifying framework.
This situation started to evolve at the turn of the millennium as a
result of the spectacular economic growth of India and China. India
had been dependent on Persian Gulf energy supplies for a long time,
but China became a net importer in the mid-1990s, a phenomenon
with direct implications for both countries and their policies towards the
Indian Ocean. This led India to refresh its strategic perspective. Tradi-
tionally, threats to India’s national security had always come from land.
With China’s navy broadening the scope of its missions to look at distant
regions such as the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa, the Indian Ocean
suddenly took a new strategic significance.
In 2008, the rise of piracy attacks near the coast of Somalia temporarily
brought the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) into the limelight. Piracy, and
the subsequent efforts from the international community to curb its flow
had another, indirect, effect which did change perceptions dramatically.
To engage China militarily, the US invited Beijing to contribute to the
counter-piracy maritime operations. At first, the Chinese response took
the form of a modest deployment of warships in the Horn of Africa
that coordinated their presence with other navies involved in the counter-
piracy efforts (Kaufman, 2009). Quickly though, this unprecedented foray
of the Chinese navy in distant waters led to a steady projection of Chinese
military power way beyond its shores, a phenomenon that would even-
tually culminate with the building of a Chinese base in Djibouti in
2017.
Admittedly, these projections were in no way comparable to those
observed in the Pacific or the South China Sea. China has indeed no
territorial claims in the Indian Ocean. They were nonetheless a depar-
ture from the relative absence of China in the region in previous decades.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
The regional powers therefore anticipated a Chinese threat, in the conti-

nuity of the dynamics observed in the seas adjacent to the Middle Empire.
Chinese ambitions in the region suddenly felt ubiquitous and were no
longer the product of mere speculation by US military planners. Conse-
quently, the Indian Ocean was now portrayed as the potential centre of
future competition between great powers.
As a result, by the end of the 2000s, China’s global growth had
triggered a new interest in the Indian Ocean among scholars and poli-
cymakers. But this interest in the region was limited and primarily driven
by the strategies of external players, namely China and the US. In op-eds,
policy papers or books published during that period, the Indian Ocean
was generally depicted as a mere assembly of littoral states with no unity
(Kaplan, 2010). The region was solely defined by the potential power
game between China and India, with the US as a potential arbiter, or
as the “offshore balancer”, to use Christopher Layne’s concept (Layne,
1997). In other words, the Indian Ocean only constituted a strategic topic
because it was incidentally located at the intersection of a power struggle
between these three global players, or what has been called a strategic
triangle.
This notion of a triangle implies a systemic level of analysis, meaning
that the interactions between the three countries are not simply deter-
mined at the bilateral level but as the result of multiple dynamics. A
strategic triangle can be defined as “an intimate and interdependent
relationship of three states whose existence creates a series of incentives
and constraints for cooperation and conflictual behaviors among those
states […] each state identifies the other two as belonging to the category
either of a security provider or a threat” (Paul & Underwood, 2019;
Woo, 2003: 50). But given the fluctuating interactions between the three
countries, this triangle should not be misread as a bipolar or tripolar
regional system but rather as a more volatile set of strategic relations that
shape, but do not order, the politics of the IOR. It is also this volatility
that explains the limited integration of the IOR as a security community.
It marks moreover the end of any illusion regarding the possibility of
an “Indian Ocean Zone of Peace”. On December 16, 1971, the United
Nations General Assembly had adopted the resolution 2982 making offi-
cially the Indian Ocean a zone of peace and calling the major powers to
remove their military presence from the region. Initiated by Sri Lanka
and Tanzania, the resolution had received strong support from India but
was soon followed by the US militarization of the Chagos archipelago
and Diego Garcia. The arrival of China de facto makes the prospect for
a regional peace approach even more remote and changes the political
landscape. India, as well as many other littoral states no longer want the
US to leave the region.
Today however, these views on great power plays prove unsatisfactory
to grasp the reality of local dynamics and are to a large extent outdated.
True, the politics of the IOR are still defined by the agendas of the three
major countries involved in the area, China, India and the US. But in
addition to this great power competition, new actors and new interre-
gional relations have also emerged—in the Gulf, in Africa, or in Asia.
These rising countries are now willing to use whatever strategic space is
available to them to build their own economic, and sometimes, military
partnerships that altogether are changing the inner logic of the IOR.
The political fragmentation that long characterized the shores of the
Indian Ocean is still a reality and in fact, it enables external powers like
China to find room for their own ambitions by building ties with a myriad
of littoral states. But the uncertainty that accompanies this fragmentation
has also led to an unprecedented—and largely unanticipated—growth in
interregional relations (e.g. relations between the Horn of Africa and the
Persian Gulf or between the latter and Southeast Asia). As a result, if
the US–China–India strategic triangle can still be considered as a major
driver of the regional policies, it is now compounded by the simultaneous
strategies of local countries. In other words, understanding the tensions
at this fault line between great power plays and local ambitions is the
primary challenge for the observers of the IOR.
Unpacking the Dynamics of the New Indian Ocean

One of the primary drivers of this new Indian Ocean remains the
acceleration of China’s global posture, which has been both a factor
of unity and polarization. Arguably, China’s project for the region may
unify the different shores of the Indian Ocean—Africa, the Gulf, South
Asia—through the implementation of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
A vast—and still uncertain—network of economic corridors and port
infrastructures, the BRI strengthens the connectivity between states of
the Indian Ocean and Beijing. If the discussion about the BRI in Western
circles has mostly speculated on the project as an instrument of Chinese
expansionism, it rarely questioned its role as a tool of regional integra-
tion. Beyond the economic prospects, the BRI will eventually impact the
1 INTRODUCTION 5
regional politics of these small states by linking them to Beijing’s agenda.

Therefore, this generates a semblance of unity with numerous countries
on the African or Arabian shores of the Indian Ocean courting China
with investment projects in local infrastructure tailored for the BRI.
But the BRI also engenders polarization, as India fears being side-lined
in its own region by its economic and political consequences. Indeed,
China’s policies have triggered a new political activism from India in the
Indian Ocean. New Delhi had long considered China’s presence in the
area with suspicion. The Look East Policy (LEP) initiated in the early
1990s had been partly a response to China’s growing power and influ-
ence in Asia (Grare, 2017). However, the policy was not specific to the
Indian Ocean. India’s concerns suddenly increased in the 2000s with
China’s naval penetration of the Indian Ocean itself. Then, starting in
2014, under the premiership of Narendra Modi, India accelerated its plans
to build stronger ties with partners in the region, whether in the Persian
Gulf, in Southeast Asia, or in Africa more specifically through cooperation
with Japan. These multiple engagements evidenced the level of concern in
India regarding China’s political and economic initiatives with its neigh-
bouring countries and highlighted the reality of the rivalry between the
two Asian powers.
Adding to this regional conundrum, the role of the US is unlikely to
fade away although the credibility of its commitment has been somewhat
under attack. The US international role in general, and towards the IOR
in particular, is increasingly being questioned. US military capabilities are
still, by far, the most important ones in the region but a general sense
of strategic fatigue and the growing political reluctance in Washington to
conduct interventions abroad eventually impact the local perceptions on
the willingness and ability of the US to shape the dynamics of the IOR
(Posen, 2014).
In this context, the evolution of US strategic views on the Indian
Ocean and in particular the official adoption of an “Indo-Pacific” strategy
by the US government after 2017 is deeply ambivalent. On the one hand,
it reflects the growing belief in Washington that the challenges in both
the Pacific and Indian Oceans are connected and therefore require a new
framework for US diplomatic and military engagements. On the other
hand, the Indian Ocean appears much less important in the Indo-Pacific
equation than the Pacific where the actual US–China rivalry is taking
place and as a result, the IOR may be treated as a mere appendix of the
Pacific theatre. As our research explains, the US remains the indispens-

able player in the Indian Ocean. But the uncertainty generated by its new
Indo-Pacific posture and the military-economic commitment it implies for
the region, are prompting local actors to simultaneously seek closer ties
with Washington, and build new partnerships with other powers, such as
China, to diversify their foreign policy options.
In addition to this first layer of regional politics—namely the strategic
triangle comprising China, India, and the US—a new layer has added
complexity to the political landscape. As mentioned above, the fragmen-
tation of the Indian Ocean has enabled local players to cultivate their own
ambitions. Through this aim, they can develop their military capabilities
and initiate new partnerships to increase their strategic autonomy.
The rise of Gulf monarchies in regional affairs, in the Horn of Africa or
South Asia, highlights the multiplication of local players in the strategic
affairs of the Indian Ocean. For a long time, the international relations
of the Arabian Peninsula were heavily influenced by the US political
and military influence there, but the countries of the Gulf Coopera-
tion Council now nurture desires of strategic autonomy (Samaan, 2018).
Likewise, ASEAN member states, at least those that are littoral states
of the Indian Ocean, are also increasingly active. Traditional actors of
the IOR like Indonesia, Malaysia are indeed developing new ambitions.
Meanwhile, Australia has embarked on an ambitious revision of its own
Indian Ocean policy. If a few years ago, its priorities appeared mostly in
the Pacific region, Canberra is quickly becoming a consequential regional
player in the IOR.
Additionally, if the littoral states of the Indian Ocean are playing a more
active role, external middle powers are also pursuing their own agendas in
the area. Such is the case of the UK and France which have both claimed
a new role in the region, either through the deepening of bilateral ties
with local countries or their activism in regional institutions.
The Argument
In the following pages, we argue that this emerging multipolarity is the
main characteristic of the “new” Indian Ocean. In other words, the “new”
Indian Ocean is neither solely the battleground of a strategic triangle
between the US, India and China nor a vast space of competition among
local players; it is both. And this suggests a new level of complexity in the
regional relationships as the trends do not consist in a mere replacement
1 INTRODUCTION 7
of old actors by new ones. The regional dynamic fuelled by China’s rise as
well as the subsequent international reactions to that rise have generated
a new arms race in the Indian Ocean but also a frantic search for new
partnerships, locally and externally.
As a result, it also increases the interconnection between the various
subregions of the Indian Ocean, such as the Horn of Africa, the Persian
Gulf, South Asia or Southeast Asia. But this interconnection raises more
questions than answers. Whereas the major risk in the Indian Ocean, ten
years ago, was the one of a security vacuum—as reflected by the interna-
tional counter-piracy operations of that era—the new dynamics spin a web
of regional and local powers partnering and competing with each other
without turning these relations into a more structured regional security
system.
In that context, the security architecture of the Indian Ocean remains
at best underdeveloped. The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA)
and, in its own and more specialized way, the Indian Ocean Naval
Symposium (IONS), a forum of navy chiefs, are the only two existing
pan-Indian Ocean organizations. But both are recent creations (the IORA
was created in March 1997 and the IONS in 2008) and their achieve-
ments have been so far less than impressive. In fact, both are essentially
talking shops. The ties they create are not binding and do not equate
mutual security commitments, in a context where, moreover, local and
external players cautiously weigh their options vis-a-vis the evolution of
the US–China–India triangle.
Based on these findings, our book eventually questions the possibility
of a meaningful security architecture, allowing for the management of the
emerging tensions in the Indian Ocean. Traditional impediments to the
development of a functioning regional system—lack of regional integra-
tion and culture, major power asymmetries between littoral states—still
persist. The perspective on the region has therefore been partly imposed
by outside players. But the objectives of both the local and external actors
have changed accordingly, bringing new questions to the fore.
Can power asymmetries in the Indian Ocean region be, if not over-
come at least be mitigated, and the convergence between littoral states
increased so as to allow for greater cooperation? The economic, political
and strategic competition generated by China’s Belt and Road initiative
has generated a dynamic favourable to the littoral states, and created space
for the most entrepreneurial. Throughout this process, the posture of
the major actors is evolving. The US is still the regional hegemon but
its motivations have structurally evolved. With its dominance being chal-
lenged elsewhere, it has less capacity and political will to act alone. It does
remain the “indispensable” player though. It is still willing to provide
security to the region but in a more indirect way, through partnerships
with the more capable regional states. Specifically, this evolution is at the
core of its relationship with India.
How these developments between major actors will ultimately influ-
ence regional stability is still an open question. If they make the current,
very weak, regional institutional framework obsolete, it is not clear
whether a new and strong security situation can emerge from it. Existing
regional subsystems reinforce, rather than diminish the regional fragmen-
tation. This then paves the way for a greater but still largely unexplored
role of the middle powers. Arguably, countries like Australia, France,
India, Japan or the UK do act as a bridge between the smaller littoral
states and the US.
Ultimately, the book argues that security and stability of the IOR
cannot be achieved by the construction or the strengthening of a single
regional organization as the power asymmetries between the actors are
likely to continue to prevent its effectiveness. The security architecture
for the region should therefore emerge from the articulation of these
new realities. It should be ultimately composed of diverse but overlap-
ping structures, including formal military partnerships at the higher end
of the spectrum, and a classical regional organization of littoral states at
the lower one. In between, ad hoc coalitions of middle powers, involved
in both structures, may ensure the gradual meshing of the Indian Ocean.
This would require efforts in local capacity building, to allow the IOR
countries to effectively control their own Exclusive Economic Zones.
This also implies a conceptual enlargement of traditional maritime secu-
rity concepts from the protection of the sea lanes of communications to
the protection of the maritime spaces. But such a process would also
enable a greater involvement of all littoral states, commensurate with their
capabilities, to sustain this multilateral enterprise for the IOR.
Analytical framework and research method.
This book looks at the IOR not as a natural region but as a political
construct. Delineating a geopolitical space implies an arbitrary decision
regarding what different countries may have in common. It suggests an
overarching coherence to a given area with some form of order organizing
relations among these countries. But this assumption can be dismissed
as a mere intellectual construct: geographic proximity does not always
1 INTRODUCTION 9
mean political proximity and it may not translate into a common strategic
environment nor a regional order. This methodological mistake has been
characterized as the “territorial trap” (Agnew, 1994).
This explains the traditional scepticism exposed earlier on the idea of
conceptualizing the IOR as a geopolitical space. But we believe that the
absence of political cohesion or a common security architecture does not
dismiss the IOR as an object of study. Instead, we use here the theory
of “security complex” as understood by Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver
to qualify the IOR as a geopolitical space gathering countries whose
foreign policies share strong commonalities in terms of threats, chal-
lenges and subsequent priorities (Buzan & Wæver, 2003). This analytical
approach does not imply an institutionalized mechanism of governance
which differentiates a security complex from a security community, i.e. a
group of states integrated in order to get “real assurance that the members
of that community will not fight each other physically, but will settle their
disputes in some other way” (Adler & Barnett, 1998: 6). Nor does it
mean that these countries are only partners or allies. According to Buzan,
states that are competing between each other should not be separated but
instead looked together as “their national securities cannot realistically be
considered apart from one another” (Buzan, 1981: 190).
In other words, this book investigates the struggle for power in the
IOR, be it at the level of great powers (i.e. the US, China) or middle and
small powers (such as India, UK, France, Gulf monarchies or ASEAN
countries). Because our research focuses on strategic competition in the
IOR, this also means that policy issues facing the countries in the region
like economic development or climate change are discussed only as long
as they have implications for the dynamics of the Indian Ocean security
complex.
Furthermore, this analytical approach led us to prioritize the study of
state strategies. The book is structured around this idea of a growing
power game among the countries within the IOR. Consequently, we do
not look at social or transnational matters, though we recognize the exis-
tence of common social or religious identities across the region. Likewise,
the last chapter discusses in detail the role of regional organizations, but
our belief is that those are not autonomous actors able to shape the gover-
nance of the IOR on their own but at best, they are the sum of what states
are willing to relinquish (or not) for this multilateral endeavour.
Because the book posits the IOR as a security complex circling around
the relations among competing states, we thought of our research not as a
monograph but rather as a mosaic that arranges together national strate-

gies and policies. Throughout the chapters, we looked at and crossed
the different perspectives defended by all these stakeholders on common
challenges such as maritime security, or the impact of the US–China
competition on local states. This mosaic of national approaches to the
IOR also underlines how the region is a different construct for each of
these actors. Defining the Indian Ocean, be it in an American way or an
Indian Way, then becomes an essential part of the regional competition.
To that aim, our research is based on a rigorous assessment of strate-
gies conducted by the relevant states, looking at both their capabilities
and their intentions. Concretely, our investigation relied on three types
of sources that helped us evaluate these strategies. First, we compiled
and studied the official documentation released, or sometimes leaked,
by governments (official statements, reports, national strategies, or white
papers). Then, we cross-checked this data with a survey of relevant refer-
ences from reliable media outlets, either globally (New York Times,
Washington Post, Defense News, Jane’s) or locally (The Diplomat, Straits
Times, Nikkei Asia) as well as from academic and think tank literature.
Finally, the book also draws on years of participant observation. Both
authors have spent decades navigating between the world of academia,
think tanks and governments in several countries under study (US,
France, India, Pakistan, Singapore, UAE). For this book, these expe-
riences allowed us to conduct interviews and test ideas on a regular
basis with policymakers. Some of these exchanges appear explicitly in
the following chapters but often, they also informed our analysis in the
background.
Structure of the Book

Based on the findings of our research, the following is divided into next
eight chapters that each provides a different perspective on the security
dynamics of the new Indian Ocean. The second chapter explores the
advent of China’s Indian Ocean strategy in the past two decades. It anal-
yses Beijing’s objectives and strategies in the Indian Ocean region as well
as their impact on all other players in the area, underlining specifically
how China has become both a unifying and a polarizing factor. Its Belt
and Road Initiative is turning the Indian Ocean region into a great area
of competition, generating a series of realignments in the process. China
1 INTRODUCTION 11
has been involved in the funding and construction of several commer-

cial and port facilities in countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar,
Bangladesh, and Kenya. It has also built a military base in Djibouti, while
increasing its naval presence in the area, linking China to the Indian
Ocean. All these developments signal a departure from the past rhetoric of
China’s peaceful rise and raise critical questions about China’s intentions
in the Indian Ocean.
Chapter 3 looks at India’s response to the China challenge in the
Indian Ocean. Although the Indian Ocean has historically been consid-
ered in Delhi as India’s backyard, it was also mostly an empty one. As
a result, India has multiplied, albeit with caution, its defence partner-
ships with local actors. It initiated a series of rapprochements with the
small island states of the Indian Ocean through the trilateral initiative.
Of particular significance has been India’s hedging policy with countries
such as Japan and France but also, and more spectacularly, with the US, a
shift from the historically difficult relationship both countries entertained
in the past.
Chapter 4 examines the new US role in the IOR. If the US is still a
major player and by far the most important military actor, its interests in
the region are essentially a by-product of its rivalry with China. Therefore,
the chapter argues that Washington primarily looks at the Indian Ocean in
terms of competition between major powers—namely India, and China—
and tends to see other local issues and players as secondary. Eventually,
this also highlights the American policy priorities: its new Indo-Pacific
strategy indicates explicitly that in the security assessment of governments
in Washington, friction and competition in the Indian Ocean would be
primarily an extension of developments originating from the Asia–Pacific
area. But such an assessment prevents the US from fully grasping the
emerging trends in the area, for instance in the Horn of Africa or the
Gulf.
Starting in Chapter 5, we discuss the role of new players in the IOR,
first with the return of European middle powers, namely France and the
UK. Paris and London still play a significant role through the develop-
ment of their own partnerships. However, the Indian Ocean has been less
an area of cooperation between the Europeans than a region of compe-
tition to gain influence. This eventually undermines the ambitions of
countries which struggle to maintain a global status in light of growing
financial constraints.
Chapter 6 investigates the rise of Gulf Arab monarchies in the area.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
have indeed broadened the scope of their foreign policies and used
economic investments as well as military assets to gain influence in several
subregions of the IOR like the Horn of Africa or South Asia. Although
these developments evidence the growth of local middle players in the
IOR security complex, it also highlights how these new ambitions can stir
regional instability, as evidenced by the consequences of the UAE-Qatar
rivalry on the Horn of Africa.
Chapter 7 questions the evolving policies of Australia and ASEAN
member states vis-a-vis the Indian Ocean. It underlines how a shift in the
Australian perception of China’s rise in the mid-2010s led to a revision of
its regional posture and a growing investment into strategic partnerships
focused on the Indian Ocean, with the US, India and France. Meanwhile
we also explain how ASEAN states are directly exposed to the evolu-
tion of the IOR security complex. However, their strategic involvement is
likely to remain limited because of their limited capabilities and their own
dilemmas vis-a-vis China.
Chapter 8 examines the role of East African states in shaping this new
Indian Ocean. It shows how most of these countries struggle to play a
consequential role. Apart from South Africa, none has currently the ability
to act as a maritime power. Nevertheless, given their natural resources,
East African states remain the focus of attention for regional powers and
therefore their challenge is to turn the power plays into leverage for their
own benefit, to move from the position of mere stakeholders to become
genuine power brokers.
Finally, Chapter 9 builds on these multiple perspectives to reflect on the
challenge of regional governance in the IOR. It argues that the crucial
challenge for the region is to turn the economic and military capac-
ities of the local and external players into instruments of governance,
instead of tools of competition. Specifically, given the proliferation of new
players in the area, decision makers should not exacerbate the struggle for
power but work to reinforce multilateral mechanisms of governance in the
IOR. This could, and should, be done through a pragmatic and flexible
approach that combines the pre-existing regional organizations (despite
all their limitations) and the new ad hoc cooperation frameworks, be it at
the bilateral, trilateral, or multilateral levels. Such an approach may even-
tually prevent the Indian Ocean from turning into the future battleground
of great powers.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
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CHAPTER 2
The Advent of China’s Indian Ocean

Strategy
Although Chinese officials like to boast about the voyages of Admiral

Zheng He in the early fifteenth century (Cartwright, 2019),1 China’s
military presence in the Indian Ocean is a relatively new phenomenon. It
dates back only to the first decade of the twenty-first century. As rightly
observed by US former NSC official and South Asia expert, Joshua White,
“the Indian Ocean has long been, at best, a [very] secondary theatre
for Chinese strategists” (White, 2020). China’s main focus has tradition-
ally been in the Western Pacific where it does seek to reunify Taïwan,
defend China’s maritime territorial claim and constrain US naval domi-
nance. Beijing started investing significantly in the Indian Ocean region
only in the past two decades.
But if the Pacific is likely to remain predominant in China’s calculus,
the Indian Ocean has acquired a new strategic salience in the past two
1 Admiral Zheng He (Aka Cheng Ho, c. 1371–1433 CE) was a Chinese Muslim
explorer who was sent by the Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle (r. 1403–1424 CE) on
seven diplomatic missions to increase trade and secure tribute from foreign powers.
Between 1405 and 1433 CE Zheng He commanded huge fleets to such far-flung places
as India and Sri Lanka but also the Persian Gulf, and East Africa. After the death of
emperor Yongle, his successor, Xuande, put an end to the expeditions and even banned
the construction of any ocean-going ships, prohibiting also those that existed from being
used for voyages beyond Chinese coastal waters. There would be no more great maritime
expeditions and China returned to its isolationist foreign policy.

Switzerland AG 2022
decades. China is attempting to fill the strategic vacuum it believes will

emerge from the supposed waning of US power in the near future, and
prevent or limit any attempt by a littoral state—in particular India—to do
so.
For that purpose, China has been involved in the funding and
construction of a number of commercial and military port facilities
in Gwadar (Pakistan), Hambantota (Sri Lanka), Kyaupkyu (Myanmar),
Sonadia (Bangladesh) and Nairobi (Kenya). Some of these ports are
moreover linked to economic corridors—Bangladesh, China–India–
Myanmar Economic Corridor, China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. All
have been part of the Belt and Road Initiative or requalified as such.
It has also steadily built up its military capabilities in the Indian Ocean,
establishing a permanent presence through the construction of a military
base in Djibouti, while increasing significantly its naval presence in the
area, linking China to the Indian Ocean. Beijing’s profile has indeed risen
considerably since the mid-1990s (US Department of Defense, 2020).2
All of these developments have raised questions about China’s inten-
tions in the Indian Ocean. The issue is not China’s right to protect its
sea lanes of communication but the conflict of interest between China
and previous stakeholders in the littoral states of the Indian Ocean which
remain suspicious of China’s motives in light of its past and present
behaviour in the South China Sea. China’s infrastructure building and
loan policy—going often beyond the reimbursement capacity of recip-
ient states—has provided Beijing with economic and political capital
which many fear could be turned into military assets. This could even-
tually provide China with area denial capabilities around the entire Indian
Ocean, especially as China has already set up its first naval base abroad, in
Djibouti.
Interestingly, the discussion about the BRI in Western circles has
mostly speculated on the project as an instrument of Chinese expan-
sionism. But it rarely questions its role as a tool of regional integration.
Beyond the economic prospects, the BRI will eventually impact the
regional politics of these small states by linking them to Beijing’s agenda.
Therefore, this generates a semblance of unity with numerous countries
on the African or Arabian shores of the Indian Ocean courting China with
2 According to the US Department of Defense, the PRC has also likely considered
Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates,
Kenya, Seychelles, and Tanzania, as locations for PLA military logistics facilities.
2 THE ADVENT OF CHINA’S INDIAN OCEAN STRATEGY 17
investment projects in local infrastructure tailored for the BRI. But it also
engenders polarization, as India fears being side-lined in its own region
by the economic and political consequences of the BRI.
In that perspective, the acceleration of China’s posture in the region,
has been both a factor of unity and polarization, and overall it is arguably
one of the primary drivers behind the emergence of a new Indian Ocean.
It has unified the different shores of the Indian Ocean—Africa, the Gulf,
South Asia—through the implementation of its Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI). A vast—and still uncertain—network of economic corridors and
port infrastructures, the BRI strengthens the connectivity between states
of the Indian Ocean and Beijing.
But it is still unclear to many whether these economic projects of the
BRI have to be factored in within the context of China’s growing military
assertiveness or if the process should be understood the other way around.
The major naval investments of China, its gunboat diplomacy in the South
China Sea, the construction of its first overseas military base in Djibouti,
alongside increased military cooperation with small states in the Indian
Ocean, are all signals of a departure from the past rhetoric of China’s
peaceful rise. In this perspective, both the revised naval posture of China
and the BRI epitomize the new ambitions of Xi Jinping in the region and
globally.
Against that backdrop, this chapter will detail the gradual but fast
emergence of China as an Indian Ocean actor. It will analyse Beijing’s
objectives and strategies in the IOR as well as their impact as China has
become at the same time a unifying and a polarizing factor. Largely absent
from the Indian Ocean until 2008, China has now built a military base
in Djibouti, while increasing significantly its naval presence in the area.
The Indian Ocean leg of the BRI will be examined in this context in
order to explain how China has turned the IOR into a security complex,
generating a series of realignments in the process.
China’s Evolving Naval

Presence in the Indian Ocean
China has not officially articulated its interest or strategy in the IOR.
Beijing’s communication about its presence in the region oscillates
between the claims of the right to the status of an “Indian Ocean
State” because of Heng Tze voyages in the region, as was asserted by
a Chinese representative during the 2018 Indian Ocean Conference in
Colombo and the denial of an existing Chinese “strategy” in the region.

China’s presence and intentions in the Indian Ocean are therefore best
understood as part of Beijing’s larger maritime ambition and strategy.
Maritime Concerns and Responses in China’s Defence White Papers

As stated by Indian scholar Raja Mohan, “China’s Indian Ocean strategy
must also be seen as driven by Beijing’s sense of its own rise and its
strategic imagination as a natural global power” (Mohan, 2012). This was
reflected by the evolution of the ten defence white papers that China has
released since 1998 to explain its national defence policy. Each of them
indicated a new step in Beijing’s naval build-up and overseas positioning.
All of them have to be examined in parallel with China’s economic rise
and its subsequent capacity to build up its military apparatus.
Its 1998 defence white paper was indeed in sharp contrast with the
latest such document, stating that “China does not station any troops
or set up any military bases in any foreign country” (States Council of
the People’s Republic of China, 1998). On the contrary, the last defence
white paper, released in 2019, insisted on the need “to safeguard China’s
maritime rights and interests; to safeguard China’s security interests in
outer space, electromagnetic space and cyberspace; to safeguard China’s
overseas interests; and to support the sustainable development of the
country” (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of
China, 2019), openly assuming the existence of a PLAN base in Djibouti.
In between those two documents, other defence white papers essen-
tially marked the progress in advancing China’s capabilities for naval
warfare. The 2000 defence white paper which stated that the navy had
“such arms as the surface, submarine, naval aviation, coastal defence and
marine corps, as well as other specialized units” (Information office of
the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2000) was the first
indication that China had acquired the capability of offshore defensive
operations. The 2002 defence white paper indicated that China had not
only nuclear-powered submarines but also nuclear counter-attack capa-
bilities and specified the primary duties of the naval forces (Information
office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2002).
The following two papers, released respectively in 2004 and 2006 insisted
respectively on the enhancement of naval capabilities in both weaponry
and equipment (Information office of the State Council of the People’s
Republic of China, 2004) as well as the gradual “extension of the strategic
depth for offshore defensive operations” (Information Office of the State

Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2006). Both insisted on the
enhancement of capabilities in integrated maritime operations.
Interestingly, the navy was given a new and unprecedented importance
in the 2008 white defence paper. The long, almost four pages develop-
ment contrasts with the sober one or two paragraphs that were dedicated
to the corps in previous documents. Yet the level of details given to the
PLAN development in the document is less significant than the context in
which it does take place. In 2007 China had surpassed the US as a leading
exporter (Brewster, 2018). It also had to witness the first multinational
naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal.
2008 was a landmark. It did see the organization of the Olympic
Games in Beijing, a political triumph for the authorities, but Chinese
performances were not limited to the stadium. 2008 was also the year
of the most consequential financial crisis since 1929, surpassed only
in 2020 by the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
China’s leadership (among others) interpreted the crisis as a sign of the
decline of the West, an opportunity to seize but also the beginning of
a period of harsh competition, a trend underlined by the 2008 white
paper which argues that “struggles for strategic resources, strategic loca-
tions and strategic dominance have intensified”, suggesting moreover
that the PLAN should develop “capabilities of conducting cooperation in
distant waters” (Information Office of the States Council of the People’s
Republic of China, 2009). It was also in 2008 that China decided to send
a naval contingent for anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden (Mohan,
2012).
Subsequent defence white papers were all variations on this need to
operate further away from its own shores in order to protect China’s over-
seas interests. The defence white paper of 2010 insisted notably on the
development of capabilities to conduct operations in distant waters and
the building of both shore infrastructures and surface logistical platforms
allowing the PLAN to operate far away from its domestic bases (Infor-
mation Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China,
2011). The 2012 document coincided with the launching of China’s first
aircraft carrier Liaoning (Information Office of the State Council of the
People’s Republic of China, 2013). The PLAN had entered a new phase.
Indeed the 2015 white paper, which reiterated the PLA’s assign-
ment “to safeguard the security of China’s overseas interests” and the
need for the PLAN to “gradually shift from ‘offshore water’ defence to
the combination of offshore water defence with ‘open seas protection’”

(Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of
China, 2015), clearly stated China’s intention to “seize the strategic initia-
tive in military competition” (Information Office of the State Council
of the People’s Republic of China, 2015). Unsurprisingly it preceded
only by a few months the beginning of China’s ambitious modernization
programme of its armed forces.
The Determinants of China’s Presence in the Indian Ocean

There is also a body of writing by Chinese scholars and former offi-
cials, which enumerate China’s maritime interests in the Indian Ocean,
although mostly in general terms. Zhou Bo, from the PLA Academy of
Military Science, states for example that “China has only two purposes
in the Indian Ocean: economic gains and the security of the Sea lines of
Communications” (Zhou, 2014). China’s outreach to the Indian Ocean
is indeed a strategic consequence of its economic performances. However,
this hardly accounts for the totality of China’s involvement in the region.
Chinese motivations for entering the Indian Ocean, as well as Beijing’s
ultimate objectives in the region, are still partly uncertain. If its economic
motivations—China’s dependence over Middle Eastern and African oil—
are obvious, other factors are still, to some extent, a matter of speculation
and best apprehended through China’s positioning in the area. Even then,
perceptions of Chinese global objectives influence the interpretation of
Chinese intent in the area and make the understanding of its regional
policy a highly subjective and complex endeavour.
Although China’s maritime trajectory in the Indian Ocean has been
largely determined by its economic rise, its naval outreach to the IOR is
not exclusively a consequence of that growth. China entered the Indian
Ocean, even though in a modest way, before any economic require-
ments compelled it to do so. The People Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
conducted its first port visits to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
between 16 November 1985 and 19 January 1986, demonstrating the
PLAN capability to operate in the Indian Ocean Region, long before
China became an economic power. However, the next port calls in the
region did not take place before the mid-1990. China had then become
a net oil importer.
China’s energy imports rely heavily on the freedom of navigation in
the Malacca Strait. China became a net oil importer in 1993 and has
been growing ever since. China is today the largest importer of energy in
the world. More than half of its oil imports come from the Middle-East,
Africa and Southeast Asia, and about one fifth of the imported crude
oil travels through the Malacca Strait. Moreover, besides energy, rising
demand for resources such as fisheries, and raw material—minerals and
metals but also agricultural raw materials like natural rubber, raw cotton
and various fibers—but also trade which grew exponentially after China
joined the WTO in 2001, increased the country’s dependence on the
high seas. In China’s perception, entering the Indian Ocean was only
one part—though an essential one—of protecting its domestic economic
development.
In this context, the term “Malacca dilemma” appeared in a 2003
speech by President Hu Jintao to a Chinese Communist Party conference,
in which he contrasted China’s growing dependence on the Indian Ocean
and the Malacca Strait with US dominance on both the region (Mohan,
2012) and the Strait itself. Moreover, in China’s perception, its “Malacca
dilemma” was exacerbated by the Strait’s geographic conditions, piracy
activities as well as India’s “Look East” policy and strengthening of its
naval power (Li, 3:4, 2017). Indeed, in June 2012, the US and Singa-
pore agreed on the US deployment of littoral combat ships in Singapore
(Li, 3:4, 2017). India, on the other side had started building its own
defence networks in the area in the early 1990s as part of its “Look East
policy”, establishing in 2001 its East Naval Command in the Andaman
and Nicobar islands to monitor maritime activities in the area west of
the Malacca Strait and initiating a rapprochement with the US which led
both countries to cooperate in the Indian Ocean. Interestingly, if this
emerging cooperation was a way for the US to counterbalance China’s
growing influence, India was too cautious in its approach to China to be
anything but ambivalent at best, refuting any idea that it might act as a
counterweight to Beijing and refusing to be considered as such.
These developments made China’s trade increasingly vulnerable to any
disruption in the area. They also contributed to Beijing’s perception that
the two main obstacles to its increased presence in the Indian Ocean
would not only be the US, but India as well. Hence the need for Chinese
decision-makers to build naval forces capable of protecting its sea lines of
communication and to look for ways to bypass the Malacca Strait, both
of which had subsequent implications for the perception of China’s role
and intentions in the Indian Ocean.
Yet subsequent development should have led China to adopt a more

cautious approach as external and littoral powers alike, intended to
develop cooperative interactions with Beijing in the region. China did
enter the Indian Ocean with the blessing of some Western powers willing
to engage with Beijing and thus to contribute to China’s socialization
into international norms of behaviour. Even India did officially acknowl-
edge to some extent the legitimacy of China’s presence in the Indian
Ocean when the two countries agreed to work together to tackle piracy
in the Gulf of Aden, during the visit of then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
(Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 2010). Indeed China
did participate in anti-piracy operations, although in its own separate way,
and essentially to protect Chinese ships. It did patrol the Gulf of Aden
and the Arabian Sea, dispatching twenty four naval contingents between
2008 and 2016 (Brewster, 2018). By the time it did open its base in
Djibouti, supposedly to support its anti-piracy operation, piracy was no
longer a major threat in the area. Perceptions about China’s presence in
the Indian Ocean started to change dramatically. China had always stated
that its intentions were peaceful and its leaders justified its military build
up, including its naval one, by defensive needs as well as their willingness
to contribute to world stability. In reality it only managed to create a new
security dilemma.
The Indian Ocean: From the String

of Pearls to the Belt and Road Initiative
Subsequent developments were an attempt to integrate these different,
although complementary, logics. The Indian Ocean segment of China’s
Maritime Silk Road was more than a network of port infrastructures and
various facilities in the Indian Ocean. It was an attempt at reshaping
regional dynamics (Brewster, 2018).
Chinese investments in the Indian Ocean Region did not start with the
BRI. Nor were they exclusively determined by energy security concerns.
In order to develop its remote—and quite peripheral—provinces of
Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan, it needed to reconnect them to the global
economy and therefore to the sea. Both concerns led to the build up in
the Indian Ocean of the famous “String of Pearl” which was supposed
to be later articulated with three major corridors, one linking Kashgar in
Xinjiang to Gwadar in Pakistan, one linking Lhasa to Calcutta and a last
one connecting Yunnan to Southeast Asia through Myanmar.
The term “String of Pearls”, coined by US defence contractor Booz

Allen Hamilton and used for the first time in 2004 in a report enti-
tled “Energy Futures” was a geopolitical theory about China’s supposed
intentions in the Indian Ocean. It did refer to the facilities that China was
trying to establish along its Indian Ocean shipping routes, from China’s
mainland to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, via Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri
Lanka, the Maldives and Pakistan. Although the facilities built or devel-
oped by China were civilian, it was often assumed that they were part
of a longer scheme under which China would increase its military pres-
ence in the area in order to protect its commercial routes but also project
power overseas. Chinese officials and analysts alike, have always denied
such objectives, claiming instead that China had only peaceful intentions
(Zhou, 2014).
The idea that China was trying to establish permanent footholds in
the Indian Ocean soon became a defining feature of the debate regarding
China’s perspectives in the region and a symptom of China’s growing
influence in the area. Many analysts in the US and even more so in India,
saw the concept as a way to challenge either US hegemony, or Indian
position in the region, reflecting more in the latter case India’s own inse-
curities. Others though, including in China, remained sceptical about the
rationale of trying to secure China’s energy supplies essentially through
military means (Mohan, 2012).
The tone of the debate changed with the launch of the Belt and Road
Initiative announced by President Xi Jinping during an official visit to
Kazakhstan and Indonesia in September and October 2013. The initia-
tive aimed officially at the integration of the region into a cohesive
economic area through building infrastructure, and broadening trade.
It was to be a “win–win” endeavour for participating countries and was
welcome in many states desperate for foreign investments. In the Indian
Ocean, Chittagong in Bangladesh, Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in
Sri Lanka, Kyaupkyu in Myanmar, Malacca in Malaysia or Mombasa in
Kenya, already part of the “String of Pearls”, became the symbols of the
new, all-encompassing policy. But in 2017 the inauguration by China in
Djibouti of its first ever naval base abroad, was perceived by regional
and non-regional actors alike (with the exception of China’s traditional
partners) as a revealing factor. China had finally unveiled its geopolitical
ambitions.
In this context, China’s planned economic corridors took a special
significance. Thousands of kilometers from the sea, western China did not
enjoy the easy access to global markets. Neither could it attract significant
foreign investment. The corridors were therefore logical extensions to the
oceans (Garver, 185, 2006).
Chinese thinking about linking the Yunnan province to the Bay of
Bengal emerged in the mid-1980s. Chinese development planners under-
stood that new transport infrastructures were key to the development
of provinces such as Yunnan. In 1989, Myanmar abandoned its tradi-
tional policies of economic isolationism but its governance and human
rights record kept it isolated from most western countries. China saw an
opportunity and shut down the armed insurgency led by the Burmese
Communist Party. The Myanmar government welcomed its involvement
in the modernization of its transport infrastructure. China modernized
the road between Kunming and Mandalay, and set up the Irrawaddy
corridor (by the name of the Irrawaddy river used by the corridor), a
combination of roads, river, rail and oceanic harbour, linking Kunming
to the port of Kyaukpyu on the Ramree Island. The Irrawaddy corridor
saved over a week for transport to and from Yunnan and the sea (Garver,
185, 2006). In 2018, China and Myanmar started negotiations for a new
phase of transport infrastructure building between the same two cities
but with new roads and speed trains, aimed at furthering the economic
integration between the two countries, the China Myanmar Economic
Corridor (CMEC) (Hammond, 2018).
Similarly, the strategic partnership between Beijing and Islamabad did
offer China the perspective of an additional strategic outlet on the Indian
Ocean. China’s decision, in 1964 to build the Karakoram Highway,
linking its Xinjiang province to Pakistan aimed at outflanking India’s posi-
tion on the Kashmir dispute. In the early 2000s, the modernization of
the highway was supposed to facilitate economic integration and allow an
increasingly globalized China to access Pakistan’s market while consol-
idating China’s strategic position vis-à-vis India. As part of an effort
to make Kashgar a hub for Central Asia and the subcontinent, China
considered plans to move the Xinjiang rail network into Pakistan (Mohan,
2012).
The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), launched on April
20, 2015 during Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan did nothing other than
formalized projects which had been discussed for almost two decades. The
CPEC was conceived as a set of transport infrastructure projects linking
the Xinjiang province to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan. It did
include the upgrading of the road between Rawalpindi and the Chinese
border, the construction of a highway between Lahore and Karachi as well

as the renovation of the railway between Peshawar and Karachi which
was supposed to be extended to Kashgar at a later stage. In the mean-
time, China completed the building of the first phase of the Gwadar port,
in Balochistan, in 2016. On November 13, 2016, Nawaz Sharif, Prime
Minister of Pakistan, along with the Army Chief, flagged off the first
ship from Gwadar that was carrying a consignment from China (Rajesh,
2018).
Both corridors contributed to the perception that China was up for
more than economic infrastructure. That both the CPEC and CMEC
did create tensions in Pakistan and Myanmar respectively, because of
a perceived loss of sovereignty is irrelevant here. They increased the
impression that the progression of China on its periphery was irresistible
and access to the Indian Ocean inevitable. Because the initiative initially
displayed a sense that China’s rise was unstoppable, it also triggered
unexpected reactions in the region. As observed by US analyst Nilanthi
Samarayake, it did incentivize India to pursue increased naval presence
and capabilities, and heightened the concerns of the smaller regional
states about the effect of Chinese projects in their countries and focused
unprecedented attention by major powers on their national interests in
the Indian Ocean (Samaranayake, 14:2, 2019).
The Looming Military Dimension

With regard to the previous considerations, it has been obvious to many
analysts, Indians in particular, for some time, that China had a real
interest in an increased military presence in the Indian Ocean. The
Indian Ocean Region contributes about 20% of China’s international
trade in value terms, in large part because of its dependence on energy
and raw material over the Middle-East and Africa. It can be reasonably
argued that the BRI demonstrates that China is seeking dominant access
and influence through a new geographical contextualization of what
Indian analyst Raghavendra Mishra calls “Nareland” (Natural Resources
Land) (Sakhuja & Chan, 2016), that the factors of geo-economics are
the driver for its politics and security policy. But, it remains unclear
whether China intends to replace traditional great powers like the US,
by positioning itself as a viable alternative strategic partner. The extent
of this military presence, the nature of the activities that China intends to
conduct, the pace of its military build up, remain uncertain. A decade ago,
many expected China to develop its presence slowly, and were sceptical
about China’s intention to build up bases.
But the PLAN developed its military presence in the Indian Ocean
at a faster pace than expected. It deployed a nuclear submarine in the
Indian Ocean for the first time in 2013 (Flynn, 2014), a move followed by
two ports visits to Sri Lanka by a conventional submarine and its support
ship in 2014. The conduct of evacuation operation in Yemen, and the
opening of a base in Djibouti in 2017, indicate that China intends to play
a significant role in the area. It has also struck agreements giving it access
to bases and ports in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and,
together with Russia, has conducted naval exercises with South Africa and
Iran, respectively in November and December 2019 (Upadhyaya, 2019).
Moreover, the ongoing build up of three aircraft carriers, initiated in
2015, demonstrates that over the past years, China has systematically
chosen the maximalist option in the build up of its naval capabilities. This
represents a significant departure from the gradual, incremental process
that characterized China’s approach to international relations since Mao’s
death. The PLA has acquired the rapid-reaction capabilities required
to support the BRI and more generally, safeguard China’s citizens and
interests. Whether it has other ambitions remains an open question.
Joshua T. White, former Senior Advisor and Director for South
Asian Affairs at the US. National Security Council, argues that the
PLAN pursues “five meta-mission objectives” in the Indian Ocean: “1)
conduct non-combat activities focused on protecting Chinese citizens and
investments, and bolstering China’s soft power influence; 2) undertake
counterterrorism activities, unilaterally or with partners, against organiza-
tions that threatens China; 3) collect intelligence in support of operational
requirements, and against key adversaries; 4) support efforts aimed at
coercive diplomacy towards small countries in the region; and 5) enable
effective operations in a conflict environment” (White, 2020). China
intends to hold at risk US or Indian assets in the event of a wider conflict
and develops its ability to deter, mitigate, or terminate a state-sponsored
interdiction of trade.
White also points the deployment of a number of surface assets such as
guided missiles cruisers, destroyers, frigates, large amphibious transports
docks an emerging fleet of even larger amphibious assault ships, as well
as support and auxiliary vessels, while the PLA Air Force is expanding
its long range airlift fleet (White, 2020). Although there is still some
discrepancy between the missions the PLAN has been asked to pursue and
its actual capabilities, the latter are definitely consistent with the stated
objectives and constitute already a significant force. Moreover, if they
are consistent with non-combatant operations, questions can be raised
about the nature of the threat they are supposed to address. Counter-
piracy, for example, is no longer a major issue in the Gulf of Aden.
This did not prevent China from deploying a guided missile destroyer
(The Taiyan), as well as a frigate (The Jingzhou) as well as some 690
naval personnel, during the COVID 19 crisis, for the protection of ships
and vessels passing through the region, at a time when the Interna-
tional Maritime Bureau’s reported zero hijacking during the preceding
two quarters (Kumar, 2020).
Although they publicly maintain the fiction that China’s naval presence
is solely in the interest of the common good and the legitimate defence
of Chinese interests, officials and experts are increasingly open about
the fact that if the US can maintain overseas bases, then so can China.
Counter-piracy has indeed been an alibi for China to justify its presence
on distant shores and train its blue water navy. Interestingly the PLAN
has routinely deployed diesel-electric submarines (SSK) in the Indian
Ocean, officially for counter-piracy operations, but in reality, according
to French analyst Iskander Rehman, to both accustom its submariners
to distant sea lane protection and surface group defence, as well as
to gain a better understanding of the Indian Ocean complex environ-
ment, and map the northern Indian Ocean underwater topography “with
future submarine operations in mind” (Brewster, 2018). They may have
also assessed the vulnerabilities of underseas cables (White, 2020). The
unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) deployed in the Indian Ocean in
December 2019 (Shukla, 2020) are meant to perform the same kind of
tasks. Both submarines and UUVs provide China with intelligence about
the operations conducted by the other navies in the Indian Ocean.
Such activities are not exclusive to the PLAN and have been performed
by other navies in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. But they are a
clear indication that China’s actual intentions go far beyond its stated
limited objectives. They also indicate that China seems to look increas-
ingly towards establishing some form of geostrategic parity (Mahadevan,
2014).
Changing the Nature of the Strategic

Issue in the Indian Ocean
China’s military build up in the Indian Ocean, although the most spec-
tacular, is only one facet of Beijing’s attempt to change the strategic
landscape in the Indian Ocean. Most of the debate on maritime security in
the IOR has been framed in terms of freedom of navigation and focused
essentially on the protection of the Sea Lines of Communication. But,
although this is a legitimate concern, everyone, including China, has a
stake in maintaining international shipping.
China has obviously no interest in risking the interruption of the flow
of energy from the Middle-East and Africa. It is, however, blurring the
lines. Most of the port infrastructures it is building in the Indian Ocean
are dual-use facilities, which can be utilized for both commercial and
military purposes, which make them useful vectors of influence or even
control when massive debts are turned into equity. The impact of the
so-called “debt trap strategy” has been so far limited to Sri Lanka with
the port of Hambantota but could be extended. The calculation may
be different for marine-based resources extraction, whether it is fishing,
seabed mining or oil and gas extraction but China follows the same
pattern of action, advancing its geostrategic interests, through various
economic activities.
No other activity illustrates the geostrategic dimension of these
economic activities as well as fisheries. No country has utilized fishing
for geostrategic gains like China has. And although the phenomenon is
more obvious in the South China Sea, fisheries have been a very effi-
cient instrument of China’s penetration of the East African littoral and
the South-west Indian Ocean. A relatively recent example illustrates the
point.
On September 5, 2018, China and Madagascar signed a framework
agreement on the blue economy, during the Forum on Sino-African
Cooperation, held in Beijing. Worth $2.7 billion the agreement was
concluded for ten years. It covered five essential areas for the Mala-
gasy fishing economy: the construction of shipyards, the development of
fishing, the creation of aquaculture farms, control of illegal and illegal
fishing and the creation of maritime training centres (Cherel & Hussenot-
Desenonges, 2019). However, 700 million dollars were to be devoted
over three years to the exploitation of the fishery resources of Malagasy
territorial waters, in return for Chinese investments. 330 Chinese trawlers
would have been armed for this purpose for annual catches unofficially
estimated at 130,000 tons. Signed two days before the resignation of
President Rajaonarimampianina left to campaign, contested for its opaque
and oversized nature—the agreement was never made public while its
implementation would have amounted to doubling the tonnage of catches
taken annually in the Malagasy Exclusive Economic Zone, even though
Madagascar did not have the capacity for real stock assessments to be
carried out. The project very quickly encountered opposition from fishing
communities, scientists and more generally from civil society. The project
was suspended after the election of a new president.
If carried out, the agreement would have deprived Madagascar of some
precious halieutic resources, but also provided China with direct and
indirect means of control on Madagascar Exclusive Economic Zone, exac-
erbating moreover the tensions between Madagascar and France over the
Scattered islands in which water Malagasy fishermen would inevitably have
been pushed, weakening at the same time French and Western influence at
a time when China is trying to assert its influence over the Mozambique
channel.
The combination of economic concerns backed up by military means,
is not a new phenomenon. The novelty resides in the fact that the
Chinese fishing fleet is being used as a substitute for the PLAN. Chinese
fishing flotillas are acting as unofficial militias, which, used opportunis-
tically, provide China with control and influence over areas China is
preying. Similarly, Chinese fishing vessels, as well as other civilian ships,
are also used for intelligence collection. India regularly reports the pres-
ence of Chinese vessels fishing illegally near the coast of Maharashtra
while a number of studies point out that these vessels often do not keep
their Automatic Identification System (AIS) despite the fact that this is
mandatory under international law (Bhatt, 2020).
China has in fact used all categories of civilian vessels as potential
informants. Oceanographic research is one such example. It does provide
information useful to both civilian research and military planners and
China has been investing massively in the field over the past few years
(Martinson & Dutton, 2018). The bulk of China’s out of area research
activities is taking place between the First and Second chain of islands in
the Pacific but the Indian Ocean is also part of its target list. In December
2019 one such Chinese research vessel was intercepted near the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands and forced out of the territorial water by the Indian
Navy (Bhatt, 2020).
China’s Indian Ocean Diplomacy

Most of the debate about China’s diplomacy and quest for influence in the
Indian Ocean has focused on the BRI and its militarization. The debate
around the BRI is usually articulated around the so-called “Debt trap
diplomacy”, the idea that the BRI could ensnare participating countries
into so much debt that their only option would be to cede their sovereign
rights to China in exchange for its use of their infrastructure and terri-
tory (Samaranayake, 2019). Indeed the hunger of many littoral states of
the Indian Ocean for infrastructure financing greatly facilitated China’s
presence and influence in the region. Militarization on the other side, is
usually examined through the prism of great power rivalry, in particular
China–US or China–India relations.
China’s Engagement with the Smaller Indian Ocean States

China’s engagement with smaller Indian Ocean states deserves to be
examined in this context. Following the inauguration of the BRI in 2013,
China promoted its relations with four small island states, (Sri Lanka,
the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles) to unprecedented levels with
the expectation that they would “play the role of China’s natural part-
ners” (Ren, 2020). More than 50 high-level visits (ministerial level and
above) between China and the four island states have taken place since
the launching of the BRI in 2013 (Ren, 2020).
Geographically, these four island states protect the Sea Lines of
Communications. Sri Lanka and the Maldives are sitting astride the most
direct route between China and the Middle-East while Mauritius and
the Seychelles are located on the Asia-Africa sea routes. Unsurprisingly
China sees its relations with the island states as a worthwhile investment
to safeguard its energy security and economic interests.
China also sees the four island states as potential leverage points in
its competition with the US and India. Having a base on the periphery
of India would unquestionably help China increase India’s vulnerability.
China has indeed been trying to acquire facilities in the vicinity of India
for decades. In 1986, it attempted to buy one of the Maldives islands on
lease. In December 2011, China announced that it would set up its first
military base abroad in Seychelles. It never retracted from this project but
military analysts later declared that the planned facility did not amount to
a military base (Shubham, 2018). Officially, China was simply considering
seeking supply facilities at appropriate harbours in order to support its

anti-piracy activities.
The four island states also have a political value for China and hold
the key to Beijing’s participation in the existing regional or subregional
organizations. Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles are
all members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). Mauritius
and the Seychelles are also members of the Indian Ocean Commission
(COI) a much smaller, yet more effective, intergovernmental organiza-
tion bringing together five francophone member states of the South-west
Indian Ocean: the Union of Comoros, France (because of La Réunion),
Madagascar, Mauritius and the Seychelles. China is an important dialogue
partner of the IORA and an observer at COI which borders the Mozam-
bique channel.
In this perspective, and even though they vary greatly by country, trade
and infrastructure projects, as well as financial contributions to regional
organizations, have been effective vectors of Beijing’s influence. But a
careful examination of the actual relationships between China and these
states demonstrates that this influence is not the mechanical result of some
neglect by the Western or even neighbouring powers. Interestingly, China
is not a top export destination for any of these small states, all eager to
trade with the US and have a long established economic relationship with
India. However, China is the largest export destination for Sri Lanka and
the third largest for the Maldives which has also been the first small South
Asian state to sign a free trade agreement in 2017 (Samaranayake, 2019).
China’s penetration of the island states’ economies is deepest in
terms of cooperation on development for which they lack the necessary
financing, while sometimes no longer eligible for concessional assistance
thanks to their own economic success. Sri Lanka, often cited as the case
of a debt trapped country, reflects this dynamic. As the country transi-
tioned from a low to middle-income status, it lost access to concessional
resources from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Sri Lanka had no choice but to seek commercial loans at commercial
interest rates and shorter repayment schedules to finance its infrastruc-
ture projects. In the Hambantota port project, its inability to generate
enough revenue to repay in US dollars, the country had to lease the port
for 99 years. Not all cases are obviously that dramatic but as US analyst
Nilanthi Samaranayake points out “transitioning middle-income countries
that achieve their next-step income goals, like Sri Lanka, are inadver-
tently penalized: they continue to have development priorities but have
less access to grants and concessional loan terms to finance their infras-
tructure” (Samaranayake, 2019). It is important to note in this context,
that, irrespective of the value they attach to their development projects,
smaller Indian Ocean states, in particular the island states, “usually view
China as a fall-back option and not necessarily as a partner of first choice”
(Samaranayake, 2019).
Other, more political, dimensions also have to be taken into account.
China’s political engagement with the island states is seen by the latter
as an opportunity to get better terms in their exchanges with the
larger powers. China is investing politically, economically and strategically,
patiently cultivating countries with financial vulnerabilities, thus estab-
lishing the elements of a long-term presence and influence, which other
large regional states like India are trying to counter. This emerging multi-
polarity is seen as a blessing by most island states which suddenly saw
themselves courted by all the protagonists.
Federating the Revisionist Powers of the Indian Ocean: Pakistan,

Russia and Iran
Federating the revisionist powers in the Indian Ocean around its own
agenda, even if only partially, is another dimension of China’s regional
policy. Whatever the motivations of the frustrated partners, China is keen
to pay on the existing convergences even if they do not fully coincide.
Pakistan, Russia and Iran are the three most salient examples of this
convergence.
China’s partnership with Pakistan is unquestionably the oldest Beijing
ever held in the region. Founded on a shared enmity with India, “Bei-
jing’s secretive ties with Islamabad have run closer than most formal
alliances” (Small, 2015) and has, in the early 1980s, transferred to
Pakistan the technology and materials allowing it to build its own nuclear
bomb. Indeed, because of its conflict with India, Pakistan is also seen as a
useful instrument in Beijing’s rivalry with New Delhi. China, on the other
side, is seen by Pakistan as a potential exporter of development infrastruc-
ture, a diplomatic protector, and a security guarantor, thanks to its arms
sales and diplomatic protection (Small, 2015). In spite of this, China is
cautious in its approach to Pakistan. Beijing is willing to use Pakistan as a
leverage against Delhi but does not trust Pakistan and is unwilling to let
it dictate the terms of its relationship with India. China is also unwilling
to support Pakistan’s adventurism and will protect the country only as
long as China’s own interests are not affected (Tellis et al., 2020). But,
as observed by US-based analyst Andrew Small, Pakistan now lies at the
heart of China’s potential connection between the energy rich Middle-
East and Western China, and constitutes an asset to China to navigate its
interests in the Middle-East. As a result, Pakistan is gradually becoming a
staging post for China’s take off as a naval power.
However, Pakistan is no longer China’s sole partner in the Indian
Ocean. Nor is India the only hurdle to Beijing’s ambitions in a region
where the US is still seen as a dominant power. Their common opposi-
tion to the West in general and Washington in particular has therefore led
to a growing naval cooperation between China and Russia in the Indian
Ocean.
Russia has a long history in the Indian Ocean. In the 1970s and 1980s,
the Soviet Union had constituted a clientele of littoral states in order to
reduce Western regional influence. Interestingly, this policy also included
a strong anti-China component. As a result of the Sino-Soviet split of
1969, the USSR’s strategy had aimed at completing China’s encirclement
in the South. Moscow had thus conducted a very active naval diplomacy
in the region and ensured a permanent naval presence in the Indian
Ocean, as well as a network of logistical support facilities (Delcorde,
1993).3 Subsequent attempts at a rapprochement led to ups and downs in
the relationship and were hampered by the collapse of the Soviet Union,
which the Chinese blamed on Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not until 1996
that bilateral relations started to develop significantly, when the coun-
tries announced their commitment to develop a “strategic partnership”
(Dueben, 2013). Opposition to the US gradually became the core of
their cooperation.
However, naval cooperation did not take off until 2012 when China
and Russia started holding joint naval drills in the Pacific. This was
followed in 2015, by another joint exercise in the Mediterranean Sea,
in 2016 in the South China Sea and in 2017 by yet another joint naval
drill in the Baltic Sea (Higgins, 2017). In 2019, Beijing and Moscow
decided to extend their cooperation to the Indian Ocean where they
conducted two trilateral exercises with South Africa and Iran, respectively
on November 28, 2019 (China Ministry of National Defense, 2019), and
December 27 (Westcolt & Alkhshali, 2019).
3 Camran Bay in Vietnam, Chennaï and Mumbaï in India, Berbera in Somalia were
among those. It also tried to obtain mooring rights in Maldives and the Seychelles.
The exercise with Russia and South Africa involved the PLA Navy’s
type 054A frigate Weifang, the Russian Navy’s Salava-class missile cruiser
Marshal Ustinov, Kaliningradneft-class medium seagoing tanker Vyaz’ma,
and rescue tug SB-406 as well as South Africa’s Valour-class frigate
SAS Amatola, and SAS Drakensberg, a fleet replenishment ship (China
Ministry of National Defense, 2019). Behind the generic term of interop-
erability, the exercise was limited to formation maneuver, surface gunnery
exercises and helicopter cross-deck landings, and their military significance
should not be over-interpreted.
The political convergence of the three actors should not be exagger-
ated either. China-Russia cooperation in the Indian Ocean is no different
from the overall bilateral relationship which has often been described as
nothing more than a relationship of convenience. Their common and
growing interest for Africa hardly hides equally growing competition for
the African markets, ranging from the supply of nuclear-power plants to
small arms. South Africa’s military partnerships on the other side remain
predominantly with NATO and NATO members. Even the common
membership of the three countries to the BRICS cannot be seen as truly
significant in this context as the latter has become essentially an adjust-
ment mechanism of China’s bilateral relations (Bobo Lo, 2016) with each
BRICS member. If it is a useful instrument to manage potential bilateral
contradictions, it hardly reflects a common vision. Yet the trilateral exer-
cise was a political signal sent to all Indian Ocean states, to assert China
and Russia’s presence on the Mozambique channel whose strategic signifi-
cance is growing, as well as, more importantly, to demonstrate their ability
to project power in the region.
The trilateral exercise held in December 2019 by the two countries
with Iran in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean under the code name
“Marine Security Belt” had an even more specific significance. The exer-
cise focused on joint rescue and anti-piracy operations and was presented
by the Iranian command as evidence that the “maritime security [could]
be established by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies and [that]
there [was] no need for the presence of foreign forces, especially Ameri-
cans, in the region” (Pars Today, 2020). China and Russia however were
more cautious in their comments.
It is unclear whether the joint drill indicated a change in China’s
Middle-East policy. Beijing’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has steadily
intensified while China has managed its relationships with Tehran very
carefully, getting politically closer but delaying Iran’s request to become
a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and

curbing economic activities with Iran in 2019 to comply with new US
sanctions (Eurasia Review, 2020). Interestingly, China has become a
supplier of arms to Iran to which it delivers air defence systems, jet
fighters, missile boats and submarines, even though Russia remains Iran’s
first choice when it comes to arm purchases. Growing opposition to the
US, which has risen further during the presidency of Donald Trump is
the only obvious convergence between the three countries (Rajagopalan,
2019). Patiently, alone or in partnership with Russia, China mobilizes the
littoral states of the Indian Ocean which, although for different reasons,
feel they are insufficiently taken in consideration, or unfairly treated, by
the main actors of the Indian Ocean.
The Future of China’s

Presence in the Indian Ocean
China is following in the footpath of the rising powers and is expanding
its military missions to match its interests. The concerns of the Chinese
government regarding the security of the sea lines of communication
increase with the growth of its economic dependence vis-à-vis the regional
sources of energy and raw material. As a result China’s forays in the Indian
Ocean have raised alarm and triggered a series of warnings among the
littoral states as well as external actors.
China’s presence in the Indian Ocean has led to a greater milita-
rization of the region. Many littoral and non-littoral states have sought
to increase their coastal and long range defence capabilities. China, but
also India, Pakistan—all nuclear powers—and others are among them. It
is also noticeable that the most advanced naval assets are concentrated
in the North of the Indian Ocean. Over the years the Indian Ocean
has witnessed a qualitative and quantitative strengthening of submarine
forces, the development of anti-ship and land attack cruise missiles, with a
focus on traditional area denial capabilities, the implementation of better
surveillance systems (satellite, radars, UAVs), intended to increase naval
forces vulnerability and the deployment of air force able to operate against
more remote targets (French Ministry of Armed Forces, 2018). More
worrisome however is the fact that these developments take place in a
context of growing polarization, between the US and China, but also
between India and China, while traditional disputes, in particular between
India and Pakistan, or Iran and the US remain unsolved. The political
fragmentation of the region is only adding to the problem while the

resumption of power relations, increases the risk of escalation.
However, questions can also be raised about the sustainability of
China’s presence in the area, should its dependence on the region be
reduced. As observed by Australian analyst, Rory Medcalf, “it can be
debated whether China can, in the long run, lessen its dependence on the
Indian Ocean lifelines of energy and trade”. As reasons for this poten-
tial evolution, the author mentions the building of overland pipelines
and transport routes or the opening of an Arctic sea lane through the
Atlantic (Medcalf, 2020). Other analysts dispute the idea that China may
be willing to replace American dominance in the Indian Ocean, arguing
instead that Beijing may only seek a limited naval role, as sea control
may not be a realistic goal for the foreseeable future (Brewster, 2019).
Indeed, China is increasingly facing new obstacles and resistance in the
Indian Ocean.
On the military side, the Indian navy, which had been concerned
primarily with coastal protection since the 2008 Mumbai attack, has again
prioritized its blue water navy, insisting on the development of new power
projection platforms and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. In parallel, it
did expand its naval diplomacy across the entire Indian Ocean, particular
attention being given to the small island states (Samaranayake, 2019).
China’s increased presence in the Indian Ocean, symbolized by its
naval base in Djibouti, has generated a flurry of diplomatic dialogues,
attempts at coalition building and various initiatives to try to counter the
BRI as detailed in the following chapters. Meanwhile, smaller countries
are increasingly careful in their dealing with China in order to avoid being
caught in a debt trap, and have learned from the experience of Sri Lanka
with the Hambantota 99 years port lease. Far from being the passive
recipients of Chinese loans, most beneficiaries retain agency in their rela-
tionship with China. They also diversify their relationships. Russia for
example is courting the island nations in the Indian Ocean (Madagascar,
Comoros) but countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia or the United States
Emirates are new players in the region (Baruah, 2020).
Littoral states also instrumentalize their connection with China in their
dealings with other powers. China is often no more than a fall back option
whenever financing from other sources, in particular multilateral develop-
ment banks are not available (Samaranayake, 2019). Yet the littoral states
have understood the political and diplomatic potential of the Chinese
presence in the Indian Ocean. China is a card they can play in order to
increase their own margins of maneuvers.
In the process the Indian Ocean becomes paradoxically more frag-
mented as attempts at coalition building multiply. The region has become
a friction point for tension between China, India as well as the US and its
allies, each trying to maintain or develop its own influence, in a context
where each of their potential partners is in a better bargaining position.
Yet China is still in a relatively good position in the Indian Ocean. Its
economic, military and political investments in the region, big or small,
do constrain other but less well-off powers to compensate and invest even
more. A country like India now has to spend more in order to maintain
its influence in its neighbourhood where its dominance is constantly chal-
lenged. Its position remains stronger than China’s but its own resource
allocation has become more complex. China, being less vulnerable in the
area, can afford to be more opportunistic.
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CHAPTER 3
Between East and West, India’s Revived

Engagements
India’s relations with the Indian Ocean are in many ways a paradox. The
Indian Ocean is central to India’s economic rise, a rise that is increasingly
dependent on the access to energy supplies and raw material. This has
led New Delhi to a new appreciation of the link between India’s national
power and its maritime strategy. It also made its decision makers increas-
ingly sensitive to China’s expanding influence in the area through the
BRI, and more specifically to Beijing’s growing partnership with Pakistan,
materialized by the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and its flagship
project, the Gwadar port. This environment logically triggered a new
political activism from India in the Indian Ocean.
Yet India’s revived engagements on the shores of the Indian Ocean
are relatively new. If Delhi had long eyed China’s activities in the area
with suspicion, it is only from the mid-2000 onwards that this led to
substantial changes in its foreign policy. However, it took even longer
for this concern to begin manifesting itself in tangible policies designed
to counter a larger Chinese footprint in the region. Under the premier-
ship of Narendra Modi, India has accelerated or reinitiated plans to build
stronger ties with partners in the region, whether in Africa, the Persian
Gulf or Southeast Asia.
India’s contemporary partnerships with the Arab monarchies of the
Gulf are another compelling case of these revived engagements. Previous

Switzerland AG 2022
Indian governments had already acknowledged by the mid-2000s the

need to enhance Delhi’s ties with the Arab Peninsula, given its strategic
relevance (presence of Indian labour migrants, energy dependence, and
common security interests) but the implementation of this political state-
ment was slow. However, starting in the mid-2010s, the swift strategic
rapprochement of Delhi with a country like the United Arab Emirates
and the warming up of its ties with Saudi Arabia demonstrated Modi’s
intention to revamp India’s Look-West Policy.
These engagements evidence the level of concern in India regarding
Pakistan’s traditional proximity with Gulf powers, but also and more
importantly, regarding China’s political and economic initiatives with its
neighbouring countries. The specific case of the city of Duqm in the
Sultanate of Oman is revealing: both Delhi and Beijing are now investing
military and economic assets in this small but strategically located port.
If these projects are sustained, Duqm could become—in some ways
like Djibouti in the Horn of Africa—a major gateway in the Gulf to
the Indian Ocean, projecting and reflecting the Indian-Chinese regional
competition. Political and economic investments by Delhi and Beijing in
small islands like the Seychelles and the Maldives also mirror this power
struggle.
India has also multiplied, although with caution, its defence partner-
ships. India initiated a series of rapprochements with the small island
states of the Indian Ocean through the trilateral initiative. Of particular
significance has been India’s hedging policy with countries like Japan and
France but also, and more spectacularly, with the US, a shift from the
historically difficult relationship both countries entertained in the past.
New Delhi is now trying, in cooperation with Japan, to expand its
infrastructure projects in order to mitigate China’s influence in East Africa
Eastern countries as well as in Southeast Asia. This Indian policy in the
Indian Ocean ultimately resembles its Look East Policy. It is implicitly
recognized as such through the label “Look West Policy” given in 2005
to India’s policy with the Gulf countries.
Finally, India was one of the co-founders of the Indian Ocean Rim
Association (IORA) and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS)
and as such an ardent promoter of multilateralism in the Indian Ocean,
although with limited success so far.
These developments did not take place in a linear way though. They
did not even evolve in parallel but responded to different sets of objec-
tives which ultimately converged in the Indian Ocean. This was reflected,
3 BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, INDIA’S … 45
from 2015 onwards, in the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the
Region) initiative. As stated by Foreign Minister Jaishankar, SAGAR was
India’s “first maritime integrated outlook” (Jaishankar, 2020b). But if
it came to terms with a new reality of competing forces in the Indian
Ocean, SAGAR’s premises, the “belief that advancing cooperation and
using [its] capabilities for larger good would benefit India” (Jaishankar,
2020b) was present in previous Indian policies. Unquestionably though,
SAGAR articulated them in a more coherent whole focusing on the
Indian Ocean seen as the condition for a successful Indo-Pacific strategy.
India’s centrality in the Indian Ocean is already much more than a
geographic reality: it is unclear whether it will be able to contain China’s
influence in the region but New Delhi is now being courted as the partner
of choice by all countries willing, implicitly or explicitly, to mitigate the
impact of China’s rise.
Against that backdrop, this chapter will look at the motives, objectives
and strategies of India in the Indian Ocean. Although the name of the
Indian Ocean underlines how it has always been considered in New Delhi
as India’s backyard, it was also mostly an empty backyard. Therefore the
chapter will analyse how New Delhi has embarked on a process to “Indi-
anise” the Indian Ocean by fear that a vacuum—political and strategic—in
the area may be filled by potentially hostile countries, China of course but
also Pakistan. It did so in multiple ways, developing its own navy, drawing
close ties with the US and some of its allies, developing or strengthening
links with Indian Ocean littoral and Island states while trying to assert
its influence by developing a common regional political identity. In the
process, India not only changed its Indian Ocean policy and defined a
new role for itself, but it also found a new prominence that it reluctantly
but gradually came to assume.
The Strategic Determinants of India’s Policies

in the Indian Ocean: More Than Geography
It is a fact of geography that India is at the crossroads of the maritime
routes which link up the three continents of the old world. But it would
be a mistake to believe that its privileged location on the shores of the
Indian Ocean alone has naturally made India a maritime power.
True, former diplomat turned historian K.M. Panikkar, wrote of India’s
glorious maritime past as mentioned in the introduction. But he did so
mostly to regret the loss of the country’s naval tradition which he held
responsible for India’s colonization by the UK (Panikkar, 1945). Indeed

his plea for a renewed and strong maritime orientation of India evidenced
that such an orientation was neither natural nor obvious to India’s post-
independence rulers whose perception was shaped by threats coming from
the continent, not from the sea.
For centuries, with the obvious exception of the British, invasions
had come from the continent. Partition only reinforced the percep-
tion. With the creation of Pakistan, “India was compelled to secure its
new land border” (Mohan, 2012). In 1962, the war with China took
place on the Himalayas and allocations for the navy were drastically
reduced. The navy was not and could not be, at the time, a priority for
the post-independence leadership. Although development plans for the
Indian navy were enacted soon after independence, it is, unsurprisingly,
India’s economic reforms which led India’s maritime renewal. The mid-
1980s and, more importantly the 1990s, saw a significant expansion and
modernization of the Indian navy. As long as its economy was inward
looking, maritime issues remained second-order priorities.
The situation changed however, as a strategic consequence of India’s
economic performance and the result of India’s attempt to reconnect
with Asia’s globalization process. Delhi now had to protect its sea lanes
of communications which accentuated the need for a strong navy, while
providing the means to achieve that goal. India has since developed a
significant navy, the seventh in the world, according to Military Today
(Military Today, 2020). But if maritime considerations play a much larger
role in New Delhi’s calculations today, it is a result of the evolving struc-
ture of the international system, which has been affected by the rise of
China. This has created additional constraints for India’s security estab-
lishment while generating a change of India’s posture vis-à-vis the rest of
the world.
In this new situation, India’s maritime interests have evolved much
less than the way they are now taken into account. Stability, secu-
rity and safety, including of all the major choke points of the Indian
Ocean, coastal and offshore security, seaborne trade, shipping assets, sea
resources, seabed resources and energy security are still primary objectives
of the Indian Maritime Doctrine (India’s Ministry of Defense, 2009).
Since the early 1990s however, they are an integral part of a larger, more
ambitious and comprehensive set of policies extending to all the shores
of the Indian Ocean, a set that progressively took a different meaning as
China started projecting power in the Indian Ocean.
The China Factor

The expansion of China’s maritime power in the Indian Ocean has
unquestionably been a paradigm change for India’s policy in the region.
As estranged as India and the US may have been until the end of the Cold
War, and despite tensions over US relations with Pakistan and China, the
US was not perceived as a direct threat to India’s interests in the Indian
Ocean (despite the episode of deployment of the USS Enterprise aircraft
carrier in the Bay of Bengal during the Bangladesh war). Indian concerns
about a possible power vacuum in the Indian Ocean after the end of the
Cold War related to the USSR’s previous role being taken over by China.
In this perspective, and irrespective of the rhetoric, US presence in the
area was seen as an implicit security guarantee.
PLA Navy deployments and the construction of a Chinese naval base
in the IOR amplified the existential character of the Chinese threat for
India by creating the possibility of a multiple front. Until then, naval
warfare with China was primarily seen through the lens of potential as
horizontal escalation, i.e. the expansion at sea of a conflict started on land.
The possibility of a war initiated at sea suddenly became a reality even if it
did not diminish the likelihood of a war on land as demonstrated by the
summer 2020 incidents in Ladakh.
Moreover Chinese naval manoeuvers comforted Pakistan’s position
in the Indian Ocean. Bilateral naval cooperation between China and
Pakistan, started in 2003 as a simple search and rescue drill, gradually
increased to include joint escort, counter-piracy and live-firing, but also
anti-submarine warfare (Koh, 2016). The joint exercise conducted in
January 2020 in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Pakistan, involved a
Chinese destroyer and a frigate in addition to support vessels. By raising
the level of Pakistan’s maritime capabilities, China increased the number
of concerns for the Indian military, potentially stretching the Indian Navy.
Indeed, Pakistan’s impact on India’s posture in the Indian Ocean
should be understood as part of China’s strategy vis-à-vis India. The
January 2020 exercise, “Sea Guardians 2020” in the Arabian Sea, was
supposed to be the first in a series (Li, 2020) that should lead to greater
interoperability and integration of the Chinese and Pakistani navies.
Pakistan still pursues objectives of its own, which can even be occa-
sionally at odd with China’s interests (like the November 2008 terrorist
attack on Mumbai, which came from the sea), the growing dependence of
Pakistan’s navy vis-à-vis Chinese equipment and training is undoubtedly
a source of concern for India which is only partly mitigated by Pakistan’s

continued naval interactions with the US.
Indian decision-makers also consider that, if PLAN deployments and
bases were (partly) meant to offset China’s Malacca dilemma and diminish
its vulnerabilities in the Strait of Hormuz, a Chinese presence in Pakistan
or in Djibouti had the potential to create an Hormuz dilemma for India
(Upadhyaya, 17:1, 2017). It could be considered that, in war time, the
PLAN would be highly vulnerable and could find it difficult to protect
its trade route, bases and ships if a contingency were to occur, involving
India (and possibly the US) (Cooper, 2018). Yet, the dynamic seemed to
be on China’s side, with the Belt and Road initiative generating influence
and leverage for Beijing in the entire region.
Chinese activism in the Indian Ocean created additional constraints
for India’s allocation of military, diplomatic, political and economic
resources. China’s engagement with the smaller Indian Ocean countries
did not eliminate India’s role and influence. New Delhi was able to main-
tain its dominant, although diminished, role (Samarayanake, 2019). But
the competition with China created more space for these smaller coun-
tries to maneuver between the two Asian powers, thus increasing the
diplomatic, economic and military costs for India.
Ultimately, as observed by Australian analyst David Webster, Chinese
presence and activities in the Indian Ocean are perceived in New Delhi
as a challenge to its regional and international status. China’s permanent
presence in the Indian Ocean is widely perceived by the Indian strategic
community as illegitimate. New Delhi considers itself as the natural leader
of the region as well as the regional security manager in Southern Asia and
other parts of the Indian Ocean, a status that China refuses to recognize
(Brewster, 2018).
India’s Response
Even if comprehensive, India’s response was a very gradual one. Although
China had always been an Indian concern, India’s response did not evolve
as a linear process but, like almost everywhere else in the world, as
a dialectic between the willingness to engage, which characterized the
political approach of the government, and a more alarming perspective
progressively developed by the defence establishment, in particular the
navy, as China’s presence in the Indian Ocean materialized.
For years, the Indian strategic community had warned the authorities
in New Delhi that Beijing was developing a more forward Indian Ocean
policy that included naval, diplomatic and economic elements. However,
for a long time, the official policy was to offer engagement with China
through a dialogue on common interests (Brewster, 2018). The evolu-
tion did not happen without significant hesitation and was ultimately the
consequence of Beijing’s negative responses to New Delhi’s overtures.
But even the beginning of a Chinese permanent presence in 2008, as a
result of the anti-piracy effort off the coast of Somalia, which made the
Indian defence establishment uneasy, was not enough to alter the policy
of engagement. In December 2010, during the visit of Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao, the two countries even “agreed to work together in tackling
piracy in the Gulf of Aden” (Indian Ministry of External Affairs, 2010), an
implicit admission of the legitimacy of China’s role in the Indian Ocean.
In 2013 however, with the announcement of the One Belt One
Road (OBOR) programme, soon to become the BRI, the perception of
Beijing’s intentions changed. The ascent of Narendra Modi to power in
2014 did not really change the orientation of the policy but gave it a
somewhat more muscular character, accelerating India’s military build up
and diplomatic offensive.
India’s response to China’s policy in the Indian Ocean, should however
be examined in the larger context of New Delhi’s regional foreign policy
before narrowing down to the specific Indian Ocean issue as every
stage contributed to India’s overall effort to reassert its presence in
the Indian Ocean region after the end of the Cold War. This effort
included economic, political and military components, each conditioning
the others. But the response was not a clear cut strategy defined at once,
but rather, a cumulative process of overlapping policies which did not
always have the Indian Ocean as their primary focus. Altogether, they
contributed to India’s political netting of the region, and their comple-
mentarity and convergence grew as the threat perception became more
specific and India’s capabilities increased.
The reform of its economy allowed New Delhi to develop its military,
including the navy, while requiring cooperation with its neighbours, close
or distant. Indeed the most important aspect of its Indian Ocean compo-
nent did consist in reaching out to the other states of the Indian Ocean
as well as to some external actors, through a series of policies, most of
which were inclusive of China. They were not always strictly aiming at the
Indian Ocean or directed against China, they occasionally overlapped but
they ultimately pursued similar and complementary objectives: enclosing

China in a web of networks in which Beijing’s potential opposition to
Delhi on issues was matched by vested interests of sort. In this process,
inclusivity was not just a desirable state of affair, or wishful thinking. It
was a tool to manage the relation with China in a situation characterized
by an asymmetry of power which had been growing ever since China
initiated its own reform in the early 1980s and a situation which Indian
decision-makers were all painfully aware of, irrespective of their political
affiliation.
The India–China Naval Equation in the Indian Ocean

Of particular importance in this context is the India–China military equa-
tion in the Indian Ocean. With approximately 137 ships and submarines
and 291 aircrafts, the Indian Navy is the seventh largest navy in the world
and considered to be a capable naval force, confident in its ability to
protect India’s shores. Indeed, for a long time, China seemed to be a
manageable and long-term threat (as opposed to the situation prevailing
in the Himalayas).
But China’s Southern Theater Command now controls more diesel-
electric attack submarines (16) and guided missile frigates (21) than the
entire Indian Navy which owns some 15 electric-diesel submarines and
13 guided missile frigates (Kliman et al., 2019). Moreover this increase in
the number of ships is accompanied by a modernization of the fleet, with
the introduction of larger, multi-missions ships equipped with a larger
range of capabilities, ranging from anti-ship to anti-submarine warfare
equipment (Kliman et al., 2019).
True, according to Indian analysts, India still has the advantage of the
terrain. Neither China nor Pakistan can seriously challenge India’s main
axes of maritime approaches whereas its navy’s intimate knowledge of the
complexity of the neighbouring maritime environment gives it a decisive
advantage in anti-submarine warfare.
Moreover it has greater capabilities than China with regard to maritime
domain awareness of the Indian Ocean. It has developed dual-use infor-
mation gathering facilities that include coastal radar chains and maritime
information fusion centres and benefits from the tactical air support of a
fleet of P-8 maritime patrol aircrafts (Brewster, 2018). Maritime surveil-
lance is central to India’s space diplomacy. In this domain, New Delhi has
signed a pact with France for the production of a constellation of satellites

destined to maritime surveillance (Reddy, 2019).
This advantage may however diminish over time as China’s base in
Djibouti may allow Beijing to develop further its own maritime surveil-
lance capacities. Moreover, sooner or later the base will be able to operate
Chinese maritime patrol aircrafts without which the PLAN would be at a
clear disadvantage in wartime.
Moreover, the deployment since 2014 of the PLAN Chinese SSBNs in
the Indian Ocean has placed India under direct Chinese nuclear threat. As
stated by former Indian National Security Advisor, Shivshankar Menon,
“technology and evolving military strategy are tending toward the offen-
sive, toward forward deployment and toward pre-emption” (Menon,
2016), while the vastness and the geography of the Indian Ocean are
making them increasingly difficult to track. Moreover China also extends
its cooperation to Pakistan’s quest to acquire ballistic missile-equipped
submarines with nuclear warheads (SSBNs) (Menon, 2016).
Indeed, adding to Indian concerns are Pakistan’s growing capabilities
in both the conventional and nuclear domains. Islamabad has acquired
an array of anti-access and anti-denial capabilities, including coastal
batteries of anti-ship cruise missiles and advanced Chinese diesel-electric
submarines turning Pakistan into a real threat on India’s western coast
(Kliman et al., 2019).
The convergent elevation of Pakistan’s naval capabilities and China’s
levels of naval deployments has triggered a new sense of urgency in New
Delhi and made the Indian Navy a new priority, with new force structure
development plans. Within the 2027–2030 time frame, the Indian Navy
should include three carrier groups and incorporate 200 ships including
24 conventional submarines and 500 aircrafts (Economic Times, 2018).
Yet, the share of the Indian Navy in the overall budget of the Indian
armed forces has declined in recent years, a tendency which is unlikely to
be reversed in the forthcoming years as the summer 2020 incidents with
China on the Line of actual Control (LaC) in Ladakh only reinforced
India’s dilemma for resource allocation between the navy, the air force
and the army.
Small and Island States: The New

Geopolitics of the Indian Ocean
The reality of the balance of power in the Indian Ocean should also be
apprehended from the larger geopolitical and economic perspective. The
BRI constrains India in its immediate neighbourhood. This dynamic is
particularly in evidence in the small island states of the Indian Ocean.
Islands in the Indian Ocean are located near key transit routes. Their
geography has therefore the potential to impact geopolitical competition,
Sri Lanka and the Maldives being the most often quoted examples.
With China using commercial initiatives to improve relations with
the latter, India has no choice but to try to reassert its influence and
embark into an Indian Ocean island diplomacy, namely with four crucial
island states: Mauritius, the Maldives, Seychelles and Sri Lanka. Besides
regular meetings among leaders and officials, India gradually stepped up
its regional development assistance and technical assistance, buying up
part of the Maldivian debt and providing Sri Lanka with hard currency
reserves to maintain investors’ confidence. Significantly it did engage also
in an effort to build up and improve maritime domain awareness (MDA),
including information sharing with all four states. The Trilateral Maritime
Cooperative Initiative, signed in 2013 with the Maldives and Sri Lanka to
enhance MDA, and facilitate cooperation through trilateral exercises and
capacity building, was extended to Mauritius and Seychelles in January
2014. It was later upgraded to include information sharing with all four
states, new radars and communication facilities as well as regular patrols
by India’s P-8 surveillance aircraft with the Exclusive Economic Zone of
Mauritius and Seychelles.
As a result, India’s dominance in the Indian Ocean remains a reality.
As stated by US analyst Nilanthi Samarayanake, “smaller South Asian
countries in particular are well aware of the Indian Military operational
reach into their countries—whether invited or uninvited” (Samarayanake,
2019).1 But these efforts come at a political, diplomatic cost and, when
India embarks on infrastructure building, an economic cost too. Regional
states still see India as the dominant regional power, but this dominance
is eroding.
1 In early 2018, serious discussions took place among Indian strategists about the need
to intervene militarily in Maldives.
Redefining India’s Indian Ocean Policy

The post-Cold War years have been transformative for India’s percep-
tion of the Indian Ocean and of itself in the Indian Ocean. Although it
has been an uneasy and sometimes uncertain process, India’s foreign and
defence policies have redefined some of their orientations, launched new
formats of dialogue and gradually partnered with countries with which
cooperation would have been anathema in the past. It has tried to lay the
foundations of a security architecture of the Indian Ocean and attempted
to forge a political unity of the area. As often with India the process went
outside in, rather than expanded from inside out. But the Look East and
Look West policies, as well as the construction of the IORA ultimately all
converged and overlapped in the Indian Ocean, where they entered into
a slow process of crystallization which should lead to regional security
architecture.
Looking and Acting East in the Indian Ocean

India’s Look East Policy was not designed to be primarily India’s manage-
ment instrument of preference for the Indian Ocean. Initiated in 1992,
it was at first an economic policy aimed at developing regional trade and
attracting foreign direct investment from the capital rich Asian economies
to finance India’s economic reform. Soon however, concerns about a
rising and potentially hegemonic China turned the Look East Policy into
a comprehensive policy with political and military dimensions gradually
emerging alongside economics, through a cumulative process.
Moreover, the initial failure to secure capital from Taiwan and Japan,
more interested in China’s market, soon gave it a distinct Indian Ocean
identity (even if the latter tends to be increasingly diluted today in the
larger Indo-Pacific concept). ASEAN, and more specifically Singapore,
became the target of India’s search for funding and markets.
Similarly, a quest for defence partnerships led India to turn to some
ASEAN members, all littoral states of the Indian Ocean, in order to
prevent China from taking advantage of the strategic vacuum left open
by the end of the Cold War, at India’s expense. In the process, New
Delhi had to reconcile two imperatives: the availability of partners with
significant capabilities and the need for political trust without which no
meaningful cooperation is possible. Singapore again emerged as India’s
closest partner in the region, with Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand
distantly ranking third, fourth and fifth, respectively. All of them had a
significant Indian Ocean facade with direct access to the Bay of Bengal.
Of particular significance was India’s naval cooperation with Singapore.
The two countries conducted the Singapore India Maritime Bilateral
Exercise (SIMBEX) which grew in sophistication over the years, begin-
ning with an emphasis on anti-submarine warfare but gradually including
elements of anti-air and anti-surface warfare, as well as political signifi-
cance.2 Singapore’s location made it an ideal custodian of the Malacca
strait and it had access to India’s naval facilities from Port Blair (Andaman
Islands) to Cochin, India’s southern naval command headquarters. Port
calls of Indian navy vessels in Changi naval base in Singapore increased
over the years. In November 2017, a new agreement was signed between
the two countries, further reinforcing their naval cooperation through the
facilitation of mutual logistics support, as well as, more generally, through
the increase in maritime security cooperation with joint exercises and
temporary deployments from each other’s facilities (Mindef Singapore,
2017).
Being a custodian of the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok straits as well
as of the lesser known Six-Degree Channel,3 Indonesia was a poten-
tial partner of choice for India. It also shares with India a 300 nautical
miles international maritime border. Initiated in 2002, naval coopera-
tion between the two countries had been for a long time limited to joint
patrols. In May 2018 though, during the visit of Prime Minister Modi to
Indonesia, their strategic partnership, signed in 2005, was elevated to the
level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. It led to the adoption of
a “Shared Vision on Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific between
India and Indonesia”, and the decision to extend the existing bilateral
exercises to the maritime domain as well as intelligence sharing, coast
guard training cooperation and capacity building (Government of India,
Ministry of External Affairs, 2018). The two countries conducted their
first bilateral naval exercise a few months later (Eurasian Times, 2018).
However the Look East policy created much more than military part-
nership in the Indian Ocean Region. It did allow India to prevent the
2 Until 2005, SIMBEX was held in Indian waters. In 2005 it did take place for the
first time in the South China Sea.
3 Located at the western edge of the Malacca Strait, the Six-Degree Channel is a feeder
and an outlet for the latter. It is a point of convergence of the sea routes originating from
or leading to the cape of Good Hope, the Gulf of Aden or the Strait of Hormuz.
relative political and strategic vacuum that resulted from the end of the
Cold War to be entirely filled by China, as the latter realized when it
tried to lock India’s membership to the East Asia Summit. As such it did
constitute the bedrock on which successive governments built their larger
Asian policies with an impact though on their policy in the Indian Ocean.
India Looks West: Tightening Relations with the Gulf Countries

India’s maritime diplomacy and outreach has not been limited to the
eastern parts of the Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy also embarked on
capacity building and security cooperation with the Arab Gulf states as
part of its “Look West Policy”, launched by Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh in 2005. Like its Eastern Counterpart, the ‘Look West Policy’
started with negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the
member states Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and, with some of
them,4 parallel negotiations for a comprehensive economic agreement
covering the service sector and investment.
Although it never became as comprehensive as the Look East Policy
due to the lack of GCC political institutions comparable to ASEAN’s, the
Look West Policy also had a military dimension, linked to India’s necessity
to guarantee its energy security and the growing political unpredictability
and deteriorating security which characterized the Gulf, in particular after
the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
In 2008, it did start partnering with regional maritime forces in
anti-piracy operations, providing support and training to the navies of
the GCC, three of them being members of the Indian Ocean Naval
Symposium (IONS). The objective was to contribute to the security of
the Northern waterways of the Indian Ocean and to protect both the
considerable trade that India entertained with GCC countries.
It often goes unnoticed that in 2008–2009 already, India’s trade with
GCC countries, excluding oil, amounted to $86.9 billion. Despite some
15 years of “Look East Policy”, these exchanges between India and the
Arabian peninsula did surpass trade with ASEAN ($44.6 billion), with
the European Union ($80.6 billion), and with the US ($40.6 billion)
(Brewster, 35:1, 2016). Moreover, some 9 million Indian people live in
the Middle-East where they constitute an important source of remittances
4 These negotiations involved Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United
Arab Emirates.
for the country, but where their mere presence could potentially reduce
India’s policy options in times of crisis.
Concerns about the growing Chinese presence there already played a
role too. China had become a net oil importer in 1993–1994 and like
India was both increasingly present in the Gulf and in need to ensure
the security of its energy supply. China’s presence could not be rolled
back, nor was it strategically significant yet at the time. But whatever
China did was too important for India. Therefore establishing and devel-
oping strategic influence and leverage was a strong motivation for India
to engage Gulf navies.
But despite these imperatives and the launching of the “Look West
Policy”, India’s strategic influence on GCC countries remained limited,
partly because they relied implicitly on the US for their own security.
Moreover; rivalry with Pakistan, which had developed its own political
and military nexus with many Gulf Arab countries, was an obstacle to
India’s ability to develop a close security partnership with most GCC
countries. Because of its anti-piracy operations in the North-West of the
Indian Ocean, India did consider itself a net security provider in a region
that it perceived in the terms of former External Affairs Minister Jaswant
Singh, as its “sphere of influence” or its “strategic footprint” in those
of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (Brewster, 35:1, 2016), but
where actual security was still mostly guaranteed by external powers.
The broad parameters of India’s Middle-East policy were already in
place when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in May 2014. The
‘Look West Policy’ had been economically successful but it had not
produced results at the level of initial expectations in the security domain.
The new Prime Minister did not change the overall direction of the policy
and kept developing its economic dimension but greater emphasis was put
on defence and security cooperation. India already had naval cooperation
with Oman, but relations with the UAE in the field became more signifi-
cant as the Emirati ambitions in the Indian Ocean started developing and
found itself in competition with China on the coasts of Eastern Africa
(Ministry of External Affairs [India], 2018a). But as we explain in greater
detail in Chapter 6, the political impact of India’s naval rapprochement
with the UAE should be gauged against a similar move by China vis-à-
vis Iran. Beijing benefitted from the estrangement between Tehran and
New Delhi as a result of the latter’s growing proximity with Washington.
In December 2019, Iran, China and Russia conducted their first trilateral
naval exercise.
The Quest for Indian Ocean Unity:

Security and Growth in the Region (SAGAR)
In this context, SAGAR, which appeared for the first time in a speech by
Prime Minister Modi in Mauritius in March 2015, was a maritime exten-
sion to the neighbourhood first policy which had defined the first months
of Modi’s foreign policy. It aimed at providing a regional foundation to
India’s larger ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
SAGAR was a framework more than a strategy. It intended to achieve
four major objectives: safeguard the mainland as well as India’s islands;
deepen India’s cooperation with its friends in the region, in particular
with the maritime neighbourhood and island states; promote collective
action for peace and security in India’s maritime neighbourhood; and seek
a more integrated and cooperative future for the region to enhance the
prospects for sustainable development for all (Ministry of External Affairs
[India], 2015a). They were later translated into four categories: security,
capacity building, collective action, sustainable development, maritime
engagement and regional connectivity.
These objectives are likely to be developed only over a long period of
time and may be only partly implemented. They constitute nevertheless
an attempt to unify the Indian Ocean around India. SAGAR is indeed
an answer to what can be construed as an historical anomaly in India’s
foreign policy which has always bypassed its own region in its various
bids to build up an India-centric regionalism. SAGAR does focus on the
Indian Ocean Region and is meant to add coherence to India’s various
regional policies. Yet the timeline also reflects a deeper reality, and the
paucity of regional partners with significant economic, political and mili-
tary capacities. The potential success of the “SAGAR project” over time
will be highly dependent on India’s capacity to mobilize external forces.
In that sense it is also the logical outcome of all India’s regional poli-
cies, East and West, with which it does partly overlap but SAGAR also
refocuses these policies on the Indian Ocean.
The Uncertain Build-Up

of a Pan-Indian Ocean Architecture
If India did enter Southeast Asian regionalism and build up a compa-
rable—although different—process with the Gulf countries, it also tried
to generate a regionalism specific to the Indian Ocean. Established in
1997 as a joint initiative of India and South Africa, the Indian Ocean
Rim Association (IORA) is the only multilateral forum that connects the
littoral states of the Indian Ocean Region. It was India which, together
with South Africa and with the help of Australia and Mauritius, took the
initiative to revive the idea of Indian Ocean regionalism. For India it also
meant that its relative sea blindness was giving way to a new recognition
of the country’s maritime imperative. India’s growing sea borne trade
compelled New Delhi to pay greater attention to securing a sustainable
order on the shores of the Indian Ocean. This necessity only increased in
subsequent years with what was to become a historic power shift in the
area.
Officially, the IORA seeks to “build and expand understanding and
mutually beneficial cooperation through a consensus based, evolutionary
and non-intrusive approach” (IORA Secretariat, 2018). But, as it began
to reinvest Indian Ocean regionalism, the organization also identified
maritime safety and security as one of its priority areas, besides trade
and investment facilitation, fisheries management, disaster risk manage-
ment, science, technology and academic cooperation and tourism and
cultural exchanges, all supposed to provide the Indian Ocean with the
economic, security and political networks likely to confer the region a
common identity and dynamism.
Unsurprisingly however, IORA has delivered only mixed results. Diver-
sity in geography and culture and asymmetry in economic levels of
development could be held responsible for it. IORA did struggle to iden-
tify common ground among its diverse membership and suffered from
institutional weakness. The emergence of a significant and long-term
Chinese presence added polarization to the loose regional ties, further
contributing to India’s difficulty to federate the region. It also added to
its inability to match Chinese resources and to drive regional economic
integration, despite a similar will to develop regional infrastructure and
connectivity.
Another Indian initiative, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS)
met similar difficulties, although for different reasons. Created in 2008
at the behest of the Indian Navy with the collaboration of the National
Maritime Foundation in New Delhi, IONS was the first pan-Indian Ocean
forum on defence. Its primary aim was to encourage discussions on
matters of common maritime interests and promote cooperative engage-
ment to ensure regional safety, stability and security. In the process it did
endeavour to generate a flow of information between naval professionals
that would lead to common understanding and possibly cooperative solu-

tions. It intended to achieve this objective through a range of confidence
building measures, including workshops and seminars.
Over the years, the number of national navies involved in IONS activ-
ities increased from 27 to 32, including eight with observer status, from
all shores of the Indian Ocean. As India did seek to extend its influ-
ence from the straits of Malacca to Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb, IONS
provided India with a platform that both helped it to strengthen its
existing partnerships and to reach out to a range of Indian Ocean states.
Because IONS was a technical platform with a broad membership, and
therefore not politically controversial, India could use it to “unite the
regional states on shared principles and strategies, without antagonizing
any state at the cost of block politics” (DAS, 2018). Yet, it could still be a
facilitator for India’s vision of a rules-based maritime order in the region.
Finally, IONS reflected India’s perception of its own geographical,
historical and, more importantly, political centrality to the Indian Ocean
even though New Delhi intended to project the image of a benign
power and a net security provider, as demonstrated by its 2004 and
2008 Humanitarian and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations conducted
respectively in response to the tsunami and cyclone Narpis (DAS, 2018).
However, despite the initial enthusiasm generated by the initiative,
IONS delivered only mixed results at best. The diverse capabilities and
maritime cultures of the member states generated a lack of political will
reflected in poor coordination and the inefficient chairmanship of the
organization.
Starting in 2014, the Australian chair infused a new energy in an
organization which had fallen into inertia and the momentum has been
maintained ever since. Significantly however, the renewed interest for the
organization came at a time of growing polarization, in a situation where
the rivalry between India and China as well as the one between the US
and China was increasing. This made a framework such as IONS more
necessary but it also exacerbated the existing tensions and subsequently,
the polarization within the organization.
Naval Cooperation with the US

Naval cooperation with the US is a consequence of India’s overall rela-
tionship with Washington and has therefore followed its evolution. As
a result, it started late. The framework for India–US military ties was
originally laid down in the 1991 Kicklighter Proposals, named after

Commander-in-Chief Pacific Command Admiral Claude Kicklighter. It
led to the initiation of a series of joint exercises between 1992 and 1996
(Storey, 15:3, 2003). The two navies conducted the first Malabar exercise
in 1992 followed by two similar exercises respectively in 1995 and 1997.
All defence cooperation was stopped after the 1998 nuclear tests and
resumed only after 9/11, when the sudden expansion of the cooperation
led to the signing of the “Framework agreement for the India-US defence
relationship” in June 2005 (Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence
Studies and Analysis, 2005). As a result, naval cooperation with the US
developed under the Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi governments
whose policies were informed by similar sets of considerations although
with subtle differences.
The successive governments of Singh and Modi tried to disconnect
their growing ties with Washington as much as possible from the rivalry
between China and the US. As stated by Shivshankar Menon, for India
the danger was “to be drawn into choosing sides or becoming a pawn of
either side in their game” (Brewster, 2018). Menon believed that there
was a fundamental asymmetry of interest between China and the US in
the Indian Ocean—in particular with regard to the radically divergent
evolution of their dependence over Gulf energy—in favour of China.
The gap between Washington’s stated and actual policy made it more-
over unreliable. Although the Indian government sought closer relations
with the US, it also believed that its China policy had to be conducted
independently. Therefore it tried to work with Beijing at the same time,
looking for a convergence of interest in the maritime sphere, and empha-
sized that the relationship was not only driven by elements of competition
but by cooperation needs as well. The launching of the One Belt One
Road (OBOR) initiative by Xi Jinping, including the China–Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC), as well as a second corridor linking China
through the Indian Ocean through Myanmar, preceded slightly the end
of Manmohan Singh’s mandate. Eventually, the Chinese evolution into a
full-fledged maritime power buried all hope for a convergence of the two
countries’ maritime interests.
Narendra Modi shared with his predecessor a willingness to conduct
an independent China policy. For Modi too, India’s relationship with the
US was instrumental. However, he was ready to go further than Singh in
his willingness to use it as a leverage for India’s relations with China. The
“US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia–Pacific and Indian Ocean
Region” (Ministry of External Affairs [India], 2015b), signed during

Obama’s second official visit to India, in January 2015, was an initia-
tive of the Indian government and came apparently as a surprise for the
US administration (Brewster, 2018).
In this context, the visit of 2015 and the announcement of a US
“Pivot”, soon renamed “rebalance to the Asia–Pacific Region”, proved to
be a turning point in India–US maritime interactions. The January 2015
visit of President Obama to India led to the signing of the “US-India
Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia–Pacific and Indian Ocean Region”
(Ministry of External Affairs [India], 2015c), a general document in
which the two countries stated their shared principles regarding regional
governance such as the freedom of navigation and overflight, including
in the South China Sea.
More importantly however, that same year, the US Department of
Defence issued the “Asia–Pacific Maritime Security Strategy” which offi-
cially recognized “a strategic convergence between India’s “Act-East”
policy and the US rebalance to the Asia–Pacific region, and [did seek]
to reinforce India’s maritime capabilities as a net provider of security in
the Indian Ocean region and beyond” through a three-pronged approach
to maritime cooperation with India. It did pledge to keep “main-
taining a shared vision on maritime security issues; upgrading the bilateral
maritime security partnership; and collaborating to both build regional
partner capacity and improve regional maritime domain awareness” (US
Department of Defence, 2015).
This led to the first India–US maritime security dialogue, in May 2016.
In August of the same year, after protracted negotiations, a Logistics
Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) which permitted US
and India use of each other’s facilities and provided a framework to facil-
itate the provision of logistical support, supplies and services between the
two militaries on a reimbursable basis. The LEMOA did not give the US
automatic access to India’s military bases or to logistical support. These
activities were limited to joint military exercises, port calls, humanitarian
assistance or any other military activity that both sides mutually agreed to
undertake. It did however provide an operational framework to existing
practices for which authorization had so far been granted on a case by
case basis (Rajagopalan, 2016).
But the closer the Indian government came to the US administration,
the more necessary it became to reinsure China of its peaceful inten-
tions. Hence a very carefully calibrated management of the relationship
with both the US and China. However, this position became increasingly
difficult to maintain under the Trump administration. The new admin-
istration remained committed to strong military relations with India but
its policy on China made it increasingly difficult for New Delhi to main-
tain a posture which had so far allowed it to modernize its armed forces
by getting access to US military technologies and military know-how
without escalating tensions with China.
India’s situation was further complicated by the US increasing reluc-
tance during the Obama and Trump presidencies to play a leading role
in upholding the international system as it had done in the past. This
generated middle and long-term uncertainties for Indian decision-makers.
China’s own assertiveness in the Indian Ocean as well as on India’s
Himalayan border did not eliminate New Delhi’s traditional dilemma but
strategic necessity made it inevitable for the Modi government to accel-
erate the pace of defence trade cooperation with the US while trying to
preserve as much as possible some degree of cooperation with China.
The Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement
(COMCASA) was signed during the first 2+2 India–US ministerial
meeting in September 2018 (Ministry of External Affairs [India],
2018b). COMCASA allowed India to acquire specialized equipment for
encrypted communications for US origin military platforms like the C-17
and the C-130 transport aircraft, and, more importantly in the Indian
Ocean context, the P-8I multimission maritime patrol aircraft.
But then, in the summer of 2020, amid tensions between India and
China on their Himalayan borders in Ladakh, India refused a US proposal
for mediation. Still, warships from the Eastern Fleet of the Indian Navy
conducted maritime exercises with a US Navy carrier strike group led
by USS Nimitz near the Andaman and Nicobar islands (Singh, 2020).
In October of the same year, during the 2+2 ministerial dialogue, India
and the US signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement
(BECA) (Ministry of External Affairs [India], 2020b), giving both coun-
tries mutual access to geo-spatial data and critical intelligence assets, i.e.
the exchange of classified information.
Hedging Against Uncertainty:

Coalitions with the Middle Powers
The perceived uncertainty of the US commitment to India’s security did
not exclude the fear of being drawn into “Washington’s wars”, whatever
its nature. But in addition to India’s own weaknesses, it led to the search
for new partners among the middle powers, both inside and outside the
IOR. Singapore and Indonesia, but also France, Japan and, more recently,
Australia, became partners of choice for India in the maritime domain.
France, with which India entertains, since 1998, a robust strategic
partnership, has been a long time arms supplier to the Indian Navy and
the Indian Air Force. It provided India with the Mirage 2000 fighter
aircraft in the 1980s and is now providing the Rafale as well as Scorpene
submarines which are being built in India within the framework of knowl-
edge transfer clauses. In the Indian Ocean, Indian and French strategic
interests are in fact closely aligned. Both countries have been monitoring
the activities of potentially revisionist newcomers and share similar visions
regarding sea borne nuclear proliferation as well as concerns about hostile
movements challenging the freedom of navigation.
Their navies have been conducting regular joint exercises since 2001.
However, their naval interactions intensified in the mid-2010s. In 2015,
they formalized a Maritime Security Dialogue which was further consoli-
dated after the election of President Emmanuel Macron in 2017. In 2018,
both countries signed a series of agreements, including a “Joint Strategic
Vision of [their] Cooperation in the Indian Ocean” (French Embassy
in India, 2018). The document specifically mentioned the “Agreement
regarding the Provision of Reciprocal Logistics Support”, signed on the
same occasion, as well as their bilateral and international coordination,
maritime domain awareness, but also their naval exercises that they signif-
icantly left “open to inviting strategic partner countries in the region”
(French Embassy in India, 2018).
With regard to India–Japan security cooperation, this is a relatively
new phenomenon. Recognition of possibly convergent interests in the
matter appeared only in the mid-2000s. However, Japan woke up to
India’s naval capabilities as early as 1999, when the Indian Navy and
coastguards undertook a major operation to release a Japanese freighter
hijacked in the Indian Ocean (Naidu & Yasuyuki, 43:1, 2019). Indeed,
piracy which prevailed between the Andaman islands and the South China
Sea in the late 1990s, helped cement the relationship. In January 2000,
India offered to cooperate with the Japanese Navy for the safety of the
sea routes to Japan.
Actual cooperation started a few months later with coast guards exer-
cises and port calls. The cooperation between the Maritime Self Defence
Force of Japan and the Indian Navy, and more generally, the importance
of maritime security in the relations between the two countries, was insti-
tutionalized during the visit to Delhi of Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi,
in April 2005. Although the Indian Ocean was not the sole focus of the
cooperation, naval interactions experienced another qualitative upgrade
in the following years. India hosted the Malabar exercises in the Bay of
Bengal in 2007 (which, besides India and Japan, involved the US and
Australia) and in October 2008, signed with Japan, a “Joint declara-
tion on Security Cooperation”. The document emphasized in particular
the cooperation between the Coast Guards and the navies of the two
countries (Ministry of External Affairs [India], 2018b).
The variety, scope and complexity of India–Japan naval cooperation
kept increasing afterwards to include anti-piracy operations, humani-
tarian aid and disaster relief (HADR), but also anti-submarine warfare.
The cooperation further deepened after Narendra Modi’s election in
2014. In 2018, the two countries signed an “Implementing Arrange-
ment for Deeper Cooperation between the Indian Navy and the Japan
Maritime Self Defence Force” (Ministry of External Affairs [India],
2018b) which established the means and the framework for information
sharing, including the exchange of shipping information. Naval coopera-
tion was soon completed by other forms of joint investments in the Indian
Ocean Region, including in Africa where India and Japan already had a
common history of cooperation. Both countries launched a joint initiative
for quality connectivity infrastructure and people partnerships through
the ambitious “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” (Africa Development Bank,
2017) with the clear intent of expanding their spheres of strategic and
economic influence.
Meanwhile, India and Australia, estranged for a long time, started
getting closer only in the early 2000s at Australia’s initiative. Yet,
persisting Indian mistrust of Australia because of its economic depen-
dence on China and a relatively weak involvement of the Australian navy
in the Indian Ocean did slow down the development of the relationship.
Increased Chinese interferences and pressures on both countries, as well
as Australia’s commitment to greater involvement in the Defence ties in
general and maritime cooperation in particular, in the Indian Ocean, led

to a spectacular rapprochement between the two countries.
The January 2019 address to the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi by
Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne in which she announced
greater Australian involvement in the Indian Ocean (Payne, 2019) was
well received in New Delhi. In June 2020, India and Australia signed
a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (Ministry of External Affairs
[India], 2020a), as well as a “Joint Declaration on a Shared Vision for
Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific” (Ministry of External Affairs
[India], 2020b). It marked a qualitative change in the bilateral rela-
tion and signalled that the two countries had managed to overcome
their inhibitions about security cooperation (Jaishankar, 2020a). The
“Joint Declaration on a Shared Maritime Cooperation”, stipulated that
“India and Australia [would] together, bilaterally, regionally and multilat-
erally, and in minilateral arrangements, to support regional architecture in
line with their shared values and interests” (Ministry of External Affairs
[India], 2020a).
The evolution and the deepening of all these bilateral relations, led
New Delhi’s to consider new formats of cooperation. Minilateral meetings
gradually became commonplace in India’s diplomatic practice. India has
held such meetings with Japan and Australia since 2015 and with Australia
and Indonesia since 2018. On 9 September 2020, it conducted its first
trilateral dialogue with Australia and France. These meetings however
intended to bring pragmatic responses to practical problems. India and
Australia both share maritime borders with Indonesia. With Australia and
France, India intends to strengthen trilateral cooperation in the Indian
Ocean but also to reinforce existing and often weak or dysfunctional
regional organizations.
Moreover, such groupings were not exclusive of larger, more politically
and strategically loaded groupings such as the Quad, resurrected in 2017,
after ten years of inaction, and which, as stated by analyst Vivek Mishra,
provide India “with the opportunity to use its geographic centrality in the
region to connect with the strategic ends on either side of the peninsula
to enhance its security vision” (Mishra & Das, 2019).
Conclusion: Indian Questions and Concerns

China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean is perceived by India as its
primary predicament in the area. Unable to mobilize sufficient resources
to manage the problem alone, New Delhi has both initiated a significant
(even if quiet) rapprochement with the US and other resident countries
of the Indian Ocean, but it also opened up to the presence of foreign
navies, and sometimes actively encouraged them to be more present in
the Indian Ocean like in the case of Russia—in order to play their own
contradiction of interests with China to India’s advantage. But it has also
made sure to be at the epicentre of the ongoing attempt to frame an
Indian Ocean security architecture.
The India which is gradually emerging from the new situation is a
deeply changed one. It is an India where even weaknesses are adroitly
used to its own advantage. If it has not managed to reduce its power
asymmetry with China, all other powers have accepted the idea that it was
still China’s best balancer in the region and see therefore a strong India
as beneficial for their own interests. As a result even India’s reluctance to
play a balancing role in the Indian Ocean is met with additional incentives
from a growing number of powers to cooperate with India. New Delhi is
therefore at the epicentre of the new geostrategic dynamic in the Indian
Ocean.
This merges with the traditional comprehensive strategy that India
has been pursuing vis-à-vis China for over three decades. The combi-
nation of both bilateral and multilateral cooperation with like-minded
countries or entities where a partial convergence of interests with other
member states coexist with strong elements of competition ultimately
contributes to this ‘web of webs’ by which former Foreign Secretary
Shyam Saran used to describe India’s Look East Policy, a situation in
which the traditional elements of deterrence, containment and engage-
ment are constantly reevaluated and redefined. In this process, the
interests of the competing parties are constantly taken into account to
mitigate pressures while allowing India to constitute issue-based coali-
tions, and consequently evolving formats, in order to blur dividing lines
and dilute the antagonisms while maintaining some degree of strategic
autonomy.
However, India is increasingly constrained by the contradictory pres-
sures between the need to reinforce its capacities and the need to maintain
stable relations with China. More than ever, India needs to enlarge its
partnerships in order to avoid an unnecessary confrontational message to

China. But as much as it fits New Delhi’s strategy and pattern of action,
the risk is real of a dispersion of its resources. In the end, India’s Indian
Ocean ambitions remain dependent on its economic development but the
latter is ultimately a function of its regional integration.
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CHAPTER 4
The US, the Reluctant Offshore Balancer

of the Indian Ocean Rivalries
Compared to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Indian Ocean was never
considered as a region of first priority by US governments. A secondary
theatre of the confrontation with the USSR during the Cold War, it
surfaced in the policy debate recently and largely because of the Chinese
expansion in the region. Historically, the US military presence in the
Indian Ocean only grew in earnest after the 1968 decision of UK Prime
Minister Harold Wilson to remove all British assets “east of Suez”. Even
then, the build up was conducted reluctantly and the US Navy slowly
replaced the Royal Navy without yearning for the same political purpose.
All in all, during that period, the Indian Ocean was largely perceived as
an old “European lake”, as Dov Zakheim, a former official of Republican
administrations, wrote in 1980 (Zakheim, 1980: 8).
However, the US overt neglect for the region changed in the early
2000s. Starting during the presidency of George W. Bush, the Chinese
growing presence in the IOR acted as a catalyst and led government
representatives in Washington not only to consider a stronger policy in
the area but specifically to eye India as the obvious regional partner of
the US to counter China. Still during that same period, the IOR also
became associated in Washington with issues such as the presence of
numerous weak states and the spread of transnational criminal activities—
i.e., terrorism, piracy, or proliferation networks—that made the region an
area of security vacuum, rather than of strategic competition. This created

Switzerland AG 2022
the coexistence of two very different visions of the Indian Ocean, one as
a centre stage of great power competition—namely the US, China and
India—and one of an anarchical region undermined by state failure and
violent extremism.
Against that backdrop, this chapter argues that the US approach
towards the IOR can be characterized as the combination of two separate
policies that addressed the region, either as a battleground with China or
as a mere aggregation of small states whose unique common denominator
may be their weakness. The first section explains how this latter vision is
inherited from the Cold War era, and in particular from the development
of the concept of an “arc of crisis” in the late 1970s that became an
enduring American vision of the region. In the second section, we show
that if the view of an “arc of crisis” has endured, the Chinese expansion
undoubtedly fuelled the most recent US policy discussions of the Indian
Ocean and led to the emergence of a much-discussed US–China–India
strategic triangle in the IOR. The third section looks more specifically at
the US–India partnership as the key feature of the American approach
to the IOR. It underlines that the bilateral cooperation with Delhi has
fallen short from the high expectations of past administrations in Wash-
ington and the vision of a “natural alliance” once imagined. In addition to
the challenges of strengthening the US–India relations, the fourth section
reviews the limited US engagement towards the IOR at the multilateral
level, whether through its ties with local regional organizations such as
ASEAN or the development of new formats such as the Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue (QUAD).
Eventually, as the fifth and last section underlines, the contempo-
rary American view of the Indian Ocean remains problematic because
it renders any other local issues and players in the area secondary. In
recent years, this vision became prominent with the administration of
then-President Donald J. Trump, announcing in 2017 an Indo-Pacific
strategy that merged the Indian and Pacific Oceans into one new geopolit-
ical entity. This meant that Washington was now perceiving the challenges
in the IOR to be intrinsically linked to the political developments in the
broader Asia–Pacific region. But it also suggested in the eyes of local
players, in particular, India, that according to this new US Indo-Pacific
strategy, the “Indo” might be no more than a mere appendix of the Pacific
region. In other words, friction and competition in the Indian Ocean
would be primarily an extension of developments originating from the
Asia–Pacific area. Eventually, such an assumption runs the risk of ignoring
4 THE US, THE RELUCTANT OFFSHORE BALANCER … 73
that a “secondary” Indian Ocean still exists, in fact on its Western side that
includes the African rim and the Persian Gulf.
The Early US Policy in the Indian Ocean Region:

From the Cold War to the Arc of Crisis
Unsurprisingly, during the Cold War, the American maritime deployment
to the Indian Ocean was driven by the competition with the Soviet navy.
As the UK steadily decreased its footprint in the region, the USSR rein-
forced its deployment. In 1967, only a few weeks after British forces
abandoned the protectorate of Aden, where a local insurgency led by
nationalist groups was raging, Moscow dispatched a small task force in
the area (McDevitt, 2018: 8).
In the following years, as British forces left their bases in Malaysia,
Singapore, the Maldives, or in the small Arab Emirates of the Persian
Gulf, the US grudgingly became the new guardian of the IOR. The only
US military presence in the whole Indian Ocean region was a small naval
expeditionary force hosted at the British base in Bahrain, a small island-
state in the Persian Gulf. Because of the sheer size of the Indian Ocean,
allocating maritime resources was a major logistical challenge with consid-
erable financial costs. As a result, most of the bipolar competition in the
area focused less on the opening of permanent military bases than on
securing access to local port facilities.
The most consequential measure of the transition between British
and American forces in the Indian Ocean was the deployment of
US naval assets on the British territory of Diego Garcia. One of 60
islands comprising the Chagos Archipelago, Diego Garcia has long been
portrayed as a remnant of European colonial empires. It has stirred
numerous controversies over the legitimacy, and legality, of US military
presence there, especially vis-a-vis the demands of indigenous population
(Sand, 2009; Vine, 2011). A bilateral agreement between London and
Washington was initially signed in 1966 to grant access to the island to
US armed forces. By 1971, the US Department of Defense launched
several construction works on the island to build a naval communica-
tion station, an airfield able to host US B-52 strategic bombers, MR/S
maritime patrol aircraft and AWACS aircraft. But quite revealingly, it took
fifteen years for the base to become fully operational (Roy-Chaudhury,
1998). Today, compared to other US overseas deployments, the resources
allocated to Diego Garcia remain modest. In 2020, the IISS Military
Balance estimated that 300 men and one squadron of maritime preposi-
tioning ships were stationed on the island—noticeably the numbers have
remained stable for the last decade (International Institute for Strategic
Studies, 2020: 58).
In the years following the British withdrawal from the east of Suez, US
diplomatic efforts to secure military access to the Indian Ocean region
turned out to be more challenging than expected. At first, the US could
rely on the aligned regimes of Ethiopia and Iran to provide port access to
US troops. However, by the end of the seventies, both countries experi-
enced revolutions and regime changes leading to the suspension of their
diplomatic relations with the US.
Ethiopia in the mid-seventies reflected the logic of US-Soviet compe-
tition in the Horn of Africa. The erosion of ties with Washington
after 1976 was concomitant with the decision of the ruling junta in
Addis Ababa to welcome Soviet military presence. But the USSR had
already invested economically and militarily in the neighbouring socialist
regime of Somalia—in part to counter the previously US-backed Ethiopia
(McDevitt, 2018: 12). Given the hostility between Somalia and Ethiopia,
maintaining close ties with both countries proved unsustainable for the
Soviets.
The volatility of alliances in the Horn of Africa increased as tensions
between Somalia and the USSR escalated, and the US became an alterna-
tive for the leadership in Mogadishu. As 1980 started, the US Navy was
by then able to station ships in the Somalian port of Berbera. In the first
part of that decade, the US government also initiated negotiations with
Kenya that proved inconclusive. In the sultanate of Oman, US diplomatic
efforts eventually succeeded to enable a rather limited access to their port
facilities. During that same period, the Reagan administration contem-
plated the idea of using the base of Ras Banas, in Egypt, as its gateway
to the broader region but following several financial and political issues,
the project was dismissed. Overall, these chronic difficulties in securing
base access and the volatile partnerships with local states revealed that
ultimately the Indian Ocean was neither the centre of gravity nor a major
priority in the US–USSR competition. Throughout that period, govern-
ments in Moscow and Washington aimed to prevent military escalation
in the area. In this context, both great powers agreed to send negotiators
in 1977–1978 to work on an agreement for the limitation of naval arma-
ment in the Indian Ocean but the project was later abandoned (Dowdy &
Trood, 1986: 413).
Eventually it was the local developments, rather than the global power
plays, that changed the terms of the Indian Ocean debate among Amer-
ican strategic thinkers. In the last decade of the Cold War, the US
concerns towards the area had increasingly less to do with the fear of an
open confrontation with the USSR—a scenario considered much more
significant in the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea—than with
the risk of regional instability being fed by the combination of civil wars
and insurgencies within local states and Moscow’s opportunistic attempts
to use this security vacuum as a leverage for its regional influence. The fall
of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia proved the fragility of local regimes and the
vagaries of US partnerships but another regime change was even more
consequential for Washington: in 1979, the monarch of Iran and long
partner of the US, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was overthrown by a
revolution.
A few weeks before the Shah left Tehran, on 15 January 1979, Time
Magazine published an article on the latest regional developments and
quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor of President Jimmy
Carter. Brezinski argued that “an arc of crisis stretches along the shores of
the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political structures in a region
of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation. The resulting
political chaos could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and
sympathetic to our adversaries” (Time, 1979).
Brezinski’s idea of an “arc of crisis” was the first policy concept that
conveniently captured the local developments in the IOR and provided
them with an overarching theme. It aggregated very different security
issues from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and to South
Asia under a common denominator. As a result, the metaphor of an “arc”
created an effective image to nurture the geopolitical imagination of poli-
cymakers in Washington. In this context, Brezinski and his thinking were
instrumental in leading Jimmy Carter to identify publicly the stability of
the Persian Gulf as a vital US interest. Securing the access to the Gulf
despite the many troubles in the region was to become a major goal of
US national security policy. In his 1980 State of the Union Address,
Carter specifically declared, “Let our position be absolutely clear: An
attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region
will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States
of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary,
including military force” (Carter, 1980).
Carter’s speech was driven by the concern that the “arc of crisis”
would benefit the USSR, which had launched its invasion of Afghanistan
a month before. But in retrospect, the statement also signalled a new step
in US active engagement in this subregion of the Indian Ocean. It paved
the way to the US military footprint in the Persian Gulf as we know it
today, starting in 1983 with the establishment of the Central Command
(Acharya, 1989: 126), and later with the vast military bases maintained
throughout the region after the Gulf War of 1991.
For the next three decades, the “arc of crisis” remained a salient
narrative on the Indian Ocean (Fain, 2018; Rehman, 2013). Initially
thought and conceived in a Cold War environment, this catch-all concept
endured and became a key matrix to look at the region. It proved
particularly compelling in the years following the Al Qaeda attacks of
11 September 2011 when the “war against terror” and failed states
became the cornerstone of US foreign policy (Rotberg, 2002b; Walt,
2001–2002).
But if in retrospect the US-USSR competition in the Indian Ocean
played a minor part in the Cold War, the growth of China in later years,
and more particularly its maritime expansion to the Indian Ocean, has
had a much more significant role in shaping US contemporary views of
the region. It did not render the idea of an “arc of crisis” irrelevant.
But as mentioned above, it did create two concurrent, and sometimes
competing, US visions of the IOR: on the one hand, the emergence of
a great power competition putting an emphasis on the strategic triangle
composed of China, India and the US in the area; on the other hand, the
enduring image of an “arc of crises” focused on the chronic weaknesses of
local governance enabling the development of criminal and terrorist activ-
ities that affected US interests, whether at the economic or the national
security levels.
The Indian Ocean Through

the Lens of US–China Competition
In 2005, a report prepared by Booz Allen Hamilton and commissioned
by the Office of Net Assessment at the US Department of Defense was
leaked to the press. Titled “Energy Futures in Asia”, the report shed
light on how the Washingtonian discussion of China’s rise had evolved.
It described an emerging Chinese naval strategy that would rely on a
network of military bases and entry points in ports from Africa, the
Middle-East to the South China Sea: “China is building strategic relation-

ships along the sea lanes from the Middle-East to the South China Sea in
ways that suggest defensive and offensive positioning to protect China’s
energy interests, but also to serve broad security objectives” (Editorial,
Washington Times, 2005). As mentioned in Chapter 2, the report was the
first to evoke the idea of a “string of pearls” China was then assumed to
build in the Indian Ocean through its ports infrastructure projects and
military access agreements (Pehrson, 2006).
Four years later, the journalist Robert Kaplan wrote a much-quoted
article in Foreign Affairs explicitly titled “Center Stage for the Twenty-
first Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean” (Kaplan, 2009).
Supporting the idea of a geopolitical entity with its own coherence,
Kaplan described how “the greater Indian Ocean region encompasses
the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian
archipelago”. He then embraced the same theory of a Chinese string
of pearls and argued that the Indian Ocean was becoming the centre
of gravity of world politics: “Already the world’s preeminent energy and
trade interstate seaway, the Indian Ocean will matter even more as India
and China enter into a dynamic great-power rivalry in these waters”
(Kaplan, 2009: 17). Kaplan later expanded the argument in a best-selling
book Monsoon (Kaplan, 2011).
Kaplan’s work is frequently dismissed by scholars of the IOR as a mere
journalistic account succumbing to the fad of his time. But it is worth
noting that the book as well as Kaplan’s article in Foreign Affairs are
usually credited for playing a significant role in shaping the policy discus-
sion on Indian Ocean issues that previously were rarely covered outside
of the subject-matter expert community.1 The fact that Kaplan was later
appointed by the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as a member of
the Defense Policy Board, an advisory committee to the Department of
Defense, also gave texture to the idea that his book had had an influ-
ence on the policy debate of its time. Noticeably, the 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review—a four-year review of US military strategy and priori-
ties—offered for the first time a specific paragraph dedicated to the Indian
Ocean:
1 Phone interview with a programme director at the Center for Naval Analyses, 16
April 2019.
The United States has a substantial interest in the stability of the Indian
Ocean region as a whole, which will play an ever more important role
in the global economy. The Indian Ocean provides vital sea lines of
communication that are essential to global commerce, international energy
security, and regional stability. Ensuring open access to the Indian Ocean
will require a more integrated approach to the region across military and
civilian organizations. (US Department of Defense, 2010: 60–61)
During that same period, American institutions such as the Stimson

Center, the American Enterprise Institute, or the Center for Naval
Analyses, received funding for research programmes dedicated to the
geopolitics of the Indian Ocean. The Office of the Secretary of Defense
also mandated the Naval War College to provide analytical support for a
comprehensive review of US policies towards the region (Dombrowski &
Winner, 2014). But if Kaplan’s ideas or theories such as the “string of
pearls” gained traction in Washington’s foreign policy circles, they did
not lead to concrete measures in terms of government policies. Although
some pundits recommended that the US invest more resources on the
IOR, the administration of President Barack Obama maintained its focus
on the Asia–Pacific region. Obama launched the so-called “pivot” that
aimed to reposition US diplomatic and military resources towards Asia,
where the most critical security challenges were considered to take place
(Campbell, 2016; Meijer, 2015). By 2015, the National Security Strategy
issued by the White House put the emphasis on its “rebalance to Asia and
the Pacific” with no mention of the Indian Ocean (White House, 2015b:
24).
For the remaining years of the Obama presidency, the Indian Ocean
was barely a topic on the policy agenda. The think tank bubble that
had grown in the period following the publication of Kaplan’s book
had vanished. In fact, it was only within the first year of his successor
Donald Trump that the region resurfaced in the debates as the incoming
US administration announced a new strategy that now prioritized the
so-called “Indo-Pacific region”. In the words of the Trump adminis-
tration, this new terminology of the Indo-Pacific designated a region
that extended from the Indian shores to the Pacific coast of the US—in
practice, excluding the Western side of the Indian Ocean.2
2 See the official statement on the area of responsibility for the Indo-Pacific Command:
https://www.pacom.mil/About-USINDOPACOM/USPACOM-Area-of-Responsibility/.
The expression “Indo-Pacific” was already commonly used in India,

Australia, and Japan (Australian Government, 2016; Medcalf, 2013). The
Obama administration had been cautious about embracing it though. In
2011, Hillary Clinton, the then-US Secretary of State, did use the term
“Indo-Pacific” to characterize the burgeoning partnership between the
US and Australia (Clinton, 2011). Her successor at the Department of
State, John Kerry, later described the opening of Burma’s economy as a
key for the “Indo-Pacific economic corridor” (Medcalf, 2013).
In fact, according to interviews with former officials of the Obama
administration, there were intense discussions between the White House,
the Departments of State and Defense during the preparatory meetings
of the 2015 National Security Strategy to formally adopt the expres-
sion “Indo-Pacific”. The option was reportedly ruled out for two main
reasons. First, several staff members raised the concern that the termi-
nology would put an unnecessary emphasis on India. “We felt that it
would have spooked India” confided one former high-level official at
the Department of Defense at that time.3 Second, officials pointed out
the fear that adding the “Indo” prefix may generate confusion regarding
the geographic priorities of the US military between Indian and Pacific
Oceans. In other words, the Obama administration considered that the
focus of its global posture should remain unequivocally the Asia–Pacific
region.4
The Indo-Pacific terminology eventually became a major feature of US
government rhetoric towards Asia during the Trump presidency, specif-
ically after a speech by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the
US–India relationship in October 2017 at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS). The speech argued that “India and the
United States must foster greater prosperity and security with the aim
of a free and open Indo-Pacific” (Tillerson, 2017).
Tillerson’s statement paved the way for a speech of Donald Trump a
month later during an APEC CEO Summit, a high-level event convened
in Vietnam by the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for regional
business leaders, during which he repeated the idea of a “free and open
Indo-Pacific” (Trump, 2017). In an unusually lyrical fashion, Trump
3 Interview with a former official from the US Department of Defense, Washington, 4

April 2019.
4 Interviews with former officials from the US Department of Defense, Washington, 3
April 2019.
described the Indo-Pacific region as “a beautiful constellation of nations,

each its own bright star, satellites to none — and each one, a people, a
culture, a way of life, and a home”.
The message was filled with key words like “governance” and “coop-
eration” and could be perceived as a message focusing on multilateral
engagement to foster the “Indo-Pacific dream” as coined by Trump
himself. But beyond the mere rhetoric, these speeches and documents
were primarily the result of US concerns about the expansion of China
in the region rather than their support to the development of the
region itself (Swaine, 2018). Tillerson’s speech at CSIS described Chinese
“predatory economics” in the area as the biggest challenge the United
States and its partners should address (Tillerson, 2017).
More importantly, the Trump administration’s National Security
Strategy released in 2017 defined a “geopolitical competition between
free and repressive visions of world order” and denounced how “China
seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the
reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its
favor” (White House, 2017). The document reflected a major shift from
the Obama approach that had posited a cooperative framework for the
US–China relations in its National Security Strategy of 2015. This was
arguably also the result of China’s own shift towards a more assertive
regional policy under President Xi.
At the military level, the National Security Strategy of 2017 was
followed by a series of major decisions. In May 2018 the U.S. Pacific
Command was renamed the Indo-Pacific Command, a decision justified
by the then-Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, in light of “the increasing
connectivity between the Indian and Pacific oceans” (US Department
of Defense, 2018). This rebranding was largely a symbolic measure
altering neither the mandate nor the area of responsibility for the military
command. But regional actors saw it as an indicator that this new Indo-
Pacific strategy was primarily a military enterprise aiming at containing
China’s expansion in both regions (Jibiki, 2018). In June 2019, the
Department of Defense released its own Indo-Pacific Strategy Report that
emphasized the objective of US armed forces to maintain their presence
in the area and strengthen their local partnerships in order to build a “net-
worked region” against the “revisionist power” of China (US Department
of Defense, 2019b: 7).
The permanent reference to Chinese expansion in these documents
reinforced a binary vision of the IOR and conflicted with the simultaneous
promotion of American partnerships to the region. At the Shangri-

La Summit of 2018, James Mattis assured his Asian counterparts that
America does “not ask any country to choose between the United States
and China” (Mattis, 2018).
In substance, the Trump policy was not a departure from the past. It
derived from those of his predecessors and could be seen as the culmi-
nation of Obama’s “pivot” or “rebalance”. When asked, former officials
of the Obama administration in Washington tended to see “more conti-
nuity than change” in the new Indo-Pacific strategy.5 It was therefore
no surprise that after the election of Joe Biden in November 2020, the
terminology was kept and the new cabinet appointed Kurt Campbell as
coordinator for the Indo-Pacific. The choice of Campbell, a former official
of the Obama presidency considered the architect of Obama’s “pivot”,
reflected this sense of continuity.
At the military level, the growing emphasis on the Indo-Pacific region
had started during the administration of George W. Bush. In fact, the
2007 Maritime Strategy first announced this prioritization. This official
document stated indeed that “credible combat power will be continuously
postured in the Western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean to
protect our vital interests” (US Navy, 2007: 9). In other words, the 2007
naval strategy revised the traditional focus on both the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans that had been active since the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940.
Bearing in mind these elements of continuity, the new US approach to
the region was more openly confrontational in its expression. The belli-
cose tone of the Trump administration and the explicit use of Cold War
rhetoric in documents such as the 2017 National Security Strategy framed
the regional environment as a zero-sum game, according to which local
states had to position themselves vis-à-vis two distinguishable blocs. In
late 2020, the then-Secretary of Navy, Kenneth Braithwaite, suggested
that the US may create a new fleet of warships dedicated to the strategic
competition in the IOR. Braithwaite added that the fleet could be oper-
ating from Singapore (Crabtree, 2021). The statement swiftly led the
government from the Southeast Asian city-state to distance itself from
the declaration as Singapore carefully attempted to balance between
Washington and Beijing (see Chapter 7).
5 Interviews in Washington, 3 April 2019.

The fusion of the Indian Ocean with the Asia–Pacific region for
the US policy planning process put into question the military ramifica-
tions of such an association. More precisely, it gives the impression of a
wide competition between the US and China across the surface of both
oceans. But this does not reflect the operational reality. As US military
analysts underline, China’s military posture in the Indian Ocean region
differs from the one in the Pacific.6 Whereas China’s naval approach in
the Asia–Pacific space is driven by concrete warfighting scenarios in the
Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, its military presence in the Indian
Ocean primarily aims at securing sea lanes of communication or preparing
evacuation operations of Chinese workers in littoral states—for instance
in Yemen where the PLAN evacuated 570 Chinese nationals in 2015
(Brewster, 2019).
For several years now, US military planners have been speculating on
the way this distinction between Pacific and Indian Oceans within China’s
naval posture may change, either because of a military development in
the Indian Ocean itself or because of a crisis emerging in the Pacific
and enlarging to the Indian Ocean.7 In any event, the military logic of
integrating both Oceans remains questionable.
Moreover, it may send mixed signals to Asian partners. A China
specialist for the US Indo-Pacific Command argued “enlarging the scope
of US strategy towards China might be read as a way to confess that the
US simply cannot, or, worse, is not willing to contain China in the Asia–
Pacific region and therefore opts for a broader posture”.8 This pessimistic
assessment can be disputed by the fact that in terms of resources, the
Asia–Pacific region remains the centre of gravity of US military policy
in the area. But again, in both hypotheses, the Indian Ocean is merely
an appendix to the US grand strategy towards China. Moreover, the
“Indo-” prefix of the Indo-Pacific does not exactly refer to the Indian
Ocean but rather to India, the primary if not the only reason why the US
government decided on an integrated approach to the regions (Ayres,
2019).
6 Interviews in Washington, 2–3 April 2019.

7 Interview with Toshi Yoshihara, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, Washington, 2 April 2019.
8 Interview in Washington, 1 April 2019.
The US–India Partnership, a “Natural” Response

to the Chinese Challenge in the IOR?
To a certain extent, US administrations have viewed India’s growth in the
same way that they viewed the broader developments within the Indian
Ocean: as a parameter to factor into its own competition with China.
Specifically, the idea that a stronger US partnership with India may help
in counterbalancing Beijing’s expansion is a calculus that has informed
the policy orientations of the US government for more than two decades.
The idea was already prominent in the last years of the Clinton pres-
idency when the latter travelled to India in 2000—the first time for a
US president since 1978. Then the India–US rapprochement deepened
spectacularly during the mandate of George W. Bush. In 2005, a new
framework for the bilateral defence relations was signed and paved the way
for closer military cooperation, in particular in the domains of maritime
security and counterterrorism. That same year, India and the US signed
the Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative lifting the US moratorium on
nuclear trade with India. The trend was prolonged under the presidency
of Barack Obama with the US emerging as the second biggest supplier
of arms sales to Delhi and the Indian armed forces becoming one of the
most frequent contributors to military exercises with the US armed forces
(Kumar, 2016). In 2009, an annual bilateral strategic dialogue between
Washington and Delhi was established and convened five times before
it was renamed, in 2015, the “strategic and commercial dialogue”. In
September 2014, during his first visit to the US, India’s Prime Minister
Narendra Modi issued a joint statement with Barack Obama entitled
“Forward Together We Go”. The declaration stated, “As leaders of two
great democratic nations with diverse traditions and faiths, we share a
vision for a partnership in which the US and India work together, not
just for the benefit of both our nations, but for the benefit of the world”
(White House, 2014).
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the document was followed a
few months later by a US–India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia–Pacific
and Indian Ocean Region. This Vision echoed some of the tenets of the
Trump strategy for the Indo-Pacific region. It affirmed that “from Africa
to East Asia, we will build on our partnership to support sustainable,
inclusive development, and increased regional connectivity by collabo-
rating with other interested partners to address poverty and support
broad-based prosperity”. One paragraph dedicated to regional gover-

nance implicitly condemned Chinese regional policies by calling “on all
parties to avoid the threat or use of force and pursue resolution of terri-
torial and maritime disputes through all peaceful means, in accordance
with universally recognized principles of international law, including the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” (White House,
2015a). Both governments also embraced in their speeches the rhetoric
of a “natural alliance” that emphasized the democratic and multicul-
tural aspects of the US and India as parameters favouring the bilateral
relationship.
However, the belief in a US–India alliance against China remains a
convenient but simplistic idea that hides the complex relations between
Washington and Delhi. We exposed in the previous chapter these diffi-
culties seen from Delhi but it is worth looking at those seen from
Washington as well. First, the logic of counterbalancing China as empha-
sized by the Indo-Pacific strategy of the Trump administration ignored
the asymmetric nature of Chinese–Indian relations. The US assumed an
Indian ability to reach a potential balance with China that is in practice
denied by the enduring superiority of the latter over the former in most
economic and military sectors. In the early 2000s, when the Bush admin-
istration first conceived this strategic rapprochement with Delhi, Indian
and Chinese economies were sensibly similar so the counterbalancing
logic made sense. But the asymmetry between Chinese and Indian powers
only deepened over the following two decades (Gilboy & Heginbotham,
2012). Today, the majority of indicators at the military level (expendi-
tures, personnel, capabilities) favours China, in particular in the domains
where a crisis in the Indian Ocean could lead both countries to confront
each other (Congressional Research Service, 2018: 48).
This explains why governments in Delhi opted for a more ambivalent
approach with Beijing that mixes elements of balancing and accommoda-
tion and which has generally caused the frustration of US officials (Grare,
2016). This asymmetry of power between India and China is well under-
stood by China itself and as a result, India is not driving the conduct of
Chinese strategy in the Indian Ocean. As Ashley Tellis points out, “when
one talks of China in the Indian Ocean, one has to start off recognizing
that China’s principal strategic competition—if it chooses to pursue that
path—will not be with India but with the United States” (Tellis, 2012).
Therefore, the American objective of countering China assigns to India
a supporting role that its decision makers are neither able nor willing
to fully embrace. It is also worth noting that US officials under the

presidency of Donald Trump did not reportedly consult their Indian
counterpart prior to the official release of Trump’s strategy for the Indo-
Pacific, a diplomatic faux-pas that may also explain the cold reaction from
the government in Delhi.9
These political disagreements have operational consequences. The
Indian Navy so far excluded the US Navy from its regional forum, the
Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS). Indian authorities argued that
membership was reserved to littoral states but it is worth noting that the
US does not even enjoy the status of observer like China, Germany or
Russia.10 In the fall of 2018, India signed with the US the Communi-
cations Compatibility and Security Agreement, a significant step which
should enable India to get easier access to US arms sales. But at the
same time, the Modi government maintained its decision to acquire
Russia’s S-400 air defence system. Russian weapon transfer to India
could trigger US sanctions against Delhi under the Countering Ameri-
ca’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act—a measure already activated by
Washington against Turkey for a similar arms sale with Russia (Pandey,
2019).
Overall in the past two decades, the enduring limitations of Indian
armed forces and the ambivalent support from its political class generated
deep frustration within the US government. As several former or current
government officials in Washington mentioned in interviews, there is a
common saying inside the Pentagon offices that “India is the future and
will always be”.11 Beyond its anecdotal dimension, the quote and its
sarcastic tone reflected the gap between the initial great expectations for
the US–India partnership and the reality of its achievements so far.
This view may be balanced by more moderate testimonies. Abraham
Denmark, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East
Asia, argues “those who are realistic about the partnership with Delhi are
those who engage on a regular basis with India and know it is a difficult
and long process but worth the efforts, those who have great expectations
are people in the White House who usually do not interact with India
9 Interview with a former official from the Department of Defense, Washington, 3 April
2019.
10 See the list of participating nations (as of April 2019): http://www.ions.global/ions-
working-groups.
11 Interview with Mara Karlin, Washington, 1 April 2019.
and only think of it through general considerations on US grand strat-

egy”.12 The US–India rapprochement might be a frustrating endeavour
but eventually, its broader relevance is not questioned in Washington. As
an analyst for the US Navy insisted during our interview, the bottom line
is that the counterbalancing tactic still makes sense in the eyes of the US
policy community “because there is simply no other choice than India”.13
The Uncertain US Diplomatic

Arrangements in the Indian Ocean Region
Since the end of the second world war, US regional policies tended to rely
on a set of partnerships, alliances and regional organizations that enable
Washington to advance its interests (Sabrosky, 2019). In Europe, the
combination of bilateral relations with the UK, Germany, France with the
endurance of NATO enabled the US to maintain close transatlantic rela-
tions. But such a diplomatic environment does not exist in the IOR whose
regional organizations like the Indian Ocean Rim Association remain
weak. US administrations rarely and only modestly looked for regional
mechanisms of governance. In most recent years, the proclivity of former
President Donald Trump to rely on bilateral negotiations rather than on
multilateral fora and institutions prevented an active US role in building
a robust security architecture for the Indian Ocean. As a result, US policy
in the IOR has generally been conducted via informal arrangements and
only limited engagement at the multilateral level.
The most significant exception to this approach may be the recent
development of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). Indeed, the
Indo-Pacific strategy initiated by the Trump administration revived the
idea of the Quad first promoted in the spring of 2007. Back then, the
prime ministers of India, Japan, Australia and the then-US vice president
Dick Cheney, met on the sidelines of an ASEAN regional forum. At that
time, the Quad was rapidly abandoned due to several reasons. The first
was procedural: the Bush administration remained sceptical on the effec-
tiveness of such a format for security cooperation. The second related to
political change: the most active proponent of the Quad initiative, the
12 Interview with Abraham Denmark, Washington, 2 April 2019.

13 Interview with a former official from the US Department of Defense, Washington,
2 April 2019.
then prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, left office a few months after
the introduction of the initiative. Finally, the third reason was diplomatic:
the new Australian government of Kevin Rudd, quickly distanced itself
from the Quad in early 2008, fearing that this foreign policy initiative
might compromise its own relations with China (Rudd, 2019).
Despite its premature disappearance, the Quad idea was slowly rein-
stated in the following decade. In November 2017, ten years after the
initial consultations, the US and its three regional allies held a meeting in
Manila to officially discuss developments in the Indo-Pacific (US Depart-
ment of State, 2017). In the days leading to the gathering, US Assistant
Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells stated to
the press corps that the Quad was “providing an alternative to countries
in the region who are seeking needed investment in their infrastructure”:
in other words, the Quad would serve the US to counter China’s Belt
and Road Initiative. In addition to the counterbalancing nature of the
dialogue, the Quad could also be seen as a reunion of democracies. Wells
added indeed that the main purpose of the consultations of the Quad was
to answer the question “how do we bring together countries that share
these same values to reinforce these values in the global architecture?”
(US Fed News, 2017).
Three interrelated factors explained the renaissance of the Quad: the
growing convergence between the perceptions of the four countries
concerning China’s maritime ambitions, the increased interest of Japan
and Australia for the IOR both economically and politically, and finally
the reinforcement of bilateral military cooperation between each of the
four members of the Quad. During that period, Australia’s evolution
might have been the most significant game changer (Upadhyaya, 2019).
A decade ago, the country was very cautious about not getting entan-
gled in the US–China rivalry, but by the end of the 2010s, Canberra had
revised its assessment on Beijing’s rise. Its officials were now calling the
stability of the Indian Ocean “a vital national interest” and the govern-
ment decided in 2012 to grant access to a military base in Darwin for
approximately 1500 US Marines (Jaishankar, 2019)—a decision that indi-
cated Australia no longer feared embracing a foreign policy that openly
balanced against China.
But even if the Quad provided the US with a convenient frame-
work to design a regional response to China’s challenge in the Indian
Ocean, the relations among the four countries, and in particular those
between Australia and India, have not yet evolved as quickly and smoothly
as officials in Washington expected (Chacko & Panda, 2019; East Asia

Forum, 2019). It remained overall an ad hoc diplomatic forum whose
ability to influence the governance in the IOR remained to be seen. Still,
the administration of President Joe Biden appears keen on expanding
its scope: only a few weeks after its inauguration, on 12 March 2021,
it convened the first Quad summit gathering officials from the four
countries in order to signal the growing relevance of the forum.
Another key component of the US diplomatic approach to the region
has been the reinforcement of its ties with the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN). Because of its geographic location connecting
the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Southeast Asia has increasingly been
perceived as a strategic pivot within the “Indo-Pacific” region. This
perception only grew as China increased its political and economic rela-
tions with ASEAN countries. As a result, the US responded by reinforcing
its own diplomatic engagement in the region. In 2008, it became the first
non-ASEAN country to appoint an Ambassador to ASEAN. A year later,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed the Treaty of Amity and Coop-
eration in Southeast Asia, declaring “we believe that the United States
must have strong relationships and a strong and productive presence here
in Southeast Asia” (US Department of State, 2009). This was followed by
growing cooperation between the US and ASEAN countries, in particular
in the field of maritime cooperation. A military advisor was for instance
assigned to the US mission to ASEAN in Jakarta. In 2015, a US-ASEAN
strategic partnership was created.
US engagement with ASEAN was also strengthened by close ties
at the bilateral level with three of its members: the US signed treaty
alliances with the Philippines and Thailand and a security partnership with
Singapore. Moreover, the US armed forces cooperate with their coun-
terparts in Indonesia and Malaysia on counterterrorism missions while
contributing to military education programmes in Vietnam, Cambodia,
and Laos (Congressional Research Service, 2010: 16). However, despite
this enduring US presence in Southeast Asia, local officials have been
expressing concerns over the uncertainty that surrounded this role, espe-
cially under the Trump presidency, and the risks of destabilization for
Southeast Asian countries with regard to either the crisis with North
Korea or the trade war with China (Chong, 2019). The new polarizing
parameter of the US regional policy puts these countries into a delicate
game between Washington and Beijing that seems unlikely to support a
stronger regional security architecture.
The Western Indian Ocean Frozen

in the American View of an Arc of Crisis?
Our appraisal of US policy towards the Indian Ocean reveals how much
the India–China–US strategic triangle has been shaping the American
vision of the region. But this does not mean that all the developments
in the Indian Ocean align with this approach. In fact, the geographical
division of labour within the US government still reflects the level of frag-
mentation in the making of regional policies. Inside the US Department
of Defense, the Indian Ocean is divided into three regional commands:
the Africa Command (AFRICOM) covers the African shores of the
Indian Ocean; the Central Command (CENTCOM) is responsible for
the Persian Gulf; and the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) is
in charge of the Eastern side of the Indian Ocean. In that perspective,
the strategic triangle and the great power competition that drives the
US strategic debate on the region is only covered by the third one,
INDOPACOM.
Until recently, the official priorities assigned to the two others,
AFRICOM and CENTCOM, did not address the same challenges and
threats. AFRICOM officials for instance tended to identify the fight
against transnational threats such as terrorist networks as their primary
mission (US Department of Defense, 2019a: 3). It can be argued that in
the Western Indian Ocean, the primary US objective was to prevent local
crises from escalating offshore, like Somalia did in the 2000s with the
surge in piracy activities in 2008–2009. To use the words of Michael J.
Green and Andrew Shearer, the idea is “to maintain the Indian Ocean as
a secure highway for international commerce” (Green & Shearer, 2012:
177). The “highway” metaphor is also useful to understand the occasional
need of the US Department of Defense to transfer means and personnel
from one regional command to another through the Indian Ocean: in
operations such as Desert Storm in 1991 and Iraqi Freedom in 2001,
forces and assets under the Pacific Command were relocated to Central
Command, going through the Indian Ocean “highway”.
To guarantee maritime stability in the Horn of Africa, the US has
relied on a combination of Special Forces interventions, air campaigns
(for instance against groups like Al Shabab in Somalia) and support
to security forces of local partners (Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Djibouti, Somalia). In 2001, Djibouti leased a former base of the French
Foreign Legion, Camp Lemonnier, to US armed forces which then
deployed the Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa, operating

under AFRICOM since 2007 (Rotberg, 2005). Overall, the US policy
towards the Horn of Africa was and remains heavily military-centric by
design. In the early years of the Obama presidency, the US Department
of State tried to balance these counterterrorism operations with a foreign
aid policy that would shore up the local governance initiatives on the long
term. However, limited resources as well as limited results consolidated
the view of those in policy circles calling for a narrow military approach
that merely aimed at containing security issues surfacing on the African
continent (Van de Walle, 2010).
Meanwhile in the Persian Gulf, the US policy focused primarily on
preventing the rise of a local hegemon—Iraq until 2003 and since then
Iran. The large US military footprint in the Arabian Peninsula aimed at
degrading the power of violent extremist organizations (e.g. Al Qaeda,
Islamic State) while deterring or containing the Iranian regional ambi-
tions, whether in their support to Houthi rebels in Yemen or in their naval
campaign of harassment in the Strait of Hormuz. In the last fifteen years,
the number of maritime incidents involving the US and Iran increased
steadily. In January 2008, Iranian boats approached three US Navy ships
in the Strait, threatening to explode the American vessels. Likewise, in
December 2015, Iran fired a rocket near the US aircraft carrier, USS
Harry Truman. A month later, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured
10 American sailors when their boats accidentally approached the waters
near Farsi Island. In July 2016, Iran’s ships moved close to USS New
Orleans while the then-commander of Central Command, General Joseph
Votel, was aboard. In April 2020, the US Navy reported again similar
aggressive moves by the IRGC fleet.
All of these cases can be understood as a long series of naval manoeu-
vers by the IRGC that follow a pattern defined by Iran’s naval doctrine:
using small boats in swarming tactics to harass US ships to project
an image of military strength and challenge US presence in the Gulf
(Harmer, 2013). Likewise, the IRGC frequently displays its fleet of small
submarines to demonstrate Iran’s ability to interdict shipping in the Gulf.
Furthermore, Iranian officials regularly convey public messages alluding
to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. In December 2011, Iran’s Vice
President Mohammad Reza Rahimi used the threat in a public speech and
more recently, in 2018, Iranian President Hassan Rohani declared that “if
someday, the United States decides to block Iran’s oil [exports], no oil
will be exported from the Persian Gulf” (Gharagozlou & DiChristopher,

2018; Ratner, 2018).
To a certain extent, Iran could be portrayed as a significant challenge
to US policy in the Indian Ocean because of its nuclear and ballistic ambi-
tions. For both its nuclear programme and the development of ballistic
missiles, Iran has used the Indian Ocean as the “highway” of proliferation
networks. Maritime routes have allowed the transfer of materials from
Libya, Pakistan, North Korea to Iranian ports (International Institute for
Strategic Studies, 2010). But this Iranian security challenge by no means
is equivalent to the Chinese one in the Indian Ocean as the ambitions of
the regime in Tehran are mostly confined to the subregion of the Persian
Gulf (Winner, 2014: 178).
Overall, US diplomats and officers maintain close ties with the GCC
member states which still heavily rely on US security guarantees and
military cooperation for their regime stability. However, US–GCC rela-
tions have primarily focused on security issues in the Arabian peninsula,
be it for Iran’s regional policies or counterterrorism campaigns against
Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The US–Gulf partnership has so far
excluded matters related to the IOR. This might change in coming years
as Gulf Arab monarchies have raised their own political ambitions across
the Indian Ocean and became, in the case of Saudi Arabia and the UAE,
strong supporters of China’s BRI (see Chapter 6). But even if future US
administrations were to look at the GCC as a relevant regional organi-
zation, it would face another set of difficulties: the limited integration of
policies within the GCC compared to other bodies like ASEAN and the
inability of the organization itself to play a role in diplomatic issues so far.
Although both the Africa Command and Central Commands have
prioritized the fight against terrorism, statements from their authori-
ties in recent years have acknowledged the growing influence of China
in these regions and the impact on their strategic environment. Using
the terminology of the 2017 National Security Strategy, the annual
posture statements of these regional commands acknowledge the struc-
tural change brought about by the US–China competition in Africa and
the Middle-East.
But there is a risk with such an approach: downplaying the local
dynamics and putting the emphasis primarily, if not only, on great power
competition. This may lead US governments to misread the growing
exchanges between these subregions and China. Beyond the strategic
triangle with India and China, the American vision barely concedes any
agency to the littoral states of the Indo-Pacific region. As pointed out

many years ago by James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, although “the
Indian Ocean has assumed greater prominence […] much of the recent
discourse has focused on future Chinese naval ambitions in the Indian
Ocean and on potential U.S. responses to such a new presence[…] but
such a narrow analytical approach assumes that the region will remain
an inanimate object perpetually vulnerable to outside manipulation”
(Holmes & Yoshihara, 2008: 41–42).
In other words, the discussion regarding the overarching objective of
deterring, or containing, China too often omits the need also to incite
local partners and allies to distance themselves from China in the first
place. As detailed in other chapters, the last years have seen the emer-
gence of countries in the area—either on the African shores of the Indian
Ocean or in the Arabian Peninsula that now aspire to pursue their own
policies, regardless of Washington’s preferences. In the end, because of
its emphasis on great power competition in the Indian Ocean region,
US policy towards the IOR has been China-centric in its assessment and
military-centric in its measures. It prioritized the response to threats and
challenges mostly, if not exclusively, through the use of armed forces.
Admittedly, the previous administration of Donald Trump revised its
Indo-Pacific policy after the first year to address these concerns and
to create greater incentives for IOR states to align with the US view.
Starting in July 2018, a new emphasis was put forward on the economic
and diplomatic provisions of the Indo-Pacific policy, as demonstrated by
the multiple initiatives (BUILD Act, Asia EDGE, the Digital Connec-
tivity and Cybersecurity Partnership) announced by Mike Pompeo during
that summer (Pompeo, 2019). This was a way to focus on local part-
ners instead of targeting China per se. But these new programmes have
been modest in design and resources, compared to those initiated by
China with countries of the Indo-Pacific (Sayers, 2018). Moreover the
US regional policy still struggles to adopt a multilateral dimension. The
U.S. Department of State invested efforts in this field, by engaging with
the Lower Mekong Initiative, APEC, ASEAN, or the Indian Ocean Rim
Association but not only were they rarely mentioned in major speeches
but they did not yet generate significant outcomes (US State Department,
2018).
It is yet too early to assume the contours of the American approach
towards the IOR under the presidency of Joe Biden. If one looks at
the past and present speeches as well as publications from its official
representatives, it seems to indicate a strong level of continuity with the

previous administrations. Overall, the US Indian Ocean policy of the last
two decades has been driven by scepticism for the geopolitical coherence
of the region, neglect for the strategic relevance of littoral states and
more recently, a sense of urgency because of China’s growing presence
in the area. Eventually, these different aspects have hindered the efforts at
building a consistent American approach for the Indian Ocean, and with
its Indian Ocean partners.
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CHAPTER 5
The UK and France: An European Struggle

for Regional Influence
If a decade ago, European influence in the Indian Ocean was largely

dismissed as a relic of the colonial era, both the UK and France have
revived their strategic ambitions towards the region and to some extent
orchestrated their own “pivot” to Asia (Brattberg et al., 2018; Le Corre &
O’Hanlon, 2016; Paduano, 2019). However, both countries did so on
their own, and according to different interests, priorities and capabilities.
For a long time, French governments have been adamant to remind
local stakeholders that they considered France as a “littoral state” of the
Indian Ocean, given the numerous territories falling under its national
sovereignty and the size of French economic exclusive zones (EEZ) in
the area—primarily in the Western Indian Ocean—which provides the
country with the second largest EEZ in the world (Coutau-Bégarie,
1993; La Bourbonnais, 2004; Lamballe, 1980; Maestri, 1994). Going
beyond its colonial legacy, Paris progressively looked eastward, towards
the Asian shores of the Indian Ocean. This was initially driven by
economic motivations that then translated into security interests.
Meanwhile, the UK historically saw the Indian Ocean as a “British
lake” but in the past decades, London barely looked at the region strate-
gically. This neglect was the consequence of the British decision in 1967
to remove all forces “east of Suez” (Dockrill, 2002; Pickering, 1998).
In recent years, the British prioritization of the IOR changed following
several steps. First, as the international capital of maritime trade, London

Switzerland AG 2022
remains economically tied to the events of the Indian Ocean. The growth
of piracy attacks—be it in the Strait of Malacca or Bab-el-Mandeb—
impacted British companies and therefore the country’s security interests
(MENON Publication, 2015: 16–17). Second, since the mid-2010s, a
debate has been brewing about a “return to the east of Suez”—meaning
a British redeployment of diplomatic and military assets to its former area
of influence. If the debate emerged in military circles, it progressively
gained traction in the political arena (Stansfield & Kelly, 2013). Such
rhetoric provided the governments of Theresa May (2016–2019) and
then Boris Johnson (since 2019) with a convenient narrative to down-
play British isolation following the Brexit referendum of 2016 and to
promote the idea of a “Global Britain” (Gaston, 2019). This was epito-
mized by a speech delivered by the then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain in 2016:
Britain is back East of Suez not as the greatest military power on earth,
though we certainly pay our share and we certainly have a fantastic capa-
bility. Not as the sole guarantor of peace, although we certainly have a huge
role to play. But as a nation that is active in and deeply committed to the
region. […] Britain has been part of your story for the last two hundred
years, and we will be with you for the centuries to come. (Johnson, 2016)
Against that backdrop, this chapter compares and assesses the claims of
France and the UK to each play a role as external powers in the Indian
Ocean. It starts by looking at the ways both countries articulate their
regional interests and then conduct foreign and defence policies with
local states. It then underlines the significant soft power that both coun-
tries, and in particular the UK, enjoy in the area. Finally, the chapter
puts into question the French and British ability to contribute to regional
governance: although London and Paris are eager to gain influence
throughout the region, they have yet to demonstrate how they can move
beyond mercantilist strategies and support the efforts at building regional
governance architecture.
French and British Diverging National

Interests in the Indian Ocean
The contemporary policies of France and the UK towards the Indian
Ocean are logically influenced by their colonial histories and the way these
5 THE UK AND FRANCE … 101
shaped their political understanding of the region. Interestingly, despite

the common view that the Indian Ocean was a “British lake”, there had
never been a proper strategy for the region in the UK—apart from merely
securing the British access to the Raj (Bose, 2009; Metcalf, 2008). As
mentioned in our introduction, Alastair Buchan, the then-director of the
London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in 1966
that the Indian Ocean was no more than “a body of water surrounded by
land, and not a strategic nexus like the Atlantic and the Pacific” (Buchan,
1966: 186).
Buchan’s critical assessment reflected a long scepticism in London
regarding the political construct of the Indian Ocean and partly explained
the absence of a British “grand strategy” towards the region. It can be said
that, just like the US, the UK looked at the area as a mere “highway”
which connected the European continent to South Asia and the Raj—
the colonial regime that covered the Indian subcontinent from 1858 till
1947.
There are only three small mentions of the Indian Ocean in the 2021
Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy,
a government document detailing the British national security strategy.
The document does make extensive use of the Indo-Pacific terminology
and talks of a British “tilt” towards that area (UK Government, 2021:
66). But contrary to other countries, the UK did not yet release a specific
policy document regarding that specific region. This contrasts with the
French views on the Indian Ocean that can be noticed much more often
in official documents. The French White Paper on National Security and
Defense of 2008 integrated the IOR to the “arc of crisis”, the overarching
concept of the French defence policy at that time:
This region is not a homogenous ensemble. Each country in it has its own
identity and history, and its political, social, economic and human well-
springs. Each part of the region has its own logic: that of the Sahel area,
from Mauritania to Somalia, is clearly different from the Mediterranean
littoral, the Near East, the Arabian-Persian Gulf, or from Afghanistan and
Pakistan. (French Government, 2008: 42)
Interestingly, the French view of an “arc of crisis” echoed the American

concept of the late seventies as described in the previous chapter (Foucher,
2012; Samaan, 2018). It also reflected the geographical priorities estab-
lished by the authorities in Paris for the Indian Ocean: the emphasis was
clearly put on the Western side, in the north, with the Horn of Africa and
in the south with the strait of Mozambique and French territories of La
Reunion and Mayotte. This was further detailed in the 2013 update of
the White Paper:
Reunion Island and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean are pockets of relative
prosperity in the midst of a less privileged environment, and strategi-
cally significant. As a neighbouring power, France has a responsibility to
protect the French population and contribute to freedom of navigation and
the combat against piracy and human trafficking. The Iles Éparses (Scat-
tered Islands) located in the maritime navigation zone of the Mozambique
Channel give France an exclusive economic zone covered by other coun-
tries due to the possible presence of oil and gas resources. The same is
true for the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF), which offer
substantial fishing resources. (French Government, 2013: 50)
It was also echoed in several statements from French officials. In an inter-

view in 2012, Admiral Dufourcq, then an influential voice within French
naval circles, argued that “the Indian Ocean presents two major focal
points of military interests for France. The first goes from Djibouti to the
Persian Gulf. The second is the region of Mascareignes, the region of the
south Indian Ocean” (Hérodote, 2012: 22–23).
In recent years, this French focus on the Western Indian Ocean evolved
as Paris reinforced its ties with Asian countries but it is worth noting
that this geographical vision still shapes the contemporary French under-
standing of the Indo-Pacific concept. As a matter of fact, it can be argued
that the French vision is “the reverse reflection” of the American one:
if Washington looks at the Indian Ocean as a strategic extension of the
Pacific, Paris sees its engagement towards East Asia as a continuation of
its policies in the Indian Ocean (Rehman, 2018: 16).
This obvious disparity between French and British interests towards
the IOR can be explained by the imbalance between the territories under
the sovereignty of both countries in the area. For France, La Reunion
and Mayotte represent two overseas departments with about 1.1 million
inhabitants. One must also add the tiny French Subantarctic and Antarctic
Territories (Crozet Islands, Kerguelen Islands, Amsterdam and Saint-
Paul Islands). Most significantly, altogether, these territories represent
an exclusive economic zone of 3.1 million square kilometres (French
Ministry of Armed Forces, 2019b: 3).
Conversely, there is only one territory left from the British colo-
nial empire, the British Indian Ocean Territory. It covers the Chagos
archipelago comprising seven atolls and approximately 1000 small islands
that altogether barely represent more than 60 square kilometres. The
biggest island though is the much-discussed territory of Diego Garcia.
Although Diego Garcia is under the legal and historical sovereignty
of Mauritius, it was integrated into the British Indian Ocean Territory
in 1965. As mentioned in the previous chapter, London and Wash-
ington signed a bilateral agreement a year after that granted access
to Diego Garcia for US forces. Contrary to the French territories,
the British one has no permanent population apart from US and UK
military personnel and contractors, mostly coming from the Philippines
(Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 2012: 96).
But the British control of the Chagos Islands has been disputed for
years by the government of Mauritius demanding its return. In the spring
of 2019, the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution that
called for the UK to cede the sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office rejected the vote on the basis
that removing UK and US military assets stationed in the area would have
critical consequences for national security (Bowcott & Borger, 2019).
The legal dispute is unlikely to fade away as the United Nations Inter-
national Tribunal for the Law of the Sea also issued in January 2021 its
own advisory opinion supporting Mauritius’ claim.
With regard to energy dependence, this does not represent a major
factor either in the British policies towards the Indian Ocean. Although
the UK imports oil and gas supplies that transit through these sea lanes,
Gulf petrol only represents a minor portion of British imports: in 2018,
it was estimated that 3% of British oil imports came from Saudi Arabia,
against 64% from Norway and in second position, 7% from Nigeria (US
Energy Information Administration, 2018: 8).
Arguably, the biggest stakes for British interests in the Indian Ocean
relate to the impact of local crises on the stability of maritime commerce.
With its international organizations, insurance companies and shipbro-
kers, London remains one of the biggest capitals of maritime trade in
the world. Because many businesses in the UK depend directly or indi-
rectly on maritime security, phenomena like the surge of piracy attacks in
the Horn of Africa, starting in 2008, have tremendous consequences: for
instance, it is estimated that during the 2008–2009 peak of these attacks,
insurance costs for a cargo transiting through the Gulf of Aden soared
from $900 to $9000 (Stevenson, 2010).
Taken altogether, these factors reveal how much French and British
visions of the Indian Ocean differ with regard to the significance attached
to the region within the realm of each country’s national security interests.
Although British politicians have been vocal about moving back to the
“east of Suez”, the region did not play such a central role as it did in
the French policy environment. As detailed in the following sections, this
initial divergence translated into other differences, starting with the way
both countries approached their regional diplomacy.
Different Diplomatic Approaches

Towards the Regional Powers
Although French and British governments both aspired to act as cred-
ible external powers in the Indian Ocean, they struggled to build a
coherent approach towards the local strategic competition, specifically the
growing power plays between India and China. If Paris and London see
the development of relations with Delhi and Beijing as a priority for their
diplomatic apparatus, they refrained from fully embracing the American
view of a strategic triangle driven by a zero-sum game logic.
For a long time, the UK maintained an ambivalent approach towards
China which contrasted not only with the US position but with the
French one as well. The UK Strategic Defence and Security Review of
2015 reflected the trade-driven motivations of the British government
of David Cameron towards China. It started by presenting the idea of
“expanding our economic relationship” with China as a key priority and
then by the end of the document, it provided an explicit description of
how the UK government envisioned its relationship with Beijing: “Our
engagement with China in recent years, following this model, has led to
direct financial benefits for the UK – and reflects our ambition for the UK
to be China’s leading partner in the West” (UK Government, 2015: 71–
72). These ties were evidenced by the economic exchanges between China
and the UK. Throughout the 2010s, the UK became a major destination
of Chinese investments in Europe, only surpassed by Germany (House of
Commons, 2020: 4).
During that period, two cases crystallized these British ambivalent
views on Chinese economic expansion. First, the government of Theresa
May approved in the fall of 2016 China General Nuclear taking a 33.5%
stake in the construction of a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point without
triggering significant political opposition (Ruddick, 2016). Second, May
sent mixed signals on the controversial issue of granting Huawei access

to the UK’s 5G network. Although government officials expressed reser-
vations over Huawei’s ties with the Chinese State, they also rejected
the US demands to ban the Chinese company, the Foreign Secretary
Jeremy Hunt arguing that the US “doesn’t have a veto” on British policy
(Cooper, 2019).
Eventually, the government of Boris Johnson made a major shift in
the first half of 2020 as it decided to remove Huawei from the UK’s
5G network. The decision put a halt to the British-Chinese trade ties
that had been burgeoning all along the previous decade. More broadly,
it signalled an end to the British ambiguity vis-a-vis China’s expansion.
This was then compounded by the attitude of London regarding the
protracted crisis in Hong-Kong that surfaced in the fall of 2019. In
response to Beijing’s tightening grip over the former British colony, the
British government initiated in January 2021 a fast-track immigration
programme specifically for Hong-Kong citizens fearing the worsening of
Chinese control over the city. Although the programme angered Chinese
officials, British officials tried to prevent broader tensions. Still, the 2021
Integrated Review evidenced the British shift on China in comparison
with the previous document of 2015. The designation of China as a
“partner” was replaced by a description of the country as “a systemic
competitor” (UK Government, 2021: 26).
In the past, the ambivalent China policy of London had an impact
on British relations with India (Barber, 1986; Scott, 2017). Despite, or
perhaps because of, the historical ties between the UK and India, the bilat-
eral relationship had remained a difficult one. Noticeably, during his first
official tour of Europe in April 2015, India’s Prime Minister Narendra
Modi travelled to France and Germany, but not the UK. Modi eventu-
ally visited London in November of that same year but it was actually the
first time an Indian Prime Minister did so since 2001 (Malhotra, 2015).
There have been significant efforts on the British side to get closer to
India: during his mandate, Prime Minister David Cameron visited Delhi
three times and the UK was among the first countries in 2012 to end
the diplomatic boycott of Narendra Modi, regarding his responsibilities
during the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 (Burke, 2012).
There are parameters in favour of a closer partnership between both
the UK and India: the presence of an Indian diaspora amounting to
1.734 million residents in the UK—the largest foreign-born commu-
nity—and bilateral trade relations representing around $20.9 billion in
2016 (Report for Joint Economic and Trade Committee, 2018; Sinha,
2015). But in the foreign policy field, it is in fact with France that India
deepened its exchanges.
The rapprochement between Paris and Delhi has been in the making
since the signature of a bilateral strategic partnership in 1998 that initially
covered four pillars of cooperation: civilian nuclear technology, space,
counterterrorism and defence (Saint-Mezard, 2015: 3). The relationship
grew in earnest over the following two decades as France increasingly
asserted its diplomatic position towards Asia, in particular vis-à-vis China.
France has been arguably the most vocal European country to support
principles such as freedom of navigation in the South China Sea—even
calling for an EU naval deployment in the area in 2016. The call was not
followed through but it evidenced the French ambitions in the region (Le
Drian, 2016; Panda, 2016).
Moreover, observers frequently emphasize similarities in French and
Indian foreign policies, starting with the axiom of strategic autonomy: the
concept does not imply the exact same meaning in both countries but
reflects similar political sensitivities in New Delhi and Paris with regard
to national defence and the desire to avoid systematic alignment on the
US policies. French officials also tend to emphasize the idea of shared
values with India as evidenced in this speech from then Defence Minister,
Jean-Yves Le Drian, during a trip to Delhi in July 2013:
We share the same political vision. We share numerous common values:

democracy, rule of law, individual liberties, the respect of human rights.
We are deeply attached to our national independence and our strategic
autonomy. And we want a world of peace and security following the
principles of the UN Charter. (Le Drian, 2013)
At the same time, French governments nurtured its own ties with China,
mostly for trade purposes. France signed a strategic partnership with
China in 1997—a year before the one with India. France was also among
the most active European countries back in the mid-2000s to lift the EU
ban on arms sales to China. In 2005, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin
qualified the embargo as “anachronistic, unjustly discriminatory, and in
full contradiction with the current state of the EU-China strategic part-
nership” (China Daily, 2005). In reality, the embargo was never entirely
comprehensive and did not prevent European companies—in particular
French ones—from selling dual technologies that were eventually used
by the People’s Liberation Army, though at a modest scale. It is in fact

estimated that between 2003 and 2012, China was the 17th recipient of
French military sales (French Ministry of Defense, 2013: 82).
This double-talk on China has sometimes undermined French political
credibility in the region. In recent years, French governments toned down
their attacks of the EU embargo, in particular as they prioritized their
strategic partnerships with India as well as with countries such as Japan,
Vietnam and Singapore that have all been concerned by Chinese military
build up.
French governments also aimed to build closer ties with Australia
which were epitomized by the 2016 decision of Canberra to award
a major contract to France’s Navale Group to build 12 new genera-
tion submarines. During a presidential visit to Australia in May 2018,
Emmanuel Macron claimed that this French-Australian relationship was
emerging as a driver of governance in the Indo-Pacific region (Macron,
2018).
Macron went even further by connecting these bilateral develop-
ments to those with India, talking of a “new Paris-Delhi-Canberra axis”
(Reuters, 2018). This led in September 2020 to the first trilateral dialogue
between representatives of the three countries’ foreign ministries (Grare,
2020). This French search for new diplomatic dialogues reflected a
growing ambition in Paris to orchestrate—or at least to contribute to—
an ad hoc alliance of partner countries in the area. In an opinion piece
published by the Indian Express a few days after President Macron’s visit,
French, Indian and Australian think tank analysts echoed this mindset
within policy circles:
India, France and Australia have a striking convergence of security inter-

ests, defence capabilities and maritime geography. […] In time, they
could formalise three-way information sharing on seaborne traffic of all
kinds. Between their island territories — France’s Reunion and Mayotte,
Australia’s Cocos and Christmas islands and India’s Andaman and Nicobar
islands — they possess a triangle of some of the most strategic maritime
surveillance real estate in the Indian Ocean. (Mohan et al., 2018)
However, this French outreach strategy faced an unexpected setback in

September 2021 when Australia suddenly joined the US and the UK into
a new alliance framework coined AUKUS. The pact included the provi-
sion of US-designed nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and implied
the sudden reneging of French sales of submarines to Canberra approved

five years before.
Still, in addition to ad hoc trilateral engagements, France also gained
full membership of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) in 2020.
All together, these diplomatic forays enabled France to demonstrate
strategic ambitions in the Indian Ocean that go beyond the mere
protection of its territories. To a certain extent, French partnerships
in the region mirror those of the US: India, Australia, and ASEAN
countries. Contrary to the UK, it already articulated an official Indo-
Pacific strategy through diplomatic and military measures (Sheng, 2019).
Governments in Paris also seemed less uncomfortable than those in
London in endorsing a strong stance against China with regard to its
maritime strategy or the BRI (Pennetier & Irish, 2019). During a visit of
Chinese President Xi Jinping to Paris in the spring of 2019, the French
head of state Emmanuel Macron insisted that China’s new Silk Road
“cannot be one-way” and urged for the “end of Europe naïveté towards
China” (Peel et al., 2019).
This French assertiveness did not mean that France aligned its diplo-
macy on the position of Washington. The government of the same
Emmanuel Macron supported the signature of an EU–China trade agree-
ment in December 2020 that remains a contentious topic between
European and the US governments. This is why putting aside the political
rhetoric and the diplomatic arrangements, it is worth asking if any of these
two European countries can actually be consequential in the power plays
of the Indian Ocean. Looking at the current state of their hard power
provides us with a more nuanced answer to this question.
A Significant but Not Decisive Military Presence

Both France and the UK maintain an active military policy in the Indian
Ocean that is reflected by permanent deployments, regular military exer-
cises and arms sales to local partners. With regard to France, this military
posture relies on three regional commands: the French Forces in the
Southern Indian Ocean Zone (FAZSOI), the French Forces in Djibouti
(FFDJ), and the French Forces for the Indian Ocean (ALINDIEN) based
in the UAE.
Overall, there are 4100 French soldiers stationed in the Indian Ocean
(French Ministry of Armed Forces, 2019a: 6). About half of them are
operating under the FAZSOI with the support of five ships (frigates
and patrol vessels), two helicopters and two Casa cargo aircraft (ibid.).
Because their area of responsibility technically covers French territories,
the primary mission of the FAZSOI is to secure and defend them against
“regional threats like piracy, illegal migration and illicit fishery” (French
Ministry of Armed Forces, 2016).
With 1450 men, the French base in Djibouti remains significant too.
A former colony of the French Empire, Djibouti granted France with a
military presence right after its independence in 1977. The arrangement
was revised in 2011 following a French reform of its overseas deployments
but till this day, the command plays a major role at the operational level
in French contribution to counter-piracy activities in the Horn of Africa
as well as in French training initiatives with East-African countries (de
Rohan, 2011; Rosso, 2008).
Finally, the French command for the Indian Ocean, named Alindien,
may be the smallest in terms of personnel and capabilities but it is the
largest in terms of area of responsibility, going from the Persian Gulf
to South Asia, and Southeast Asia; and it also maintains close contacts
with military counterparts in the Horn of Africa. Created in 1973, Alin-
dien was initially a command without a physical location: its commander
was fulfilling his missions from the sea on a ship that was regularly
berthed in the ports of local partners (Mérer, 2006). However, the French
government of Nicolas Sarkozy, back in 2008, took the decision to relo-
cate the command to Abu Dhabi, where France was in the process of
signing a new defence agreement with the UAE. This indirectly signals
the importance of the UAE as an anchor of French regional policy.
The Alindien command combines three very different purposes:
warfighting missions such as the operational command of the French
operation “Chammal” against the Islamic State between 2014 and 2016;
training missions with Gulf countries as well as with South Asian and
Southeast Asian partners; intelligence and monitoring activities on the
security environment in the Indian Ocean. Like US regional comman-
ders, the Alindien commander also has a quasi-diplomatic mission: as
the highest military representative of France in the area, he travels to
various regional capitals on a weekly basis and is responsible for translating
strategic orientations designed in Paris into practical measures through
political-military exchanges with local counterparts.1
1 Interviews with French officials at the ALINDIEN Command, Spring 2019.

In contrast, British deployments to the region are much more modest.

First, there is no equivalent within the British military to the three French
regional commands in the Indian Ocean. Second, the forces stationed
in local partner countries are small detachments: 40 men in the British
Indian Ocean Territory, 400 in Kenya as part of the British Army Training
Unit, approximately 80 in Somalia (either through EU or UN missions),
200 in the UAE, 160 in the Kingdom of Bahrain, 90 in the Sultanate
of Oman, 50 in Kuwait (International Institute for Strategic Studies,
2019: 162). All in all, this represents barely a quarter of French military
deployments in the area.
If British forces decreased their overseas presence in general and
in the Indian Ocean in particular, the French deployments have not
been immune either to that pressure: in the last years, the burden
of multiple operations (in Mali, Central Africa, or Syria) in addition
to the prolonged homeland security mission—named operation “Sen-
tinel”—forced decision makers to lower their ambitions for the Indian
Ocean. Specifically, operation “Sentinel” followed the wave of terrorist
attacks on French territory in 2015 and put into question the ability
of the French authorities to simultaneously maintain these deployments
(Tertrais, 2013)—unmatched at the European level.
But while France and the UK have very different approaches when
it comes to their permanent presence in the Indian Ocean, they both
participate in military cooperation activities such as training courses and
exercises. They have been part of multinational exercises such as Cobra
Gold in Thailand and they organize bilateral drills with Gulf partners
on a regular basis. With India, both European countries conduct bilat-
eral exercises for each of their services. For instance, France and India
conduct Shakti (for the Army), Varuna (for the Navy) and Garuda (for
the Air Force). Moreover, the French Navy initiated in 2019 a new naval
exercise La Pérouse in the Bay of Bengal. Its 2021 edition saw French
vessels maneuvering with ships from the US, India, Australia and Japan.
In other words, the exercise was the opportunity for France to display its
operational proximity with all members of the Quad.
Additionally, both France and the UK are members of the Indian
Ocean Naval Symposium, the Indian Navy-led initiative, based on the
idea that due to their sovereignty over territories in the Indian Ocean they
can be considered as “littoral states”. The UK also benefits from a lesser
known forum called the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FDPA).
Established in 1971 through the combination of multiple defence agree-

ments between Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore and the UK,
the FDPA have allowed London to maintain a significant presence on the
Asian side of the Indian Ocean. If it was initially conceived as a mere
forum, it has grown into a quasi-regional organization with a permanent
structure and a military component that plans joint exercises (Bristow,
2005).
Finally, arms sales have also been a major instrument to build influence
in the region for both countries. On a general basis, defence contracts
enable French and British industries to cultivate ties with the armed forces
of littoral states in the Indian Ocean region. But they can also stir contro-
versies with regard to the compatibility between business interests and the
unintended effects of arms sales on regional stability.
For instance, France was for a long time a key arms supplier to
Pakistan, providing fighter aircraft, submarines among other platforms.
As France aimed to get closer to India in the late 1990s, these sales
to Islamabad obviously undermined Paris’ credibility towards its Indian
counterparts. In the 2000s, French contracts to Pakistan became a regular
issue not only because of the increased pressure coming from Delhi but
also because of the contribution from French armed forces to the opera-
tions in Afghanistan. Indeed, the involvement of Pakistani secret services
with the Talibans became another parameter complicating the decision
process and eventually led the Sarkozy government to halt these arms
sales (Godement, 2014: 4). Likewise, France has been a major supplier
of submarines in Southeast Asia to countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
These exports inevitably impacted the local maritime military balance. As
a Paris-based Asian specialist wrote, “This trade has been an undeniable
component in the regional arms race and formed a contributing factor to
the uncertainties over the future control of straits through which almost
half of the world’s trade must pass” (ibid.: 4).
Both French and British defence industries have been involved in
controversial contracts with countries in the IOR. In the 1980s, BAE
systems concluded the biggest arms deals for the UK with Saudi Arabia
named “Al Yamamah”, generating an estimated GBP 43 billion in revenue
between 1985 and 2007 (Leigh & Evans, 2007a). But the contracts
involved numerous cases of bribery that led to a major scandal in British
politics. Eventually the Tony Blair government demanded the investiga-
tion to be stopped out of fear of Saudi economic retaliations (Leigh &
Evans, 2007b). French companies have also been implicated in corrup-

tion scandals in Pakistan and Malaysia (Camu & Sipalan, 2017). Overall,
these cases tarnished the diplomatic efforts of France and the UK to
appear as countries contributing to the security architecture of the region.
Both countries have since then launched reforms of domestic legislation
on arms sales in order to prevent these malpractices. But it remains to
be seen if European countries can transcend their negative perception as
mercantilist powers—or predatory powers—that these past scandals have
generated.
The Enduring Soft Power of European Countries

In the field of cultural influence in the IOR, the UK largely prevails over
France. Despite the limitations to its military resources deployed to the
region, London is indeed still able to exercise influence through a myriad
of other initiatives. Again, the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review
emphasized how the UK perceives itself as “the world’s leading soft
power” that gives it “international influence” in part because “English
is the global language, and our time zone allows us to connect with
the Americas and Asia in the same working day” (Strategic Defence and
Security Review: 13).
The English language is indeed the first leverage for British influence in
the Indian Ocean thanks to the presence of offices of the British Council
but also thanks to media such as the BBC that is aired across the coun-
tries. Moreover, the UK plays a central role in the education and training
of local elites. The attractiveness of British schools remains high across the
Indian Ocean, even so that many of them have opened local branches:
Dulwich College (Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore), Harrow School
(Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong), Brighton College (Abu Dhabi, Al Ain),
ACS (Doha), Bromsgrove School (Bangkok), Epsom College (Malaysia),
Marlborough College (Johor), Repton School (Dubai and Abu Dhabi),
Sherborne School (Qatar), Shrewsbury (Bangkok) (House of Lords,
2014: 640).
Future decision makers from the Indian Ocean region in the polit-
ical, economic and military fields still attend courses in British universities
(Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics or King’s College).
But the most emblematic case is the special position occupied by the
Royal Military College of Sandhurst. Its alumni network includes the
King of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad Bin Essa Al Khalifa, the former chief
of army staff of the Indian Army, Joyanto Nath Chaudhuri, the late Emir
of Koweït, Sheikh Saad Al Abdullah Al Salim Al Sabah, the current Emir
of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani (and his father as well) or
the President of the UAE Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan as well
as his half-brother, the powerful crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al
Nahyan.
This proximity of Sandhurst with foreign elites, and in particular those
from the Arabian Peninsula, led to significant financial donations: in 2012,
the UAE invested 15 million pounds for an accommodation block named
the Zayed Building. A year later, Bahrain gave 3 million pounds for refur-
bishing a sports centre. As Michael Stephens, from the London-based
Royal United Service Institute, underlines, “the [UK] gets the kind of
attention from Gulf policy elites that countries of our size, like France
and others, don’t get. It gives us the ability to punch above our weight”
(Teller, 2014).
The Gulf constitutes the subregion of the IOR where the UK main-
tains its strongest influence, in particular, in Bahrain and Oman. In the
latter case, the late sultan Qabus Ibn Said attended Sandhurst and later
relied on the expertise of British military advisors during the Dhofar
insurgency between 1965 and 1975 (Ladwig, 2008). King’s College in
London provided military education to several countries in the area:
its faculty staff taught for three years at the Joint Command and Staff
College of Qatar and occasional training has been provided in Kuwait,
Oman, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In the field of strategic thinking, the UK also plays a significant
role through the regional presence of the London-based International
Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). IISS organizes two major regional
conferences, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore and the Manama
Dialogue in Bahrain, which gather high-level officials from the area. Even
if these events do not directly aim at promoting British policies, they
provide the authorities in London with a platform to nurture close ties
with local elites (Capie & Taylor, 2010).
In theory, one of the most obvious tools of influence for the UK would
be the Commonwealth, an organization which rose to prominence in the
decolonization era and includes many of the littoral states in the Indian
Ocean. However, the institution remains underexploited as pointed out
in a 2014 report from the House of Lords: “Our evidence suggested that
the new significance for the UK of the modern Commonwealth, offering
high-growth and high-savings markets, as well as a gateway to many of
the great emerging powers of Asia, Africa and Latin America, is not quite
understood in Whitehall” (House of Lords, 2014: 85).
France has its own ambitions as a soft power in the Indian Ocean,
starting also with its language: French is not only spoken in its local terri-
tories like La Reunion and Mayotte but in former colonies in the Horn
of Africa, and to a lesser extent in Southeast Asia. In a speech at the
Economic Forum of the Islands of the Indian Ocean, French Ambassador
Jean-Marc Chataigner claimed “French language is the working language
of the Indian Ocean: its lingua franca […] this is why I would like to talk
not of France in the Indian Ocean but France from the Indian Ocean”
(Chataigner, 2011).
The presence of French language may not be insignificant but it obvi-
ously cannot compete with the use of English. Furthermore, French
influence in educating local elites is less salient than the British one, with
only a major presence noticeable on the African continent and the pres-
ence of a Sorbonne campus in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. Likewise, French
think tanks have only modestly engaged in public events in the region and
their influence pales in comparison with conferences like the Shangri-La
Dialogue or the Manama Dialogue.
Overall, the European cultural footprint in the IOR remains significant
but this does not clearly translate into diplomatic currency. Despite the
upbeat speeches from French and British officials on the deep ties between
their countries and the region, this soft power is not fungible and could
not compensate for their limitations in hard power.
An Uncertain Contribution
to Regional Governance
In this context, France and the UK remain limited but significant external
players in the Indian Ocean. They have been using all instruments of
power—whether hard power, business contracts or soft power—to sustain
a presence in most of the subregions and if they clearly cannot be on
a par with the US, India and China, they are still able to impact the
regional power dynamics. But defining the extent of this influence remains
uncertain.
Because of their middle power status, French and British policies
towards the IOR are unlikely to be regionally consequential if they are not
part of a broader movement. In other words, Paris and London can only
matter if their efforts are combined with those of other Western and local
allies. The first case would be through a policy of the European Union
as a whole. At first, the EU would appear as a credible player: altogether,
the EU member countries have major trade relations with the region and
the international organization played a significant role in maritime secu-
rity through its operation Atalanta, started in 2008 to curb piracy attacks
in the Gulf of Aden. But the EU has barely discussed the Indian Ocean
as a policy object until today. The 2016 EU Global Strategy document
only mentioned once the region to affirm succinctly that “the EU will
contribute to global maritime security, building on its experience in the
Indian Ocean” (European External Action Service, 2016: 41). The EU
is also too fragmented between its multiple directorates to orchestrate a
regional strategy that would have such an ambition.2 Moreover, the UK
Brexit referendum of 2016 leaves France as the de facto most active EU
country in the region.
The EU is therefore unlikely to play a political role in the Indian
Ocean. One can then speculate that France and the UK may eventu-
ally align their policies on those of the US, especially as the competition
between Washington and Beijing becomes the defining issue in the area.
As evidenced earlier, both European countries have been trying to define
their own posture in order not to be seen as mere proxies of the US. The
UK maintained an ambivalent position with China largely because of the
economic prospects and this initially led London to take a critical posi-
tion on the US trade war with Beijing (Strauss, 2019). But as shown by
the Huawei debacle in the British 5G market or by London’s reaction to
the Hong-Kong crisis, or more recently its membership to the new trilat-
eral alliance with the US and Australia, the British China policy changed
and it is now clearly tilting closer to the US. At the operational level, if a
conflict—be it of major or low intensity—was to occur between the US
and China in the IOR, the US forces would very likely use their facilities
at Diego Garcia, pushing the UK as a de facto part of the conflict.
Furthermore, as the US administration of former President Donald
Trump initiated its Indo-Pacific strategy, it repeatedly called on European
allies to support its policy. American officials have mentioned the contri-
bution of France and the UK in that respect. Back in 2018, during a
hearing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary
of Defense Randall Schriver stated “We are stepping up our engagement
2 Interview with EU diplomats in Abu Dhabi, June 2019.

with European and NATO allies, such as the United Kingdom, France
and Canada, with whom we share enduring interests in the Indo-Pacific
region” (Vaughn et al., 2018). Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis
almost used the same words when he addressed the audience of the
Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018: “We’re also increasing our engagement
with other Pacific allies, such as the United Kingdom, France and Canada,
with whom we share enduring interests in the region” (Mattis, 2018).
This puts in a delicate situation for those European countries eager to
mark their difference. On the one hand, if France’s Indo-Pacific strategy
is the “reverse reflection” of the American one, complementarity could
be conceivable: the former may focus on the Indian Ocean while the
latter concentrates its efforts first and foremost on the Pacific Ocean.
But on the other hand, French policies towards the Indian Ocean have
reflected the desire of its governments to conduct a foreign policy distinct
from the American one. Unpacking France’s Indo-Pacific strategy at the
2019 Shangri-La Dialogue, Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly
insisted, “we believe we can chart our own way, avoid confrontation, and
carry a distinctive voice”, a subtle way to distinguish itself from the US
approach to the region (Parly, 2019).
To that aim, French governments aimed to create a momentum
through the formation of trilateral dialogues, either including India and
Australia, or India and the UAE. This practice involving a few like-minded
countries, sometimes called “minilateralism”, is largely inspired by the
French experience within the EU (Kim, 2017; Moret, 2016). However,
as mentioned before, such initiatives have limitations: they go against the
traditional preferences of local states to rely on bilateral relations as the
primary framework of diplomacy—a fact that partly explains the limita-
tions of the Quad until today. Moreover, French decision makers do not
conceive—at least yet—these engagements as parts of a broader effort
along the US, to build partnerships with countries of the Indian Ocean.
It means that at best, they will be seen by local partners as an additional
option rather than a genuine alternative to the partnership with Wash-
ington—a fact epitomized by the Australian annulment of its previous
commitments with France.
All in all, both European powers, France and the UK, still aspire
to a bigger role in the growing power plays in the Indian Ocean but
their contribution and their credibility vis-à-vis local partners will be
constrained by their inherent limitations as middle powers. They may
shape some regional arrangements such as the UK with the FPDA and
the AUKUS pact or France with its trilateral dialogues with Delhi, and
Southeast Asian countries. But London and Paris are unlikely to influ-
ence the course of the US–India–China strategic triangle and as a result,
they may ultimately be forced to cope with the effects of its increased
polarization in the area.
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CHAPTER 6
The Gulf Arab Monarchies: From Gateways

to Strategic Players in the Indian Ocean?
The Arabian Peninsula has been historically tied to the Indian Ocean,
primarily because of its geographic proximity with the Horn of Africa
and the South Asian subcontinent. From the sixteenth century till the
nineteenth century, the Peninsula was a regional hub between East and
West that attracted European empires (Portugal and United Kingdom)
to establish a military and economic presence. Then, the pearl trade of
the early twentieth century brought labour migration from both South
Asia and Eastern Africa, followed later by the oil boom. At the cultural
level, the centrality of Saudi Arabia in the spread of Islam from the
African shores to Southeast Asia also played a crucial role in cementing
ties between the Gulf and the rest of the Indian Ocean. More recently,
over the last two decades, the growth of Gulf economies and the devel-
opment of air and maritime infrastructures in newly established states like
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar turned Arab monarchies into
major players of the air freight and shipping industries linking Asia to
Europe.
But in addition to the economic and cultural importance of the Arabian
Peninsula vis-à-vis the other subregions of the Indian Ocean, these coun-
tries have also, in recent years, raised their ambitions, both diplomatically
and militarily. Long seen as mere consumers of security—specifically
provided by Western powers—Gulf kingdoms such as Saudi Arabia, the
UAE and Qatar have embarked in the last decade, on a path to become

Switzerland AG 2022
strategic actors whose influence matters beyond the Peninsula. This is

evident in the new ambitious policies initiated by these countries, whether
with countries of the Horn of Africa, or with India and China.
Today, the development of Gulf relations with all the major stake-
holders of the Indian Ocean enables them to influence the balance of
power in other subregions while becoming a centre of competition in
itself for regional powers like India and China. However, as this chapter
evidences, it remains to be seen if these political ambitions can be
translated, either into an enduring security role or into a significant contri-
bution to regional governance mechanisms. Moreover, the ambivalence
of Gulf monarchies, when it comes to disputes among countries of the
Indian Ocean—in particular regarding the India–Pakistan standoff—fuels
major unknowns regarding the ability of these emerging actors to become
strategic players in the area without choosing one side against another.
A Long Time Hub of the Indian Ocean

The geopolitics of Gulf countries was historically oriented towards the
Indian Ocean because of British policies in the region in the nineteenth
century (Buchan, 1966; Macris, 2010). For London, the deployment of
its navies on the shores of the Persian Gulf was meant to guarantee British
access to its Indian Empire, and in particular to prevent potential disrup-
tion by the competing French naval forces. This translated into local
partnerships which, to a certain extent, still shape British diplomacy in
the Gulf. In 1798, the first treaty was signed with the Sultan of Muscat.
Over the following decade, facing piracy challenges from these coasts,
the British forces increasingly engaged in gunboat diplomacy. Eventu-
ally, a treaty was signed in 1820 between the UK and local sheikhs and
their territories, named the “Trucial States”, became covered by British
protectorates (Heard-Bey, 1982).
Following the British withdrawal from “the east of Suez” announced
in 1967 by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, most of the Trucial States
joined the newly founded United Arab Emirates in 1971.1 Noticeably the
old logic of the Gulf as a gateway to the Indian Ocean remained salient
in Western military circles. This explains why the US established its own
1 Six emirates joined the federation on 2 December 1971: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman,
Fujairah, Sharjah and Umm al Quwain. Ras al Khaimah eventually joined in February
1972.
6 THE GULF ARAB MONARCHIES … 127
military presence in the Peninsula through the establishment of its Central

Command’s forward headquarters (1983) and the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet
in Bahrain (1995). Likewise, the French government of Nicolas Sarkozy
opened its own military base in Abu Dhabi in 2009, covering not only
French security interests in the UAE or the Gulf but in the whole Indian
Ocean (see Chapter 5).
But the ties between the Gulf and the other regions of the Indian
Ocean were not solely the result of Western powers’ strategies. Trade
relations had already developed long before the British Empire. In the
seventeenth century, Omani traders had established posts in East Africa
and by the end of that century, under the rule of Imam Said Ibn Sultan,
Omani forces were supporting these commercial interests in places like
Mombasa, Kilwa, Pemba and Zanzibar (Commins, 2012: 47). In 1691,
Zanzibar would become part of an Omani empire that gradually eroded
in front of the British increased presence in the second part of the nine-
teenth century. Despite the decline of Oman’s influence in these areas,
it impacted migration flows with Zanzibaris remaining today a significant
minority in Oman (Al-Rasheed, 2013).
Historical research identifies the arrival of the British in the Gulf as the
starting point of major waves of immigration to the region. Most signif-
icant was the flow of Indian and Iranian merchants that travelled to the
peninsula to trade rice, food, spices and pearls. As the representative of the
British Empire in India also exercised his control over the Gulf emirates,
he facilitated the migration of Indian bankers and bureaucrats who built
the local state institutions during that era (Gardner, 2010). The flow of
migration accelerated in the 1960s following the discovery of oil and the
rapid modernization of Gulf cities it triggered. In the first years of the oil
boom, 80% of the migrants to the Gulf originated from Arab countries
but progressively this was surpassed by the wave of Asian workers who
became the primary source (Rahman, 2010). Today, the exact number
is not known but Indian migrants remain the largest workforce in the
Arabian Peninsula. In a country like the UAE, it is estimated that there are
approximately three million Indian residents, amounting roughly to one-
third of the whole population (Emirati citizens representing, depending
on the sources, about 900,000 individuals) (Connor, 2017).
If the oil era brought South Asian migration to a new level in the Gulf,
it also led in the last decade to a change in the international trade relations
of these Arab kingdoms, and more specifically the increased Asianization
of the export market for oil and gas producers in the Arabian Peninsula.
Four out of the five biggest importers of oil in the world today are Asian
countries: China, India, Japan and South Korea—the US remains the
second biggest one. By the end of the 2010s, these four Asian countries
represented near 40% of the total crude oil imports (Workman, 2019).
Economists assess that this trend is likely to deepen in coming years.
In its 2018 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency esti-
mated that “Asia makes up half of global growth in natural gas, sixty
percent of the rise in wind and solar PV, more than eighty percent of the
increase in oil, and more than one hundred percent of the growth in coal
and nuclear (given declines elsewhere)” (International Energy Agency,
2018: 2).
In that context, China remains the biggest consumer of Gulf crude
oil. In 2019 Saudi Arabia was its primary supplier, with three other
GCC members being among the top 15 providers, Oman, Kuwait and
the UAE (Workman, 2020). In the field of liquefied natural gas (LNG),
Qatar is the biggest exporter to China and represents a third of China’s
imports, a share that is likely to grow as both countries signed in 2018
a 22-year LNG supply agreement that should secure the Qatari primacy
in this domain (Reuters, 2018b). Qatar is also India’s biggest supplier,
accounting for 41% of Indian gas imports (US Energy Information
Administration, 2020).
Economic trends highlight a clear picture: if GCC countries used to
sell their commodities to Western markets, their markets are now driven
by Asian demand. This implies that Gulf economies—and by extension
the stability of the local regimes—will be increasingly defined by their
Asian customer base. On the other side, the economic ambitions of
Asian powers will remain attainable as long as their access to Gulf energy
markets is protected from disruptive elements such as local wars, terrorism
or maritime piracy.
Against that backdrop, the Strait of Hormuz is considered the most
important oil transit choke point in the world. Approximately 35% of all
seaborne oil passes through the strait and more than 85% of this flow goes
to Asia. Consequently, the access in and out of the Gulf is so critical to
the global economy that it requires significant logistical efforts. Hence,
local investments in shipping ports are another indicator of how much
the area is a hub in the Indian Ocean. Countries like the UAE, Qatar
and more recently Oman are in fact competing to be the biggest hub
for the shipping industry in the subregion. A consequence of this race is
the fast expansion of local ports and the associated risk of overcapacity
(Ardemagni, 2018).
The UAE invested massively in the modernization of several commer-
cial ports, in particular Jebel Ali, Mina Rashid in Dubai, Khalifa Port and
Mina Zayed in Abu Dhabi. It also acquired access points in at least 77
other ports around the world. This is in large parts the result of the inter-
national development strategy conducted by Dubai Ports World. Thanks
to its numerous global investments, the company has become the fifth
ports operator in the world in terms of container capacity.
In addition to the infrastructures in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, another
lesser known location in the UAE has been developed: Fujairah. In recent
years, the development of this small northern emirate reflects the broader
strategy of the UAE in the Indian Ocean. Fujairah is strategically located
with direct maritime access on the Gulf of Oman, allowing tankers to
bypass the Strait of Hormuz and avoid insurance costs related to the
security risks in the area.
The development of Fujairah followed the construction of the
Habshan-Fujairah pipeline in 2012 linking the oilfields of Abu Dhabi to
Fujairah. Then, investments targeted the reinforcement of Fujairah port
capacities. In 2007, Fujairah terminals had three berths hosting 400 ships
each year with a storing capacity of seven million tonnes. By 2015, 2230
ships were stopping and the port was able to store 56 million tonnes.
According to Emirati public statements, the ambition was then to turn
Fujairah into a credible world hub alongside cities like Rotterdam and
Singapore (Defterios, 2016).
Thanks to Jebel Ali, the UAE is so far the most advanced Gulf state in
this domain but all its neighbours have engaged in the race. Saudi Arabia
is increasing the capacities of Jeddah and King Abdullah Port on its Red
Sea coast. On the other side of the Peninsula, nine major ports compete
with each other on the Arabian shore—and four if we add Iran’s ports.2
In Qatar, the Hamad port has been going through an expansion of its
capacities to support the goal set in Qatar National Vision 2030 to trans-
form the country into a regional trade and logistics hub (Gulf Times,
2018). In the context of the growth of the Qatari shipping industry,
QTerminals signed a memorandum of understanding with China Harbour
2 Dammam in Saudi Arabia, Shuwaikh, Shuaiba, Mubarak Al-Kabir in Kuwait, Khalifa

bin Salman in Bahrain, Port Hamad in Qatar, and Khalifa Port, Jebel Ali, Fujairah in the
UAE.
Engineering Company aiming at promoting future joint investments.

According to the Qatari authorities, the MoU “serves the objectives of
China’s One Belt, One Road initiative and the Qatar National Vision
2030” (Qatar Ministry of Transport and Communications, 2018). In
order to attract foreign direct investments, the Qataris also announced
the opening of a free zone in the port for international companies (Gulf
Times, 2019).
Oman also strengthened its position in the shipping industry. The port
of Sohar unexpectedly saw its cargo volumes rising by 30% in summer
2017: the primary reason for the increase was the implementation of a
boycott of Qatar by three of its neighbours (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE), starting in June of the same year. As a result, international shipping
companies that transited in the past through Jebel Ali in Dubai en route
to Qatar relocated most of their cargos to Sohar (The Economist, 2017).
Oman also signed an agreement allowing a Chinese consortium to build
an industrial city in Duqm, a village on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The
project is worth $10.7 billion and, if completed, it could turn the area
into one of the major hubs in the Indian Ocean (Shepard, 2017).
These simultaneous modernization efforts of Gulf ports shed light on
the desire of local rulers to be seen as privileged partners of China in
the context of the BRI. It is now common for Gulf officials to tailor
their economic reform plans as opportunities for Chinese investors. While
visiting Beijing in August 2016, Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman portrayed the Belt and Road Initiative as “one of the main
pillars of the Saudi Vision 2030 which would seek to make China among
the Kingdom’s biggest economic partners” (Arab News, 2016). Notice-
ably, Riyadh also announced in September 2018 that it would be investing
$10 billion into Pakistan’s deep-water port of Gwadar. The port already
benefits from Chinese financial support for its construction—an estimated
$54 billion budget is planned. Under the current circumstances, Gwadar
would be one of the key gateways in China’s BRI (Ghosh, 2019).
In the context of this competition between Gulf countries to be the
hub between East and West, the airlines business is another, and maybe
the most emblematic, illustration of Gulf ambitions. Starting in the 1980s,
Arab monarchies have used their oil income to build their own airlines to
compete with Western major companies. This led to the rapid growth of
Dubai’s Emirates, and later of Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad. As
a result, by January 2015, Dubai International Airport was announcing
that it had surpassed London’s Heathrow Airport as the world’s busiest

airport in terms of passengers (Molavi, 2015).
The international visibility of Gulf airlines grew in earnest in the 1990s
with the expansion of Emirates (founded in 1984) followed soon by Qatar
Airways in 1994 and Etihad in 2003. The significance of Gulf countries
in the global aviation landscape finds its roots in the geography of the
region, putting it halfway between Europe and Asia. As Kristian Coates
Ulrichsen reminds us, when the Imperial Airways of the United Kingdom
opened a flight between London and Brisbane, the British built an airfield
in the Emirate of Sharjah to serve for an overnight stop (Ulrichsen, 2015:
3). In the late 2000s, the then-CEO of Etihad James Hogan boasted that
“the Gulf is a natural air bridge between East and West” (USA Today,
2008).
Looking more closely at the trajectory of these companies, we can see
how the initial growth of companies like Dubai’s Emirates was driven
by the position of the Arabian Peninsula in the Indian Ocean. Emirates’
model relied on the flow of labour migrants from South Asia and its first
deals were to fly to Karachi, New Delhi and Bombay in 1985. They were
followed a year later by flights to Colombo, Dhaka and Middle Eastern
destinations such as Amman and Cairo. By the end of that first decade
of operations, Emirates added lines to Singapore, Manila and Bangkok.
By 1995, Emirates entered the African markets, reaching Johannesburg,
Nairobi and Kenya (Emirates Webpage). All along, Emirates designed
its corporate strategy within the context of Dubai’s own evolution. Its
growth was in many ways part of Dubai’s development strategy and coin-
cided with the construction of shopping places (Dubai Mall, Mall of the
Emirates) and luxury hotels that aimed to attract Asian customers.
Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad followed a somewhat distinct
business strategy but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the
three companies altogether had disrupted the global aviation market.
Nicknamed the “superconnectors”, they had become a source of concern
for US and European traditional companies that considered this new
competition coming from Gulf rentier states unfairly given the amount
of financial support these airlines were getting from their local authorities
(Powley & Kerr, 2017).
As a result, the development of Gulf countries into modern economies
consolidated their position as a hub between the other subregions of
the Indian Ocean. But this was until recently merely a topic for busi-
ness analysts that looked at the trends in energy and global aviation
markets. What changed in recent years was that this economic devel-
opment became the backbone of an ambitious political strategy that led
Gulf countries, and in particular, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, to go
beyond the idea of representing a hub for the area and to become middle
powers that matter in the security environment of the Indian Ocean.
The Asian Pivot of Gulf Countries

If only a few years ago, the international relations of the Arab penin-
sula were heavily influenced by the US political and military influence
there, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) now nurture
desires of strategic autonomy and have moved their political agendas
beyond the Gulf. Several factors led to this phenomenon. The first is
the growing concerns of Arab monarchies for maritime security, not only
in the Strait of Hormuz vis-à-vis Iran but also in Bab-el-Mandeb where
piracy became a major challenge in the late 2000s.
Starting in 2008, the participation of Gulf navies in counter-piracy
operations in the Indian Ocean, though modest in terms of capabilities,
indicated a common interest in preventing the disruption of maritime
trade caused by a surge in attacks. As mentioned before, acts of piracy in
the area increased to more than 60% between 2007 and 2008 according
to the International Maritime Bureau and triggered the resolve of these
countries to deploy their own military assets to curb the phenomenon
(Nelson & Goossens, 2011: 2). For rentier states like Qatar, the UAE,
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, any disruption of the free flow of commodi-
ties from the region is not simply an economic issue, it is perceived as
a national security challenge. Attacks targeted merchant vessels, meaning
possible shortages and a significant increase in insurance costs.
The second factor is the evolving relations of Gulf countries with the
three main powers in the Indian Ocean, namely India, China and the
US. Over the last decade, the erosion of US power in the region and
the growing unpredictability regarding Washington’s intent and ability to
support its allies urged local actors to review their alliances and reconsider
alternatives. Indeed Gulf perceptions of the US role in the Middle-East
gradually deteriorated over the last decade, following episodes such as
the chaotic reconstruction of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, or
the inconsistencies of the Obama policy on the Syrian civil war (Samaan,
2018). But more importantly the members of the GCC grew anxious vis-
à-vis the credibility of US security commitments, following the decision of
the Obama presidency to call Egypt’s former ruler Hosni Mubarak to step
aside following the revolution in early 2011 (Cooper & Landler, 2011).3
This perception of the US becoming an unpredictable protector caused
local actors to diversify their strategic options. Back in March 2009,
the former emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, captured
the Gulf state of mind vis-à-vis the uncertainties over US commitments:
“China is coming, India is coming, and Russia is on its way, too … I don’t
know if America and Europe will still be leading” (Gulf Times, 2009). As
a result, Gulf countries widened the scope of their relations with Asian
powers, in particular China and India.
Gulf relations with China are mostly driven by energy exports and
the prospects of the Belt and Road Initiative. However, strategic affairs
have progressively been put on the agenda of political meetings. Gulf
and Chinese leaders share a similar worldview as evidenced by China’s
Arab Policy Paper issued in 2016. As the first document to state the
Chinese strategy towards the Arab World, the paper acknowledged the
convergence with Arab regimes on “safeguarding state sovereignty and
territorial integrity, defending national dignity, seeking political resolu-
tion to hotspot issues, and promoting peace and stability in the Middle
East” (Xinhua News Agency, 2016).
If American military cooperation in the region dwarfs Chinese activi-
ties in that domain,4 there have been significant cases of Gulf countries
signing arms deals with Beijing that have raised the concerns of Amer-
ican officials. Back in 1988, Saudi Arabia turned to China to acquire 50
Dongfeng CSS-2 missiles. More recently, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have
been purchasing the Chinese Wing Loong unmanned aerial vehicle while
Qatar bought China-made short-range ballistic missiles (Senear, 2018).
As the Chinese defence industry consolidates its position in international
markets, this could gradually rebalance the breakdown of arms sales in the
Gulf.
3 In his memoirs, Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense (2006–2011), shares

details of his exchanges with Gulf rulers alarming him on the danger of seeing a ‘new
Iran’ in Egypt: Gates, R. (2014). Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. New York: Vintage,
468.
4 For instance, the Chinese share of Saudi arms supplies always remained small. For the
2012–2015 period, Chinese armament transfers to Saudi Arabia represented merely $600
million while the US had won contracts worth $17 billion during the same period. Source:
Theohary, C. (2016). Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2008–2015.
Washington: Congressional Research Service, 36.
With regards to India, the rapprochement with Gulf countries was

initially launched in the mid-2000s and was summarized by the expres-
sion “look-west policy” officially adopted by the Indian government in
2005. As shown in Chapter 3, it echoed and complemented the “look-
east policy”, a major effort of New Delhi to strengthen its ties with East
Asian countries at economic, political and military levels (Baru, 2015). In
the words of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Gulf region was “part
of our natural economic hinterland” (India’s Prime Minister’s Office,
2005). But Singh failed to materialize this aspiration and it is only with
the arrival of Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister in May 2014 that
a new dynamic was triggered.
If India’s policy goals were to build closer ties with all the members
of the GCC, it is with the UAE that the relationship improved the most
significantly. In January 2017, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan,
crown prince of Abu Dhabi, travelled to Delhi, where he was invited
as guest of honour for the celebration of India’s Republic Day, a priv-
ilege given in the recent past to the former US and French Heads of
State, Barack Obama and Francois Hollande. The event was followed by
the signature of a Strategic Global Partnership between India and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), including a dozen bilateral agreements
going from military cooperation to investment into Indian infrastructure
(Joshi, 2017).
The rapprochement between Delhi and Abu Dhabi was driven by
common interests with regard to maritime security and counterterrorism.
Both governments prioritized the threat of Islamist groups. If Dubai had
long been seen by Indian officials as a financial platform for Pakistani
militants or Indian criminals, the increased number of deportations to
Delhi in recent years reveals the new level of proximity between the two
countries.5 Noticeably, when India launched retaliatory strikes against
Pakistan in September 2016 following an attack against an Indian mili-
tary base in the Uri district in Kashmir, the official statement from the
UAE following the attack expressed its full solidarity with the Indian
Republic and conveyed “its support to all actions it may take to confront
and eradicate terrorism” (Chaudhury, 2016).
At a lower level, Gulf countries also developed close relations with
Southeast Asian countries. The city-island of Singapore was the first
5 Interviews with Emirati and Indian officials, Abu Dhabi, February 2019.
country outside of the Middle-East in 2008 to sign a Free Trade Agree-

ment with the GCC (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, 2013).
Singapore also provided technical assistance in the field of government
capacity building to Oman and Kuwait. The other way around, Gulf
acquisitions in Singapore have intensified. The UAE-based Al Futtaim
Group bought Singapore’s Robinson & Company—one of the largest
retailers—in 2008 while the Emirate of Fujairah awarded the Singaporean
company SembCorp Utilities with a $2.5 billion contract to build an inte-
grated Water and Power Plan. Likewise, SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries
Corporation), a global manufacturing company, supervises its Asian oper-
ations from Singapore. The Qatari DIAR real estate fund acquired a 40%
majority stake of Singapore’s Raffles Hotel in 2009.
Beyond trade and energy relations with Southeast Asia, Gulf countries,
and in particular Saudi Arabia, have increased their cooperation with the
states of the region in the field of counterterrorism. It is estimated that
in the mid-2010s, between 700 and 800 Southeast Asian jihadists left
for Syria and Iraq at the peak of the war against the Islamic State. The
majority came from Indonesia, followed by Malaysia, Singapore and the
Philippines (Delman, 2016). This flow of foreign fighters led Gulf and
Southeast Asian countries to share their own counterterrorism experi-
ences and to discuss ways to enhance the responsibilities of Gulf charitable
organizations—major donors of aid to Muslim communities in Southeast
Asia—in preventing radicalization (Latief, 2014).
The War in Yemen and the Acceleration

of Gulf Strategies in the Indian Ocean
After 2015, the war in Yemen accelerated the Saudi and Emirati plans
of developing military capabilities that would enable them to project
power and influence well beyond their shores. The modernization of both
navies—in close cooperation with Washington—and the creation of mili-
tary bases in the Horn of Africa (in Eritrea and Somaliland for the UAE;
in Djibouti for Saudi Arabia), initially to launch amphibious assaults on
Yemen, have an impact beyond the war. Specifically, it has been reshaping
the diplomatic and security arrangements between Gulf and African coun-
tries. In the midst of the war, the UAE deployed 1000 soldiers in Eritrea
and 3000 in Yemen where Saudi Arabia also sent 1500 of its soldiers
(International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2019: 321).
During that period, Abu Dhabi’s ambitions as a regional military actor

were reflected in the emerging forward bases the UAE developed in
the horn of Africa. The first of these military bases was located in the
Assab port in Eritrea—106 kilometres from Bab-el-Mandeb strait—and
the second in the autonomous province of Somaliland—276 kilometres
away from the strait. Eritrea is not a new partner for the UAE which
had built close ties with the local elites for years (Vilmer, 2019: 10). The
Assab port first served as a point of access to launch Emirati naval oper-
ations in Yemen (Knights, 2016). The facilities were also used to train
pro-government Yemeni forces.
In fact the first choice for Abu Dhabi was Djibouti where US, French
and now Saudi forces have a presence but following a diplomatic inci-
dent in April 2015, Emirati forces left their camp in Haramous (Katzman,
2020: 11). The subsequent agreement with the Eritrean authorities
granted access rights to the UAE in the Assab port for 30 years. It also
included a nearby 3500 metre runway to be used for strategic airlift C-17
of the UAE Air Force.
In the summer of 2018, the unexpected announcement of an Ethiopia-
Eritrea peace deal also revealed the increased influence of both the UAE
and Saudi Arabia in the Horn of Africa. The ceremony celebrating the
signature of the agreement took place in Riyadh in the presence of Saudi
King Salman. On the Emirati side, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince—and de
facto ruler—Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met repeatedly with the
heads of state on both sides prior to the deal. If the UAE entertained
closer relations with Eritrea, Mohammed bin Zayed also visited Ethiopia
to announce a $3 billion aid and investment package to the country
(Maasho, 2018).
Whereas the Eritrea-Ethiopia peace deal may be portrayed as a positive
illustration of Gulf intervention in the Horn of Africa, the interference of
Arab kingdoms in Somali politics is a more controversial case. There, the
UAE directly negotiated its military access with regional authorities. As a
result, the Parliament of Puntland approved in February 2017 the cession
of rights for 25 years to the UAE for the construction of an air and naval
base of approximately 40 kilometre square in Berbera. This followed a
previous major contract worth 442 million dollars and obtained a year
before by Dubai Ports World to develop and operate the civil port in
Berbera. The deal underlined how much military and business invest-
ments in the region go hand in hand for the UAE. Likewise, Puntland,
another autonomous region of Somalia—whose police force has been
financially supported by the UAE since 2010—awarded a contract for the

management of the Bossaso port to Dubai-based company P&O Ports in
April 2017.
These developments triggered concerns at the level of the central
government in Mogadishu regarding the way the UAE directly engaged
with regional entities without formally consulting with the state authori-
ties of Somalia. Some observers also put into question the legal framework
of these agreements with Puntland and Somaliland as contracts awarded
to a foreign country remain theoretically a prerogative of the government
in Mogadishu (Cornwell, 2018).
The dispute between Emirati authorities and the government in
Mogadishu culminated in the spring of 2018 when Somali security
staff seized $9.6 million in cash aboard an Emirati civilian aircraft at
Mogadishu. Abu Dhabi claimed that the money was intended for the
support of local armed forces while political circles in the Somali capital
believed that this was in fact meant to provide support to regional oppo-
nents to the central government (Reuters, 2018a). As a result, the UAE
suspended its military cooperation with the Somali government.
The Somali-Emirati crisis also highlighted the way the intra-Gulf
dispute of 2017 spilled over to Africa. When Saudi Arabia and its part-
ners announced the boycott of Qatar in June 2017, Somalia expressed
its desire to remain neutral. This cautious position was logical, given the
substantial amount of development aid Somalia receives from Qatar—and
additionally from Qatar’s ally, Turkey (International Crisis Group, June
2018a: 8). But despite the government’s claim of neutrality, officials in
Abu Dhabi believed that the 2018 seizure of the Emirati plane had less
to do with Somali domestic issues but was rather a consequence of Qatar’s
influence on the authorities of Mogadishu.6 Indeed, Emirati policy circles
deeply believe that Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed
“Farmajo”, a former Al Jazeera correspondent, had financed his polit-
ical campaign with the help of Qatari funds (International Crisis Group,
November 2018b: 6). Farmajo’s visit to Doha, only five weeks after the
crisis with Abu Dhabi, only compounded the perception that the head of
the government in Mogadishu had then chosen his side.
In other lesser known cases such as the Seychelles or the Maldives,
Gulf countries have also capitalized on their economic investments to
6 Interview with UAE officials, September 2018.

turn these small countries into political allies. In the last decade, the
UAE influence on the Seychelles increased decisively at all levels. The
Seychelles Strategic Plan 2040 launched by the former Seychelles Pres-
ident James Michel benefited from the expertise of Abu Dhabi Urban
Planning Council and was heavily inspired by Abu Dhabi Vision 2030
(Hanif, 2014). Other entities from Abu Dhabi also started working on
the island. The Abu Dhabi Development Fund, the Masdar Investment
Fund and Etihad Airways bought 40% of shares in Air Seychelles (Jain,
2012). Additionally, a new hospital was built on the island thanks to
donations from the Khalifa Foundation while the costs of extension for
the Seychelles international airport were covered by Abu Dhabi Airports
company. Even the real estate development plan—including the construc-
tion of new housing units—relied on financial resources provided by the
UAE.
These economic investments logically translate into political influence.
For some journalists, it was therefore no coincidence if the Seychelles were
the location reportedly chosen by the UAE in January 2017 to facilitate
informal exchanges between affiliates of the Trump transition team and
Russian officials close to the Kremlin to discuss the possibility of restoring
ties between Washington and Moscow (Entous et al., 2017).
The instruments of the Emirati policy towards the Maldives are similar.
Either through donations or loans, the UAE has been financing the
modernization of infrastructures in the Maldives, from its telecommu-
nication networks to its real estate market. It has obviously a lucrative
dimension—the Maldives is among one of the popular touristic destina-
tions for UAE residents—but also a political one: the Emirati support to
the Maldives is rewarded by local support to its regional policy which
might not be decisive but is still significant. Contrary to Somalia, the
Maldives was among the six countries that took part in the boycott of
Qatar announced on 5 June 2017.
The Seychelles and the Maldives are two regional illustrations of how
Gulf countries use their development aid and their business investments to
support their regional strategies in the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the African
and Asian shores of the Indian Ocean are among the most important
recipients of Gulf aid overall. This has to be put into the broader context
of the increasing courting of these small littoral states by regional powers,
in particular China and India. While the ruling family in Abu Dhabi rein-
forced its economic ties with the Seychelles island, the latter got closer to
India in the field of security cooperation. The Seychelles went as far as to
allow the Indians to build a new naval base on Assumption Island, about
600 nautical miles from its capital.
Meanwhile, the Maldives signed a free trade agreement with China
in 2017. The agreement reflected not only the past investments from
Beijing in the infrastructures of the island but also the potential role the
latter could play in the BRI. However, this triggered concerns from the
Indian government which has been significantly involved in the infrastruc-
ture development of the Maldives and leading the new government on
the island to cautiously restrict China’s access to its economy (Miglani &
Junayd, 2018).
The Uncertain Sustainability

of Gulf Regional Ambitions
As they progressively emerge as middle powers in the Indian Ocean, GCC
states face two essential challenges, first their ability to sustain their new
level of ambition and second, the possibility of strengthening ties simul-
taneously with China and India without antagonizing any of them, and
while still maintaining close relations with the US.
The question of Gulf countries’ ability to sustain, and even expand, the
scope of their foreign policies in the Indian Ocean relates to the question
of how far these states can go in the use of armed forces and economic
investments to promote their agendas. GCC members have been engaged
in active military cooperation on the eastern side of the Indian Ocean
with India, Pakistan and China while they substantially increased their
military footprint through basing arrangements and training initiatives in
the Horn of Africa. Moreover, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE allocated
significant personnel and capabilities to the war in Yemen for an extensive
period of time. If there has been no official estimate on the cost of such
deployment, it surely put a heavy burden on the defence expenditures of
the two countries.
All in all, the political aspiration behind these Gulf initiatives might not
be perfectly translated into concrete results. Gulf states retain small armed
forces whose warfighting experience remains limited. The small kingdom
of Bahrain has 8200 troops and although it has been diplomatically active
in maritime security, it relies largely on the resources of its neighbours or
Western partners for its own security. Kuwaiti forces include 17,500 men
which are largely focussing on territorial defence. The Sultanate of Oman
does have a significant number of armed forces (42,600) but these are
trained for territorial integrity and coastal defence with no indication to

go beyond these missions.
In fact, the only GCC countries that express the desire of projecting
forces beyond their shores are Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In each case,
this is reflected primarily by the active defence diplomacy of their leaders
in the Indian Ocean and their procurement policies that include naval
platforms that could support their ambitions. But even in these cases,
the reality is sobering. In terms of troops, the UAE has 63,000 men.
Only Saudi Arabia, with 227,000 soldiers, represents a major military in
terms of manpower but the level of readiness of its troops is questionable
(International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2019: 320). In the past
decade, significant military reforms have been launched in these three
countries, with the UAE leading the way, but at the moment, the readi-
ness of their armed forces, in particular in maritime operations far away
from their shores, remains limited.
As a result, it is not clear how significant the Gulf military bases in
the Horn of Africa will remain beyond the war in Yemen. As mentioned
earlier, the 2015 Saudi-led operation against the Houthi rebels accelerated
the development of Gulf presence in Eastern African countries because of
their proximity with the Yemeni battleground. However, putting aside
the operational needs for the conflict in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE did not seem intending on maintaining a large military footprint
in the Horn of Africa. As one military advisor in Abu Dhabi underlined,
“military bases in Assab and Somaliland are mainly leasing contracts to
guarantee Emirati access, do not expect them to become big deploy-
ments the way Western countries do”.7 This was later confirmed by the
dismantlement of the Assab base in early 2021 as part of the UAE military
withdrawal from the war (Al-Monitor, 2021).
This also means that military cooperation between Gulf states and
Asian partners, whether China, India and Pakistan will remain asym-
metrical in essence. At the operational level, GCC forces are largely
inferior and cannot realistically provide credible assets for maritime secu-
rity beyond the Arabian Peninsula, at least for the foreseeable future.
As a result, this calls for caution regarding the scope of the mili-
tary partnerships recently signed between Gulf and Asian countries. For
Asian countries, this rapprochement cements constructive ties in terms of
7 Interview with an Emirati military advisor at the General Headquarters of the UAE
Armed Forces, Abu Dhabi, March 2019.
defence diplomacy and provides them with military access to the Arabian
Peninsula. In the case of Pakistan—an historical partner of Gulf countries
in the military sector—it also serves as a quid pro quo to receive financial
aid from Gulf countries, especially from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But
at an operational level, Gulf armed forces cannot realistically act as equal
partners.
In addition to this uncertainty over the ability of local armed forces
to support the regional agenda of the Gulf countries, the fiscal environ-
ment in the region also calls for caution. The 2014 fall of the oil prices
marked the end of a decade of high incomes that allowed rentier states
to launch numerous policy initiatives. The rapid decline of the oil prices
combined with the effects of the 2020 pandemic caused by the Covid-19
virus jeopardize the balance of state expenditures in the Gulf. In fact even
before the pandemic, the regional economic perspectives were dark: the
2017 dispute between Qatar and its neighbours had stalled the develop-
ment of economic integration, economists feared a new real estate bubble
in cities like Dubai was growing at a worrisome level (Constable, 2019),
and annual growth percentages were already far below the two-digit rate
of the last decade. Specifically, the fallout of the pandemic on key sectors
of Gulf economies (energy, airfreight, tourism and maritime commerce)
directly affects the ability of these states to maintain their high-level of
defence expenditures and their ambitious policies of development aid and
foreign investments across the IOR.
Lastly, just like with other emerging players in the IOR, the ability
of Gulf states to sustain their foreign policy ambitions will be deter-
mined by diplomatic efforts too, and more specifically their credibility
to support regional governance. As of right now, an assessment of their
involvement in the Horn of Africa leads to mixed conclusions: whereas
Saudi and Emirati influence in Ethiopia and Eritrea played a significant
role in enabling the settlement of the conflict between both countries—
though the fate of the settlement itself seems fragile—other cases such as
Djibouti and Somalia are more problematic. The latter reflects the risks
of exporting the intra-Gulf rivalries to the Horn of Africa, where they can
easily destabilize fragile state institutions.
In the few governance institutions of the Indian Ocean, Gulf states
are quasi-absent. Despite their expressed interest in maritime security,
only three of them (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman) are members
of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS). Likewise, only three are
members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA): the UAE, Oman
and Yemen. For the first time since becoming a member in 1999, the
UAE assumed the rotating presidency of the association from 2019 till
2022. But given the limitations of IORA itself, the Emiratis focussed their
agenda on technical and economic affairs and refrained from using the
presidency as a platform to advance their strategic ambitions in the area.
With regards to the US–China–India strategic triangle in the IOR,
Gulf countries have so far trodden lightly. Gulf countries still host a vast
network of US military bases: Qatar is the location of the US Central
Command regional headquarters, the US Navy operates its fleet for the
Indian Ocean from Bahrain, and troops are also stationed in Kuwait and
the UAE. In addition to this military footprint, all the Gulf countries
have signed defence agreements with the three biggest Western partners,
namely the US, the UK and France. These agreements usually include
security guarantees that insure the stability of these regimes, provisions
that China is unlikely to offer in the near future.
As a result, the rulers in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi or Doha are fully aware
that if they give texture to the military dimension of the Gulf–China
rapprochement, it will ultimately alter their regional security arrange-
ments. It could stir concerns from the US: the government and the
Congress in Washington increasingly look at Chinese engagement in
the region with suspicion, in particular, if Gulf–China cooperation on
arms sales and the BRI follow their current trajectory. As discussed in
Chapter 4, the Indo-Pacific strategy initiated by the Trump administra-
tion builds a narrative of bipolar competition in the area which implicitly
calls on local states to take a side between Washington and Beijing. As
the US remains and shall remain in the near future the ultimate security
provider of GCC countries—a role that Chinese officials do not even chal-
lenge—Gulf countries are likely to comply with pressures coming from
Washington.
But even if Gulf states were able to avoid antagonizing the US, their
active diplomacy towards the Eastern side of the Indian Ocean could also
possibly trap them into the Asian power plays—either at the regional level
between India and Pakistan or at the continental level between India and
China. As mentioned earlier, Pakistan was historically the closest Asian
partner of GCC countries. This was the result of a large Pakistani labour
force in the peninsula, the cultivation of a common religious identity, and
the significant role played by the Pakistani armed forces in the building
of Gulf militaries (Kamran, 2013; Staudenmaier & Tahir-Kheli, 1981).
Moreover, Gulf-Pakistani relations were for a long time influenced by

the Cold War context. Whereas India was a partner of the USSR, Islam-
abad and GCC members were pragmatic supporters of US strategies in
the area. As Pakistan’s foreign policy was primarily, if not exclusively,
driven by its conflict with India, most of its decisions at the interna-
tional level aimed to counter Delhi’s influence. As a result, the US–USSR
competition was a convenient narrative for the leadership in Islamabad to
gain American support and prevent India’s engagement with Washington
and its Gulf allies.
However, in recent years, the Gulf relations towards Pakistan and India
evolved. The shift was the result of several factors, among them the
Indian active engagement with Arab monarchies under the premiership
of Narendra Modi and the Pakistani refusal to join the Saudi-led coalition
in the launching of the Yemen war in 2015. Following a fierce debate
at the Pakistani Parliament, the government decided to stay neutral and
expressed doubts about the strategic objectives of the intervention and its
operational implementation (Boone, 2015).
Pakistani leaders may also have feared that their participation in a
Saudi-led campaign against Yemen’s Houthis would stir discontent within
Pakistan’s Shia minority. In order to assuage Saudi pressures, Islamabad
offered military support to secure Saudi borders against potential attacks
launched from Yemen but it ultimately failed to reassure Gulf partners.
The Pakistani position was followed by numerous expressions of outrage
in the Gulf. Anwar Gargash, the then-UAE Minister of State for Foreign
Affairs, described the decision as “inconsistent, dangerous and unex-
pected”, adding that Pakistan would pay “a heavy price for its ambiguous
stand” (Pakistan Today, 2015). Gulf media conveyed a similar message
of condemnation, shaming the Pakistanis for their abandonment. Diplo-
matic tensions with Pakistan directly impacted the economic relations. In
the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the construction of an oil
refinery planned by the Emirati company, Xcelera Resources—a project
valued at $500 million—was subsequently suspended.
Nevertheless, the crisis over Pakistan’s absence of the Saudi-led coali-
tion did not translate into a full realignment of Gulf countries in South
Asia. Although it opened a window of opportunity for enhanced coop-
eration with India—a momentum that Indian Prime Minister Modi used
effectively—the rift was not complete. More specifically, the military rela-
tion between Riyadh and Islamabad seemed intact. By January 2017,
Saudi Arabia nominated Raheel Sharif, former chief of the Pakistani
Army as the first commander of the Islamic Military Alliance, the new
organization created by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
At the civilian level, the election of Imran Khan in 2018 as Pakistan’s
Prime Minister led to a new start with a slow recovery of the rela-
tions between Islamabad and the Arabian Peninsula. Imran Khan had
vigorously opposed the Yemen war in 2015 but by 2018, as he took
responsibility over Pakistani government, he looked at the rulers in
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as much-needed investors to help keep the
economy afloat as an IMF bailout was looming (Shah, 2019). Financial
support of Gulf countries to Pakistan naturally does not come without
conditions and it actually enables Saudi Arabia and the UAE to reinforce
their influence in Islamabad. An Indian former ambassador to the Gulf
shared an exchange with local rulers, “I bluntly asked my Emirati and
Saudi counterparts ‘why are you investing so much in Pakistan?’ Their
answer was straightforward: ‘what would you prefer? Do you want us
to be out of Pakistan or do you want us to be able to influence their
decisions?’”.8
Overall, Gulf states are likely to refrain from siding fully with one
Asian country against another as long as they can. More broadly, their
policy vis-à-vis the US–China–India triangle in the Indian Ocean can
qualify as a hedging strategy. If external balancing would mean an explicit
competitive move in a regional rivalry, hedging can be understood as a
more prudent approach to prepare for a possible change—such as esca-
lation with a local actor, or abandonment of an external ally. Such an
approach provides Gulf countries with a very convenient halfway position
to diversify strategic options without picking a side against another. This
Gulf hedging approach is not the result of a coordinated effort by GCC
members. These rapprochements remain unilateral initiatives pursued by
Arab monarchies on their own, a fact that informs us on the low level of
convergence within the GCC in the diplomatic sector. Furthermore, these
policy moves are primarily conducted by the three strongest countries:
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Although Oman, Kuwait and Bahrein
cultivate ties with littoral states and regional powers of the Indian Ocean,
it is worth noting that the most significant policies have been conducted
in Doha, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, where rulers have dedicated the highest
8 Interview with an Indian high-level diplomat, Abu Dhabi, February 2019.

attention to the need to diversify their strategic arrangements between

East and West.
Putting aside these elements, hedging is historically unprecedented in
the Arabian Peninsula: the balance of power in the subregion was defined
by Western countries for so long that local monarchs were rarely depicted
as strategic players that mattered. The real strategic significance may be
found here: with the strengthening of their ties with China and India and
their increased influence in littoral states of the Indian Ocean, Gulf coun-
tries distance themselves from American patronage and build a nascent
strategic autonomy. In some cases, this might lead to positive outcomes—
such as the Eritrea-Ethiopia peace agreement—but in some others, this
could actually stir regional instability: Given the absence of intra-Gulf
coordination and their limited interest in supporting multilateral orga-
nizations and initiatives in the IOR, their rise increases the likelihood of
competing agendas in the region and the risk of power politics prevailing
over governance.
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CHAPTER 7
Australia and the ASEAN Member States:

From Interest to Commitment?
As previous chapters evidenced, the Indian Ocean today is character-

ized by a growing reinvestment of the littoral states, including from its
eastern part. Australia and ASEAN control all the choke points between
the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. They are therefore highly sensitive to
the ongoing geostrategic developments taking place in the Indian Ocean.
But Australia and ASEAN member states have traditionally been looking
primarily to the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.
Since the end of the Cold War, their respective engagements in the
Indian Ocean have increased, even if relatively slowly, as the geopo-
litical significance of the region changed under the influence of three
phenomena that emerged and matured at a different pace: India’s emer-
gence as a major regional power, the evolving but still uncertain role of
the United States, and more importantly, the growing presence of China;
and by extension, the implications of the China–US rivalry on ASEAN
cohesion.
All these factors further inhibit ASEAN’s capacity to play a significant
role in the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the scope, shape and nature of this
reinvestment by the eastern littoral states of the Indian Ocean is uneven,
and in some cases uncertain as many stakeholders have limited capabilities
to meet the challenges generated by the new Indo-Pacific dynamic. As a
result, they have to choose between competing priorities. Their attention
is progressively enlarging to the Indian Ocean but despite the growing

Switzerland AG 2022
ambitions of Indonesia and the discreet, limited but effective role of

Singapore, ASEAN member states are stuck in the position of guardians
of the gates.
In this context, regional cooperation has increased. Indonesia and
Australia, for example, have strengthened their ties with one another, but
also, jointly or separately with other middle powers. All however are trying
to balance the growing pressures from China in the South China Sea or
the Pacific by getting closer to India. In this context, new partnership
formats are gradually emerging and New Delhi is central to all of them.
ASEAN: The Gatekeeper of the Indian Ocean?

The countries which came together in 1967 to form ASEAN have a long
association with the Indian Ocean, of which they are collectively the gate-
keepers. The Malacca Strait remains today the main maritime transit route
between the Indian and Pacific oceans and one of the world’s busiest
waterways. The security of the sea lanes of communication in the area is
central to the energy security of Asia as well as, more generally, to the
economic exchanges between East and South Asia, Africa, the Middle-
East and Europe and, therefore, for the prosperity of a substantial part of
the world. As a consequence, ASEAN is highly sensitive to geopolitical
developments in the Indian Ocean region. A number of member states
of ASEAN—Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia—
are littoral states of the Indian Ocean, even though their involvement in
maritime affairs differ greatly from one country to another.
ASEAN member states have always been aware of the importance of
the IOR. But the collective interests of its member states are primarily
affected by the instability arising from the increasingly volatile situation of
the South China Sea. This eventually affects the Indian Ocean maritime
context, but essentially as an extension of the former’s geostrategic
dynamic. From that perspective it is worth noting that most of ASEAN
member states involved in the various regionally active voluntary multina-
tional naval partnerships, be it the Combined Maritime Forces, operating
in the Middle-East, or the Malacca Strait Patrols, are Indian Ocean littoral
states, even though other ASEAN member states could potentially be
affected by the security developments in the area (Bateman et al., 2017).1
1 Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, have participated in and

contributed forces to the various Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East. Malacca
7 AUSTRALIA AND THE ASEAN MEMBER STATES … 153
ASEAN has, for example, high economic (and by extension strategic)

stakes in the security of the SLOCS in the Bay of Bengal where any
tension could directly impinge on the regional trade.
All ASEAN member states, but more specifically those which are
littoral states of the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and
Thailand, have a stake in a stable great power relationship. But at the
same time, these countries are also competing for the position of regional
hub. Indeed, the convergence between ASEAN member states regarding
their overall strategic interest does coexist with an element of competition
between them. This duality, as well as the growing China–US polarization
in the region, create a contradiction within the policy-making process as it
makes them more vulnerable to any external cooperation likely to help or,
on the contrary, to prevent them from changing the status quo. Limited
naval capabilities, and regional rivalries, combine with larger geopolitical
conflicts of interests to constrain ASEAN ability to play a significant role
in the Indian Ocean.
Moreover, ASEAN member states have no interest and are ill-equipped
to take part in the projection of the China–US rivalry in the Indian Ocean.
From the end of the Cold War till the late 2000s, threats remained of a
non-conventional nature. Piracy, IUU fishing, traffic of all kinds, varied
over time but constituted mere nuisances, without ever reaching an exis-
tential level for any of the ASEAN member states, often reflecting the
state of national governance in the concerned countries. Although bilat-
eral frictions between member states have always existed and have limited
ASEAN’s institutional progress as a regional organization, considerations
about Southeast Asian stability, whenever ASEAN’s relative unity was
being challenged, have always prevailed.
Most of its member states being dependent on both the IOR and the
South China Sea for trade and maritime commerce, ASEAN is compelled
to preserve the status quo and not to get embroiled into great power
rivalries. Consequently, at the regional level, ASEAN played a constant
balancing act, forging better ties with its main partners. In 1997, it initi-
ated the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) with China, Japan and South Korea,
and in 2005, the ASEAN Summit, with the APT, India, Australia, New
Zealand and the US. But the relative equilibrium which emerged as a
Strait Patrols, a collective term to describe the combined Maritime Strait Sea Patrols,
“Eye in the Sky” (EiS) and an Intelligence Exchange Group operating under a Joint
Coordinating Committee, includes Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.
result of these policies is increasingly challenged, a situation which the

ASEAN tries to resist—at the risk of its own unity—but that its member
states have to try to adjust to, though with limited means.
From ASEAN’s perspective, the intensification of the power contest
between India and China in the Indian Ocean is no more desirable than
the US–China competition in the South China Sea. Nowhere is this
contest more evident than in the Bay of Bengal. With over 80% of its
oil imports coming from the Middle-East and Africa, the development
of its Maritime Silk Route is seen by China as the most efficient way to
establish the influence of the PLAN in the Indian Ocean. Within the Bay
of Bengal, China has built the port of Hambantota and the Colombo
South Container Terminal in Sri Lanka, upgraded the Chittagong port in
Bangladesh and is building a deep-water port in Kyaukpyu in Myanmar.
In Thailand, China seems to be keen on the construction of the Kra
Canal. India perceives these moves as encroachments on its sphere of
influence. Despite growing border tensions between the two Asian giants,
the risk of armed conflict between India and China in the Bay of Bengal
is still relatively limited because of India’s geographic and strategic advan-
tage in the area. However, the threat of tensions and sparking incidents
at sea remains a possibility (Bateman et al., 2017).
Geopolitical developments in the area—the evolution of the US–China
rivalry in the South China Sea and China–India competition in the Indian
Ocean—are creating new dynamics that span the entire Indian Ocean.
ASEAN is caught between two volatile, although with various degrees,
maritime hotspots. But these developments are also, in a more subtle and
less confrontational way, generating tensions between IOR littoral states
of ASEAN.
The Kra Canal: Intra-ASEAN Competition and the China Factor

The renewed focus on the ever-elusive Kra Canal illustrates the point. The
Kra Canal refers to a series of proposals for a canal that would connect the
Gulf of Thailand to the Andaman Sea across the Kra Isthmus in Southern
Thailand. The Kra Canal would provide Japan and China with an alter-
native to the Straits of Malacca and shorten their oil shipments from the
Middle-East by a distance between 1200 and 3500 kms depending on
the chosen route (two to six sailing days) (Le Carrou, 2020). The canal
would indeed boost Thailand’s economy, in particular in the south of the
country, and confer the matter a new geopolitical importance. But it has
also been estimated that the canal would deprive Malacca of about 30%
of its traffic which would impact Malaysia and even more so Singapore,
the major maritime hub in Asia. This is why Singapore has made public
its opposition to the Kra Canal.
Building a canal through a Kra Isthmus is not a new idea and has been
launched several times in the past. It was first suggested in the seven-
teenth century, when Thai King Narai asked French engineer de Lamar
to survey the possibility of building a waterway from Songkhla to Marid.
The project was discarded as impractical but resurfaced at times. Several
studies were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, until Thai-
land and the British empire agreed in 1897, not to build the canal in order
to maintain the dominance of the harbour of Singapore. In the twentieth
century, several new proposals emerged, with suggested funding from the
World Bank or Japan (Verley, 2015). In 2002, the government of Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra approved the setting up of a committee to
conduct a feasibility study, but the work stopped after the 2006 military
coup.
In the meantime, the project acquired a new dimension in 2005,
with its mention in the much-discussed report of Booz Allen Hamilton
to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on “Asia Energy Futures”
(see Chapter 4) (Washington Times, 2005). The report claimed that
China was looking into funding and constructing the Kra Canal. The
China plan included a $US 25 billion budget for a ten-year construction
project involving some 30,000 workers. The objective was to develop an
industrial zone for heavy industry, including ship-building facilities and a
deep-seaport at each of the canal entrances (Verley, 2015). Yet, the project
that the Thai government had tentatively accepted in 2007 was repeatedly
postponed because of the country’s political turmoil. It did resurface in
2014, however, under the premiership of Yingluck Shinawatra, when the
China Daily Mail reported a major public–private partnership between
Chinese state-owned companies Liu Gong Machinery and XCMG, and
the private Sany Heavy industry to prepare for the construction of
the canal (Verley, 2015). In the meantime, the project had supposedly
become a component of the BRI.
However, the project was abandoned again when Prayut Chan-o-Cha
seized power in 2014. The same Prayut Chan-o-Cha declared in 2016
that the canal would never happen under his administration. But then
in 2018, he ordered his government to conduct a feasibility study). In
September 2020, his transport minister, Saksiam Chidchob, announced
that the government now favoured the building of two deep-water ports
on either side of the isthmus, linked by a highway and a railroad (Storey,
2020). A month later, the Premier ordered the National Economic and
Social Development Council to begin a new feasibility study for the canal
(Therapat, 2020).
Even if the Kra Canal is never built, the reactions provoked by
the project are symptomatic of ongoing regional dynamics. In the
current environment, traditional local rivalries are subsumed into broader
geostrategic considerations, according to which presumed opportunities
brought by China’s intents vis-à-vis the IOR are met with suspicion by
both potential beneficiaries and losers of this presence. Indeed the Kra
Canal project did raise concerns about Beijing’s strategic influence and
power projection capabilities in the Indian Ocean region. If it ever were
to be built, the Kra Canal would allow China to bypass its “Malacca
dilemma” and give it direct access to the Andaman sea in case of conflict
with India and/or the United States.
Keeping the Gate Open: The Malacca Strait Patrols

If the Malacca Strait is likely to remain the main corridor of navigation
between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in the foreseeable
future, the evolution of the security situation in the Malacca Strait, as
well as the response of the littoral states, illustrate the changing nature of
geopolitics in the region.
The strategic importance of the Strait needs not to be underlined.
Situated at the nexus of the Indo-Pacific region, it is the longest major
navigational strait in the world. It has for centuries connected the Indian
subcontinent to China and Europe, to the latter as an alternative to the
Northern Silk Road. The states bordering it, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singa-
pore and Thailand are at the core of ASEAN. Most of Europe’s trade with
China and Japan is shipped through the Strait and most of the latter’s
energy requirements depend on oil shipment from the Gulf states via
that passage. For the same reasons, the Malacca Strait is one of the most
vulnerable areas in the world to a potential environmental disaster linked
to shipping and industries but also to recurrent tidal destructions, as well
as non-traditional security issues such as piracy (Evers & Gerke, 2006).
For these reasons, the security of the Strait extends beyond its impact
on the littoral states and attracts the attention of major global powers.
China, but also the United States, sees the Strait of Malacca as a critical
juncture of international trade. But with China expanding the scope of
its maritime rights and global interests, its decision makers increasingly
see the Strait of Malacca through the lens of its rivalry with the United
States. As a result, even action against non-traditional security issues, such
as piracy or terrorism, which have traditionally affected the Strait, is seen
with suspicion by some Chinese observers. Analysts Chen Angang and
Chen Wuming have argued, for example, that protecting security in the
Strait of Malacca is the perfect excuse for the United States to interfere
in China’s naval ambitions (Sliwinski, 2014).
Even if these considerations are more reflective of a mindset than the
actual intentions on either side to interdict the Strait, they constitute
nevertheless, together with notions of sovereignty as well as the fear that
the intensifying rivalry may, someday, impact ASEAN’s cohesiveness, part
of the background against which actual security policies have evolved over
the past two decades. Littoral states of the Malacca Strait had different
views regarding foreign involvement and the responsibility to ensure secu-
rity in the Strait. Whereas Singapore felt that all users ought to contribute
to it, “Indonesia and Malaysia viewed security in the Strait as the littoral
states’ sole responsibility” (Koh, 91:20, 2018). Differences did not matter
as long as piracy was manageable but the upsurge of attacks in the early
2000, raised the risk of direct external intervention. MALSINDO, a coor-
dinated patrol programme by Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, was
launched in July 2004, in reaction to Washington’s proposed Regional
Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI) of April 2004, which envisaged US
policing of the Strait.
Considerations about sovereignty and differences over external inter-
ventions again prompted the three countries to adopt additional measures
after Japan proposed to dispatch its Coast Guard to help police the
Strait in March 2005. The creation of “Eyes in the Sky” (EiS), an aerial
patrol component, was announced the following June, during the annual
Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore (Koh, 91:20, 2018). It required each
state to contribute two maritime patrol aircraft in order for the triad
to conduct two patrols each week over the Strait. Each aircraft had a
Combined Maritime Patrol Team (CMPT) which included a military
officer from each participating state. Its task was to establish a comprehen-
sive surface picture of a designated area and report any suspicious presence
or activity to ground-based agencies, the Monitoring Action Agencies
(MAAs) in each of the participating countries. MAAs were then supposed

to coordinate responses within their respective territorial waters.
Building on the two existing mechanisms, Indonesia proposed in
September 2005, the Malacca Strait Security Initiative (MSSI). The
project was a comprehensive approach including coordinated patrols,
both maritime and aerial, and intelligence sharing, while differences
persisted over the role of external powers. The last stage was the agree-
ment by the military chiefs of the three countries on the Terms of
Reference and Standard Operating Procedures, in April 2006, formal-
izing the Malacca Strait Patrols (MSP). It included the Malacca Strait
Sea Patrols, EiS and the Intelligence Exchange Group (EIG), composed
of the naval intelligence agencies of each participating country and acting
as an information (but not governance) hub. The MSSI was therefore a
network of various military and intelligence actors from the Malacca Strait
littoral states, with a Coordinating Committee, overseeing every aspect
and facilitating communication (Koh, 91:20, 2018). Thailand, who had
joined as an observer in 2005, became a full member of the Malacca Strait
Patrol in 2008.
The development of the MSP was primarily a response to the piracy
issue which plagued the area. In the early 2000s, the Strait of Malacca
had one of the highest rates of piracy in the world, while distrust
between the militaries of the littoral states hindered intelligence sharing
and confined each littoral state’s response to its own territorial waters,
making it almost impossible to tackle the problem. The MSP provided
the littoral states with a coordinated response without encroaching on
each other’s sovereignty and, more importantly, without external inter-
ference, especially by Western powers, an issue to which Indonesia and
Malaysia were particularly sensitive. Although the prevention of Jakarta
and Kuala Lumpur was essentially reminiscent of the colonial history of
the region, they did pave the way for some form of “neutrality” in the
following period marked by the predominance of the China–US rivalry.
Singapore: The Indian Ocean “Overwatcher”

Collaborative efforts by ASEAN in relation to the Indian Ocean have
been restricted so far to the Malacca Strait and the initiative of a limited
number of member states. Institutional relations between ASEAN and
existing organizations of the Indian Ocean are still to be built whereas
active involvement in the larger Indian Ocean has been even more limited,
reflecting the vision, or the ambition, of only a few.
Over the past few years, Singapore’s strategic environment has changed
for the worse in the waters beyond the country’s immediate area. The
City-State has every reason to be worried about the escalating disputes
within the South China Sea. With ASEAN being the cornerstone of
Singapore’s foreign policy, territorial disputes between member states, or
between member states and China, are likely to impact the City-State.
The intensification of the US–China rivalry in the area is similarly seen as
potentially problematic for Singapore. With US forces permanently based
in Singapore, the country can hardly extract itself from the latter even
though it has always tried to balance the expectations of both China and
the US and has constantly emphasized the rule of law.
In this context, the Indian Ocean is only of secondary importance,
even if the Singaporean government maintains a close watch on the region
and its geopolitical dynamics. The sea lanes of communications in the
Indian Ocean are of course essential for the country’s economy, but
the immediate Southeast Asian waters remain at the top of the national
interest priorities list. Singapore’s policies there are officially grounded
in five main principles: good neighbourliness, multilateralism; sense of
community; usefulness and relevance; deterrence and defence. In effect
usefulness and relevance determine the order of priority of all other
aspects of the policy.
Moreover, its remarkably effective capabilities—its navy being consid-
ered the “best little navy in Southeast Asia” (Till & Supriyanto, 2018)—
make Singapore a true contributor to the Indian Ocean security. The
country has been part of the Combined Task Force 151 (CTF 151),
a multinational naval task force set up in 2009 as a response to piracy
attacks in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia. But despite
the ongoing acquisition of longer range, more lethal platforms (Yaacob,
2019), its forces are too limited to allow it to play a major role in the
larger Indian Ocean. Singapore’s contribution to CTF 151 is essentially
meant to demonstrate its relevance to the international community by
doing its parts for the security of the global maritime commons, and by
doing so, to manage its alliances.
Singapore is unlikely to change its eastward orientation in the fore-
seeable future. In the Indian Ocean, Singapore intends to establish itself
as a relevant actor through its participation in the Indian Ocean Rim
Association (IORA) and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS)
mechanisms, in which it plays a participative role but is not seeking any

leadership position. The core of its Indian Ocean policy will remain the
pursuit of its current strategy of balancing China through cooperation
with the US and India, while trying to defuse tensions through multi-
lateral approaches. In a situation where both Chinese interference and
US–China polarization will make Singapore’s position increasingly diffi-
cult to sustain. As mentioned in Chapter 4, it remains to be seen whether
the US idea of recreating the US first fleet, to be based in Singapore,
will materialize (Crabtree, 2021), but, whatever its size and shape, the
US presence and its military activities in the Indian Ocean are likely to
influence Singapore’s balanced posture.
Singapore’s defence relationship with India is undoubtedly its closest
in the region. After it became independent from Malaysia, in 1965,
Singapore, deeply aware of its own vulnerability, became concerned
“not only with the prospect of Communist Chinese supported internal
subversion but also with external threats posed by Indonesia and a
potentially revanchist Malaysia” (Brewster, 22:5, 2009). National interest
prompted Singapore to look for greater Indian involvement in Southeast
Asia. The bilateral defence relationship started developing only after the
end of the Cold War and the redefinition of India’s foreign policy, as
materialized by the Look-East Policy. Naval cooperation was central to
the emerging partnership. The annual Singapore-India Maritime Bilat-
eral Exercise (SIMBEX) was initiated in 1993 and grew in duration
and complexity over the years, including anti-air, anti-surface and anti-
submarine warfare. The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) was also given
access to Indian naval facilities, from Port Blair in the Andaman Islands
to India’s southern naval command headquarters in Cochin. Since 1995,
the RSN has also participated in the Milan exercises organized by India
in the Andaman Islands.
Bilateral cooperation intensified between all military services as well as
between intelligence agencies, but overall the maritime domain remains
the most advanced one. In November 2017, Singapore and India signed
an “India-Singapore Bilateral Agreement for Navy Cooperation” aimed
at “increased cooperation in maritime security, joint exercises, temporary
deployments from each other naval facilities and mutual logistics support”
(Ganapathy, 2017). The text of the agreement was not made public but
was understood as a boost to further engagements between the two sides,
including more complex exercises closer to Singapore in the Straits of
Malacca or closer to India in the Andaman Sea (Parameswaran, 2017), de
facto giving them greater control over the connection between the South
China Sea and the Indian Ocean and deepening India’s involvement in
ASEAN’s maritime security activities.
Singapore’s close ties with India are pulling the City-State deeper into
the Indian Ocean strategic dynamics. But the latter are leading to a
subtle shift in Singapore’s balancing act vis-à-vis China, as New Delhi’s
tensions with Beijing are becoming increasingly structural. With the
Indian Ocean becoming the focal point of the India–China rivalry, Singa-
pore’s balancing act is no longer primarily a good relations policy with
all. It includes a dimension of coalition building which was always in the
making but is becoming more salient in the new regional configuration,
even though it is still absent from the official narrative.
Eventually, the Singaporean leadership is walking an increasingly fine
line. On one side, it is still trying to preserve the status quo but on the
other, the growing polarization in the region keeps reducing its political
and diplomatic space, even if it has not shaken yet, the country’s quiet
confidence in the sustainable character of general peace and stability in
the Indian Ocean region.
Indonesia’s Rise and Its

Consequences in the Indian Ocean
The perception of a new ASEAN maritime role in the Indian Ocean is a
function of Indonesia’s own redefinition as a maritime power. This idea
of Indonesia as a maritime power was put forward by successive Indone-
sian leaders ever since the independence of the country in 1945. For
geographic, economic and strategic reasons, it would seem obvious to
consider it an Indian Ocean power. Indeed, the entire length of South-
east Asia’s western and southern coastline, of which Indonesia constitutes
a substantial part, faces the Indian Ocean which is the conduit for Indone-
sia’s export to Africa, South Asia, the Middle-East and Europe. Moreover,
Indonesia is dependent on the IOR for its offshore oil and gas resources
as well as its fisheries. Indonesia is the second country in the world after
China for the volume of its captures (Food & Agriculture Organiza-
tion, 2020). Surprisingly though, Indonesia’s awareness of its western and
southern maritime frontier is a new phenomenon. The straits of Malacca,
Sunda, Lombok, and Ombar-Wetar, crucial for global shipping, are all
partly controlled by Indonesia but the strategic importance of the Indian
Ocean has been rediscovered only recently. Indonesia decided not to
remain only a crossroad between the Indian and Pacific Oceans but to
become a “key player in their affairs as well” (Bateman et al., 2017).
Joko Widodo came into office in 2014 promising to turn the country
into a “Global Maritime Fulcrum” (GMF), a plan that he presented at
the East Asia Summit held in Jakarta in November 2014. The GMF
was built on five pillars: development of a maritime culture,2 managing
resources through the development of a sustainable fishing industry,
prioritizing connectivity and development,3 intensifying maritime diplo-
macy and creation and strengthening of a maritime defence force (Tiola,
2019).
The project was taken seriously enough by both China and the US
to turn Indonesia into a stake in the competition for influence in the
Indo-Pacific region (Laksmana, 2019). Chinese officials often try to link
the BRI and the GMF while Indonesia has been acknowledged as the
maritime fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific by the then-US Defense Secretary
James Mattis (Laksmana, 2019).
Yet, Indonesia struggles to materialize its maritime ambitions. Despite
its geographic location between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and the
notable improvement of its maritime infrastructure—more than 20 new
ports have so far been built under the Widodo’s presidency (Tiola,
2019)—the economic dimension of the GMF is still hampered by the
traditional weaknesses of an over-regulated, inefficient economy.
The country’s naval policy remains moreover superficial. Instead of
maritime strategy, Indonesia still promotes “national resilience” as its
main geostrategic concept, with internal security being a primary concern
(Supriyanto, 2016). In that sense, Indonesia’s maritime posture is only
beginning to cease being a paradox, as the outcome of president
Widodo’s activism. If the GMF is more than a declaration of intent, its
results are likely to be felt in the long term. It has only marginally changed
the Navy’s role within the Indonesian armed forces, traditionally domi-
nated by the army while the government has done little to propel the
2 The Srivijava and Majapahit naval empires, centered respectively in Sumatra and Java,
in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries had developed a powerful fleet and conquered
the local seas around the Indonesian archipelago but expanded also to Southern Thailand
and the Philippines. They are said to be the source of Indonesia’s maritime identity which
the GMF is supposed to resuscitate.
3 The program included the development of logistical networks and deep-seaports, the
establishment of a maritime tourism industry, the construction of sea highways along the
coast of Java and the creation of a shipping industry.
modernization of the Navy. In maritime security, like in all military affairs,

strategic affairs determine capabilities and achievements.
Throughout the twentieth century, Indonesia has largely turned its
back to the Indian Ocean. As a result the country still lacks a sound
strategy for the area. Its most assertive gestures regarding maritime
security, in particular its controversial vessel-sinking policy for illegal,
unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, are understandably, related
primarily to the South China Sea. Indeed the GMF is unlikely to drive
Indonesia’s Indian Ocean activism.
True, Indonesia is also playing a balancing act of its own in the Indian
Ocean. It has deepened its relations with India. New Delhi’s rapproche-
ment with the US initiated in the 1990s brought India’s strategic posture
much closer to that of Indonesia. Indeed, since the mid-1990s, Indonesia
has provided significant support to India to improve political and security
links within the region. It did play an important role in supporting the
development of India’s institutional relationship with ASEAN, backing
India’s membership to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1996, the
creation of the annual ASEAN-India Summit in 2002, as well as India’s
participation in the East Asia Summit in 2005 (Brewster, 51:2, 2011). In
1995, Djakarta joined the IORA and, in 2008, the Indian Ocean Naval
Symposium (IONS), two Indian Ocean organizations initiated by India.
Interestingly, naval cooperation between Indonesia and India has
followed an independent way which has been as much a function
of Indonesia’s weak capacities and willingness to maintain sovereignty
over the Southeast Asian chokepoints as China’s assertiveness in the
region. In July 2004, at the initiative of the Indonesian government,
Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia launched the MALSINDO coordi-
nated patrols in the Malacca Strait, as a response to the April US Regional
Maritime Security Initiative. The latter was rejected by both Indonesia
and Malaysia out of fear of a lasting US military presence in the strait. For
similar reasons, both Indonesia and Malaysia refused to participate in the
Japanese-sponsored ReCAAP system, involving the voluntary exchange
of information about piracy (Brewster, 51:2, 2011). Soon however, the
programme proved ineffective due to Indonesia and Malaysia limited
capabilities. In this context, cooperation appeared necessary, and India
a less politically risky, and therefore preferable partner.
If the first naval exercise between India and Indonesia took place as
early as 1960, political difficulties between the two countries led it to a
halt. Bilateral naval cooperation resumed in 1989 off Surabaya, followed
by another exercise in 1991 in the Andaman Sea. In 2002, the two

countries started coordinated patrols (CORPAT) on their respective sides
of the International Maritimes Boundary in the Andaman Sea (Bajpaee,
2016).
Strategic convergences, in particular on counterterrorism, and a parallel
rediscovery of their maritime traditions led to a subsequent rapproche-
ment of the two countries in maritime affairs. The progress in the bilateral
relationship, specifically in the defence sector, materialized with the
signing of a strategic partnership in 2005. The two countries upgraded
their relationship, from Strategic Partnership to Comprehensive Strategic
Partnership, in 2018 with a strong emphasis on maritime issues, evidenced
by the signature of a “shared vision on maritime cooperation” document
(Ministry of External Affairs [India], 2018). On 12 July of the same year,
both countries also launched a joint initiative to develop a deep-seaport
in Sabang, to enhance maritime connectivity between the Indonesian
Aceh province and the Indian Andaman and Nicobar islands, as part of
the Indo-Pacific strategies pursued by both countries (Roy-Chaudhury,
2018). Moreover, for years now, the navies of the two countries have
conducted coordinated patrols in the Andaman Sea.
However, although concerns of a Chinese naval presence in the Indian
Ocean have increased, there is still little evidence that this phenomenon
ranks high on the Indonesian agenda. If both Indonesia and India are
concerned about the Chinese growing presence in the region, it is not
yet clear that they share the same perspective on the China threat to the
Indian Ocean. Indonesia remains focussed on the South China Sea and in
that context, its cooperation with India prioritizes the archipelago and its
surroundings. Indonesia may increasingly come to understand the influ-
ence it could potentially wield through the IOR of which it already is
the second economy in terms of purchasing power parity. Naval culture
and a greater interest for the Indian Ocean may come as a result of the
country’s economic performance. But Indonesia’s capacity to become a
significant Indian Ocean naval power in the foreseeable future is still an
open question.
Similarly, if Jakarta is playing an increasingly active role in the Indian
Ocean institutions, in particular the Indian Ocean Rim Association
(IORA), it is at best a complement to Indonesia’s activism in ASEAN. If,
as Nelson Mandela said, the organization is the outcome of “the natural
urge of the fact of history and geography”, it still has to find ways to
become more than a forum. It is fair to say that IORA is the object of
renewed attention as a result of the growing power rivalry taking place in

the Indian Ocean.
Recent efforts to better integrate Indonesia’s coast guards from various
agencies are likely to help Indonesia better protect its territorial waters
(Tertia, 2021). This will be a welcome contribution to the freedom
of navigation to and from the Indian Ocean but Indonesia’s focus will
remain on ASEAN. It will be part of the IORA renovation process but is
unlikely to be one of its drivers. As stated by Indonesian analyst Ristian
Atrinadi Supriyanto, “it is hard to tell what Indonesia’s Indian Ocean
‘identity’ is, if at all, especially in the maritime concept that President
Widodo is trying to promote” (Bateman et al., 2017).
Australia’s Second Sea

Australia is, by every standard, a major Indian Ocean littoral state. It
has the longest coastline and the largest area of maritime jurisdiction of
any country in the region. However, seen from Canberra, the Pacific
has always dominated the horizon. Until the early 2000s, Australia’s
investment into security cooperation in the Indian Ocean was modest.
Asia, and China in particular, has been the source of Australia’s pros-
perity while the US remains its main security guarantor. But as stated in
its 2016 Defence White Paper, the perception of a shifting balance of
power which may confront Australia with a situation where it would have
to choose between its prosperity and its security is leading the country
to develop new partnerships in the Indian Ocean. Despite the magnitude
of its economic and strategic interests, the Indian Ocean has traditionally
been a concern of secondary importance for Australian decision makers.
In their 2010 report on the Indian Ocean, Australian scholars Sam
Bateman and Anthony Bergin call it “Australia’s ocean of neglect”
(Bateman & Bergin, 2010), by comparison to the Pacific Ocean,
including Southeast Asia, or even the Antarctica and Southern Ocean
where it has a unified policy approach. Despite extensive strategic and
economic interests in the region—the East Indian Ocean is a primary
operating environment for the Australian Defence Force—Australia is part
of only a few and weak multilateral arrangements. As a result, Australia
never had a comprehensive strategy for the Indian Ocean.
This situation can be explained by both the weakness of the existing
security architecture in the Indian Ocean and Australia’s geographic situ-
ation. If a large part of Australian exports, in particular in the resource
sector, is originating from the western side of the country, the distance
with its western neighbours has for a long time protected the main-
land from the very few existing traditional security threats emanating
from the IOR. More importantly, however, Australia relied mostly on the
dominance of its US ally in the region for its maritime security.
History, limited security risk exposure and confidence in the US
alliance led Australia to gradually diminish its investment in the security of
most of the Indian Ocean, with the relative exception of its eastern part.
As observed by Australian scholar David Brewster, “until the late 1980s,
the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) did not homeport any major warship
on the western side of the Australian continent” (Brewster, 2019).
The structure of Australia’s exports also explains the relative lack of
interest for the Indian Ocean. A high proportion of the country’s exports
cross the Indian Ocean through the Southeast Asia archipelago which
makes the security of the latter a vital Australian interest, but a very
small part of it is destined for Indian Ocean states other than Southeast
Asia. In 2015–2016, only 5% of the country’s total seaborne exports in
volume and 9% in value, ended up in South Asia, the Middle-East or
Africa. Moreover, it does import only a fraction of its oil needs directly.
Most come in the form of refined products and are imported from East
Asia (Brewster, 2019). This trend combined with concerns about illegal
migration by sea, from and through Southeast Asia, as well as terrorism,
have led to growing attention from Australian decision makers on the
northeast of the Indian Ocean where the Australian bases of the Cocos
(Keeling) and Christmas islands are located (Bergin).
Australia’s vision of the Indian Ocean has evolved over the past few
years to become a function of its definition of the Indo-Pacific. Its 2017
Foreign Policy White Paper defines it as the “region ranging from the
eastern Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean connected by Southeast Asia,
including India, North Asia and the United States” (Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade [Australia], 2017).4 China’s but also Japan’s
growing presence in the Indian Ocean, are changing the way Australians
are thinking about the broader region, but also the way they think of the
4 This definition has been criticized by Australian analyst David Brewster on the ground
that “it provided a conceptual underpinning for the gradual reduction of naval resources
committed in the Persian Gulf /western Indian Ocean and their reallocation close to
home”, whereas strategic competition with China is now happening in the western half
of the Indian Ocean as much as in the east.
Indian Ocean within the Indo-Pacific. But if the latter does now include
India, and its eastern neighbours, the focus of the Australian government
is still on the northeast side of the Indian Ocean. Australian forces have
indeed trained with their Indian Ocean counterparts in India, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore (Medcalf, 2020) while relations with
Indonesia have also considerably improved.
This orientation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future and
has recently been validated by the “2020 Defence Strategic Update”
which stated that “defence planning will focus on Australia’s immediate
region: ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime
and mainland South East Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South West
Pacific” (Department of Defence [Australia], 2020). Canberra has not
yet formulated a strategy for the entire Indian Ocean and cannot ignore
it either. But Australia’s own involvement in regional security will be an
incremental process.
Looking West: Australia’s Quest for Partnerships in the Indian Ocean

Australian authorities appear aware that if their Indian Ocean capabilities
remain limited, they benefit from the multiplier effect of partnerships.
Three specific relationships in Australia’s foreign policy and maritime
cooperation, respectively, with India, Indonesia and France, need to be
examined in this context. All three relationships have experienced an
accelerated development in the past decade.
Relations with Indonesia have gone a long way since the early 2000s.
For a long time, Australia saw Indonesia as a potential strategic liability,
“a source of threats that could come ‘from or through’ Indonesia, thus
posing a risk for Australia’s security” (Laksmana, 2018). This was not
seen as an impediment for cooperation and Australia soon engaged its
northern neighbour in capacity building, including in naval affairs. The
two countries have been conducting regular joint naval exercises since
1972.
But although Australia and Indonesia share one of the longest maritime
boundaries in the world, it is only in the 2016 Defence White Paper that
the importance of a shared maritime domain was officially recognized.
Australia welcomed Indonesia’s increased focus on maritime affairs and
announced that it would seek greater bilateral cooperation with regards
to maritime security activities (Department of Defence [Australia], 2016).
In February 2017, Foreign Ministers Julie Bishop and Retno Marsudi
signed the “Joint Declaration on Maritime Cooperation”, by which their

respective governments committed to develop a series of maritime safety
and security activities and to “work together to strengthen the maritime
security architecture […] including sharing of information relevant to
the maintenance of maritime security” (Department of Foreign Affairs &
Trade, 2017). A year later, in March 2018 the two countries signed the
“Maritime Cooperation Plan of Action” implementing the 2017 Joint
Declaration, including some 85 separate activities (Department of Foreign
Affairs & Trade, 2018).
Although Australia expected a greater role for Indonesia in the
maritime security field, the Indonesian Navy is unlikely to project itself
further in the Indian Ocean. Capabilities remain limited and despite
Widodo’s aspiration to Indonesia becoming a maritime power, the coun-
try’s strategic culture remains very inward looking. Moreover, Indonesia
is still very ambivalent vis-à-vis China which it sees as a foe in the South
China Sea where Beijing is constantly encroaching on its EEZ, but from
which it does receive substantial investments. Chinese pressures combined
with the relatively new trilateral cooperation between Australia, India
and Indonesia could however bring some change in Indonesia’s posture
vis-à-vis the Indian Ocean.
Similarly, defence and security cooperation between Australia and India
has considerably improved since the late 2000s, as a consequence of
China’s rise and behaviour. However, strategic convergence did not
immediately translate into an active partnership. The China factor was
deeply ambivalent in the development of the relationship. It was both a
driver of the bilateral rapprochement and its main impediment. According
to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Australia withdrew
from the initial Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with India, Japan and
the US, in 2007, because of the potential adverse entanglement it may
have created with regards to China, even if he also blamed the lack of
enthusiasm of India and Japan (Rudd, 2019).
A decade later, the strategic circumstances of the region changed
profoundly, but India this time rejected Australia’s participation in the
Malabar exercise by fear of pushing India into an excessively defensive
posture. Moreover, if China’s impact on the regional strategic environ-
ment created a convergence of Australia’s and India’s security interests,
progress with New Delhi in security matters remained limited, as long as
India perceived Australia’s economic dependence as dominating any other
concerns in Canberra’s relationship with Beijing.
The 2009 Australian Defence White Paper was the first official docu-
ment to underline the growing strategic significance of the Indian Ocean
as well as its prospective importance for Australia, stating that “over the
period to 2030, the Indian Ocean will join the Pacific Ocean in terms of
its centrality to [Australia’s] maritime and defence planning” (Depart-
ment of Defence [Australia], 2009). Expressing concerns “about the
emergence of a security environment dominated by any regional power,
or powers, not committed to the same shared goals” (Department of
Defence [Australia], 2009), the document underlined the importance of
India for Australia and the need for the two countries to enhance maritime
security cooperation in the Indian Ocean.
But if the need to develop defence relationship with India was reit-
erated in the 2013 Defence White Paper, it was still a relatively distant
prospect at the time. However, on 12 November of the same year, the
two countries signed a joint declaration stating that they would work
on “developing an action plan with specific measures to advance security
cooperation”, including on maritime security (Ministry of External Affairs
[India], 2009). The Framework for Security Cooperation between the
two countries was signed a year later (Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade, 2014). Australia’s weak naval involvement in the Indian Ocean, as
well as persisting mistrust, continued to slow down the development of
naval cooperation. But AUSINDEX, a major biennial naval bilateral exer-
cise was initiated in 2015 and kept growing in sophistication afterwards.5
The two countries also made significant progress in intelligence sharing.
Shortly afterwards, the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper recognized India
as a country of first-order importance for Australia.
The initiative was Australia’s all along the process and it took Chinese
interference in Australian affairs and pressures on both Australia and
India, to convince the two countries to overcome their inhibitions about
security cooperation. The January 2019 address to the Raisina Dialogue
in New Delhi by Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, was the first
step towards greater Australian involvement in the Indian Ocean (Payne,
2019). Welcoming India’s leadership in the Indian Ocean, and stressing
5 In April 2019, the third iteration of AUSINDEX was an anti-submarine warfare

exercise and included maritime patrols and reconnaissance aircrafts. On the Australian side,
HMA Ships Canberra, Success, Newcastle, and Parrametta, supported by the submarine
HAMS Collins and a Royal Australian Air Force P8-A Oseidon maritime patrol and
reconnaissance aircraft were involved.
the commonality of strategic and sub-strategic interests of the two coun-

tries in the Indian Ocean, Payne announced the substance as well as the
principle of a strategic partnership that would signed a year later, along
a “Joint declaration on a Shared Vision for Maritime Cooperation in the
Indo-Pacific”, during Australia’s Prime Minister’s visit to India, in June
2020 (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2020b). But if the coop-
eration between Australia and India seems to be growing at a faster pace,
it is likely to remain limited to the areas where both have a common
interest: The western part of Southeast Asia, including the Bay of Bengal.
Australia’s partnership with France should also be examined in the
context of Australia’s evolution vis-à-vis the Indian Ocean. For a long
time, Australia perceived France as an outside power while French nuclear
tests in the Pacific until 1996 and its opposition to the Kanak aspiration
for independence in New Caledonia created a distance between the two
countries. The termination of these tests as well as the Matignon and
Noumea accords, signed respectively in 1988 and 1998, and their follow
up, paved the way for a warmer relationship (Carroll & Ell, 2017).
As detailed in Chapter 5, French policy towards the region evolved
significantly in recent years and France looked at Australia as a construc-
tive partner and a fellow status quo power in the Pacific. Australia’s 2016
Defence White Paper mentioned France as one of its partner countries
along with Japan, New Zealand and, of course, the US (Department
of Defence [Australia], 2016). Initially, Australia’s decision to award the
contract to build its future submarines to a French consortium Naval
Group, in 2016 underlined the quality of that strategic relationship.
If cooperation in the Pacific Ocean was a more important driver of
the two countries’ rapprochement than their common interests in the
Indian Ocean where common interests are real. Cooperation in the area
remains partly but has been defined in May 2018 in the vision statement
of the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and President Emmanuel
Macron. The two leaders committed to “strengthening the Indian Ocean
region’s architecture and enhancing regional collaboration on shared
security and other challenges; cooperating closely and with like-minded
partners to bolster regional maritime security; involving other strategic
partners more broadly in the growing cooperation between France and
Australia, including through trilateral and other high-level dialogues”
(Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [Australia], 2018). However,
the decision by Canberra to put an abrupt end to these arms sales as a
result of the newly signed alliance with the US and the UK evidenced the
limits of the French–Australian partnership.
Conclusion: The Drifting Insecurities

of the Indian Ocean Eastern Shores?
China’s push towards the Indian Ocean, as well as the growing competi-
tion between Beijing and Washington, have opened an era of uncertainty
on the Eastern shores of the Indian Ocean. All Indian Ocean littoral
states, including Australia, are compelled to change their posture because
of Chinese assertiveness no longer limited to the Pacific.
The position of relative equidistance between the two superpowers that
most ASEAN littoral states of the Indian Ocean, have been and are trying
to maintain is increasingly unsustainable because of China’s claims and
aggressivity in the South China Sea, and also because of its willingness
to project power beyond the Malacca Strait. Australia, which tradition-
ally looked at the Pacific as its main source of insecurity is reassessing its
involvement as well in the Indian Ocean.
The latter is not (yet) seen as a source of actual insecurity but already a
cause for concerns. All states are already looking for signs of reassurance
against such a possibility. This quest has taken two forms. ASEAN states
have gradually reinforced their own coordination, in the Malacca Strait
in particular, in order to prevent the need for great powers interventions
while Australia has, in the case of Indonesia and Malaysia, helped build
their capacities. At the same time, all states in the eastern Indian Ocean
have developed naval ties with India. These relationships do contribute
to the security of the vicinity of the Malacca Strait and the larger Bay of
Bengal. But they also constitute a balancing act on the part of the eastern
Indian Ocean states and are increasingly taking the form of minilateral
arrangements.
As mentioned earlier, this emergence of minilateral arrangements in
the Indian Ocean is a recent phenomenon and highlights the transition
that the region is currently experiencing. With the exception of the MSP,
these new formats, whether dialogues or operations, have developed since
the mid-2010s, against the backdrop of China’s push towards the Indian
Ocean and the perception of a growing US unpredictability. At the end
of the Cold War, many in the Indian Ocean did fear the emergence of a
strategic vacuum. Although partial, this vacuum took 40 years to be filled
up by the sudden (but still nascent) military and the massive economic
presence of China. Yet, ASEAN and Australia are only beginning to react
to it.
Indonesia entertains a trilateral dialogue with India and Australia since
2018, while the latter holds such meetings with Japan and India since
2015 (Rajagopalan, 2017), and, since September 2020, with India and
France (Grare, 43:4, 2020). But limited operational cooperation is devel-
oping as well. In 2019, India, Singapore and Thailand initiated the first
SITMEX exercise in the Andaman Sea.
Interestingly, the need to engage the states bordering the funnels
leading into the Malacca Strait, including Thailand and India, had been
underlined by the MSP participating states as early as 2005. However, the
first SITMEX was announced only in 2018 at the Shangri-La Dialogue
by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Moreover, among the MSP
participating states, only Singapore did develop such exercises, based on
its existing bilateral naval cooperation with India and Thailand.
These new formats are a tangible demonstration of intra-Asian security
networking. They emerge as the logical development of bilateral relations
and try to identify strengths likely to confer the regional architecture some
niche capabilities. As such they reflect the paradox of regional integration
in the IOR: they signal both regional fragmentation, with the weakness
and insufficiencies of the existing architecture, and the ongoing initiatives
to flesh out this very architecture.
But they are also symptomatic of a slow and perhaps inevitable drift
of Eastern Indian Ocean countries into the India–China rivalry. With
the exception of the SMP, which has its own specific purpose, India is
central to every minilateral arrangement affecting Australia, as well as
Southeast Asian states (Parameswaran, 2019). True, balancing policies are
not incompatible with the search for relative neutrality. But most of the
new formats emerged as a result of growing tensions between China and
Australia on the one side, between China and ASEAN member states,
while border tensions between India and China soon translated into lethal
skirmishes.
This dynamic changed the meaning of even pre-existing relations
with India. If trilateral dialogues or exercises were not necessarily signs
of hostility towards China they were unquestionably political signals to
Beijing as much as a search for reassurance. They ultimately meant that
the quest for a balanced Asia could no longer be looked for exclusively
through good relations with China. If the Eastern Indian Ocean states
are still trying to protect themselves from the consequences of the global
(US–China) and regional (India–China) rivalries, they are also, slowly but
irresistibly projecting their own insecurities into the Indian Ocean.
The complete operationalization of these new formats is likely to be at
best an incremental process. At a general level, they all aim at developing
“a more networked architecture involving a range of often overlapping
minilateral arrangements and consultative mechanisms” (Rajagopalan,
2020). They are indeed symptomatic of the volatile strategic landscape in
the Indian Ocean and the uncertainties implied by the current evolution.
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CHAPTER 8
Indian Ocean Africa, from Mere Stakeholder

to Future Power Broker?
Of all the regions or subregions which constitute the littoral of the Indian
Ocean, the African shores are perhaps the least considered, in the strategic
literature. In his 1993 “Géostratégie de l’océan Indien” (Geo-strategy of
the Indian Ocean), French historian Hervé Couteau-Bégarie, for example,
relegated these shores to “the status of peripheral area” (Couteau Bégarie,
1993). More recently, American analyst Anthony Cordesman wrote: “The
region is of importance largely as a limited market and the source of some
critical mineral and similar exports” (Cordesman, 2016).
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, and more
importantly since the launching of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) and the various declinations of the Indo-Pacific strategy, this situa-
tion is changing. Indian Ocean Africa1 has become the location and the
prize of a renewed power game. China and India, for example, have joined
more traditional European players and become major economic actors
in Africa (Lafargue, 2:222, 2007). They compete for the building of
transport—in particular maritime—and infrastructure. But Russia, Saudi
1 For the purpose of this chapter, we consider Indian Ocean Africa to include the
littoral states of Eastern and Southern states, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania,
Mozambique and South Africa—which dynamics could not be understood without consid-
ering the hinterland as well (Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi)—and the four sovereign
island states of Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles, the two French overseas
departments of Mayotte and Reunion, as well as the Chagos, still a British colony.

Switzerland AG 2022
Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Israel and Egypt are
now also competing for influence there (Inter-Agency Analysts Network,
2017). The question is therefore whether Eastern and Southern Indian
Ocean African states will have the ability to use the competition of the
regional stakeholders as leverage for their own benefit, despite their weak
naval capabilities, with the exception of South Africa.
Indian Ocean Africa is a politically and economically diverse region.
Some littoral states of Africa are indeed rich in natural resources, which
they need to export to the rest of the developed and the developing
economies. East Africa is projected to have the fastest growth of the
entire African continent in the coming years despite the recession caused
by the Covid-19 crisis (African Development Bank, 2021). Southern
Africa is lagging behind despite the importance of South Africa as a
regional economic engine. Despite being limited in size, some Island
states—Mauritius and Seychelles in particular—play a vital regional role
as financial hubs. Therefore, all Indian Ocean African countries have
maritime interests, which can only grow as the development of these
countries keeps growing. Operational access to the Indian Ocean is essen-
tial to unlocking their economic potential. Maritime access should give
them a major strategic advantage for trade and diplomacy.
However, the construction of maritime transport infrastructure is
largely in the hands of foreign powers while very few Indian Ocean
African states can enforce their sovereignty over their own territorial
waters. Instead, according to UNDP Economist Raymond Gilpin, “the
maritime domain is […] a source of insecurity that affects the conti-
nent’s stability. Piracy, narcotics trafficking, arm smuggling and other
transnational threats all thrive in Africa’s maritime space, undercutting
government authority and investor confidence” (Gilpin, 2016a). Yet, due
to a lack of awareness, political will and resources, national security and
economic policies rarely emphasize maritime security. On the strategic
front, none of the Indian Ocean African states—with perhaps the excep-
tion of South Africa due to its role in the protection of the Cape maritime
route—is a significant actor.
Whether African countries can become regional players and under
which terms remains therefore an open question. Analysed through a
purely military prism, such a prospect is limited. Apart from South Africa,
East African countries are not maritime powers and unlikely to become
so in the foreseeable future. Their governance is often poor and secu-
rity concerns are dominated by internal stability, a situation which could
8 INDIAN OCEAN AFRICA, FROM MERE STAKEHOLDER … 181
worsen as the region is particularly vulnerable to disruption generated by

climate change: rising sea levels could indeed lead to substantial losses of
arable land, potentially further increasing instability.
This trend coexists with a growing connection between the regional
actors and the emergence of new integration blocs based on common
economic policies and the promotion of intra-regional trade (EAC,
SADC, COMESA). Moreover, despite the persistence of fragilities (South
Sudan, Somalia), it is the relative stabilization of conflict-ridden countries
such as Burundi, Rwanda or Mozambique which makes today the devel-
opment of important infrastructure projects possible (Fouéré & Maupeu,
1:253, 2015). However, positive or negative regional dynamics are inward
looking. Regional actors are concerned not so much about projecting
power than about preventing any one of them from becoming a regional
hegemon.
In such a context, whether Indian Ocean African states will have the
capacity to facilitate or upset external powers’ plans for the region and
become the real power brokers of their own future remains to be seen.
There was for a long time a quasi-consensus in the entire Indian Ocean
rim on the need to keep external powers out of the region. This consensus
is gradually disappearing with the perspectives offered by China’s BRI.
Yet the potential debt trap accompanying Chinese investments could also
be the downside of otherwise seductive—although often economically
unsustainable—projects. The latter creates new dependencies which are
already generating some pushback. True China’s rivalry with India and
with several Western countries may provide some alternatives. But the
capacity and willingness of the latter to deliver remains uncertain as well
as the ability of East African States to leverage both sides for their own
benefits. Moreover, Indian Ocean Africa is not a united entity and one
specific foreign presence in one country is not always compensated by the
presence of its competitor in another one.
Based on this background, the chapter examines the specific role of
Indian Ocean African states in the overall regional dynamics. It assesses
recent macroeconomic developments in the region. It does look in partic-
ular at the various infrastructure projects that have been proposed or
implemented by the regional stakeholders as well as the power play
dynamic which is expressed through them. It also assesses the emerging
regional maritime security architecture and through specific examples, the
objectives, strategies and naval capabilities of the Indian Ocean African
countries in order to measure the objective role of Africa in shaping the

“new Indian Ocean”.
The chapter argues that overall, Indian Ocean African states can and
will be opportunistic. Their sovereignty allows them to increase the cost of
their cooperation by playing the various stakeholders against one another.
But their capabilities, military or otherwise, are too limited for them to
influence the nature of the game or turn it to their advantage. Eventually,
sovereignty itself is a function of the nature of the game: It exists only to
the extent that the competing powers neutralize each other and it could
disappear or get considerably eroded if one of them were to become hege-
monic. The current situation, marked by an emerging multipolar Indian
Ocean, is therefore for many of them the best possible situation. But as
we have documented all along the book this is a highly unstable one and
African states have no way of tilting the balance in one way or the other
according to their best interest.
A New East and Southern Africa?

Of the subregions which constitute Indian Ocean Africa, Eastern Africa
is certainly one of the most politically volatile regions in the world. From
the Red Sea to the gates of Southern Africa, civil and inter-states wars as
well as the slow disintegration of some states have effectively prevented
the economic and political integration of the region. But it is also char-
acterized by a diversity of situations. Somalia, a state without a state but
with thousands of refugees, remains problematic, but Kenya, on the other
end of the spectrum, is the economic engine of the region.
East African states are non-resource-intensive economies. As a result,
the region has benefitted, since 2014, from the downturn in commodity
prices. Growth rates averaged 5.82% between 2010 and 2018 (African
Development Bank, 2019), far ahead of North, Central, West and
Southern Africa. A new Eastern Africa is gradually emerging. Coun-
tries like Burundi, Rwanda, and, to some extent, Mozambique have
now stabilized, facilitating interactions within the vast African hinter-
land. Although new forms of authoritarianism have emerged, middle
classes have grown significantly in the region, generating new business
prospects and, consequently, increased international interest. East African
states have indeed grown stronger over the past several years (Inter-
Agency Regional Analysts Network, 2017). By contrast, Southern Africa
is economically far less dynamic than the adjacent sub-region. It is one
of the slowest growing regions. Between 2010 and 2018, growth rates
averaged 1.78% (African Development Bank, 2019).
However, both Eastern and Southern Africa suffer from insufficient
infrastructure development. According to the African Development Bank,
for example, East Africa has serviceable road networks but poor condi-
tions and long distances cause high transportation costs (African Devel-
opment Bank, 2018b). Southern Africa suffers from similar deficits. Both
lack “more coordinated and robust infrastructure corridors such as water,
ports […] and rail” (African Development Bank, 2018b). Yet Eastern
and Southern Africa are well endowed with ports on the Indian Ocean.
Mombasa, Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam, Maputo, Nacala, Beira, Durban, Cape
Town Port Elizabeth and East London are all important Eastern and
Southern African gateways to global trade, serving two main corridors:
A Northern Corridor in East Africa, running from the port of Mombasa
via Nairobi to Kampala, with extensions to the Democratic Republic
of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi; A North–South Corridor in Southern
Africa, linking Zambia and the Southeast Democratic Republic of Congo
to the sub-region and overseas markets through Dar-es-Salaam, Walvis
Bay, Beira and Durban (Kahyarara & Simon, 2018). It is both an intrare-
gional trade route between Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South
Africa and a link to the port of Durban.
Overall. however, the transport chain remains fragmented, uncoordi-
nated and inefficient. This has in turn generated the need and allowed for
the development of major infrastructure projects which are all intended
to contribute to regional integration (Fouéré & Maupeu, 1:253, 2015).
This is where the new power game is being played, where China, India,
Japan, the UAE and European countries are all competing for contracts.
Although major stakeholders, Eastern and Southern African states are
only secondary players.
African Indian Ocean and Maritime Insecurity:

Maritime Threats as Geostrategic Opportunities
This situation is further reinforced by the lack of control of African Indian
Ocean states on their maritime space. Piracy, terrorism, drug and human
trafficking, smuggling of all kinds are well-documented phenomena. But
the debate on maritime insecurity off the African coasts of the Indian
Ocean goes beyond the simple enumeration of the threats African Indian
Ocean states regularly meet.
The reasons why these threats reached such a level at the turn of the
century need to be examined. The piracy surge in the Horn of Africa
was, for example, largely the result of the political instability and violence
which, in Somalia, followed the fall of the Syed Barre regime in 1991.
This subsequently led to the collapse of the Somalian state and the Tran-
sitional Federal Government (TFG), installed in 2003, was never able to
establish its authority beyond Mogadishu. Trawlers from Asia and Europe
soon took advantage of the government’s weakness to increase poaching
in Somalia’s territorial waters. Inter-clan rivalries soon led to the creation
of three de facto autonomous or semi-autonomous entities: Somaliland
in the north, Puntland in the east and the region controlled by the TFG
in the south which generated different types of reactions vis-à-vis foreign
poachers: The TFG controlled region did little; Somaliland reacted by
enhancing law enforcement and community policing; Puntland engaged
foreign private military firms.
Soon, however, the latter’s attempt led to the emergence of naval
groups which quickly realized that “apprehended vessels paid lucrative
‘fine’” (Gilpin, 2016b). The number of hijackings of ships quickly grew
and became an industry of its own. Sophistication and range increased
in the second half of the 2000s. From single skiffs, operations expanded
to cooperative skiffs to skiff services by motherships on the high seas.
This in turn allowed pirates to expand their operations in the Gulf of
Aden in 2005 and almost to India in 2011, transforming throughout that
process an East African problem into an issue of global concern. Other
forms of maritime crime (traffic of narcotics, small arms and people)
increased in parallel (Gilpin, 2016b). By 2011, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania
and Mozambique also recorded some form of attack in their maritime
domain. Al Shahab and other terrorist groups started spreading insecurity
from sea to land, undermining transport routes (Mbugua & Mwachinalo,
2017). Eventually, operations led by international naval forces (CTF 151,
Atalanta) led to a decline of piracy in the following years.
Follow the Fish: IUU and Over-Fishing as Strategies

State collapse and political instability offer only a partial story of the
problem. If they do account for the initial weak or nonexistent answer
from Somalian security forces, they do not explain why locals suddenly
exponentially turned to piracy. In this perspective, illegal, unreported
and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) deserves a specific examina-

tion. It cannot be dissociated from other forms of maritime criminality
and, as demonstrated by the Somalian case, it has occasionally been a
major reason for the development of piracy. It is nevertheless a specific
phenomenon. IUU fishing is a comprehensive concept. It includes fishing
without a licence, fishing in protected areas, using banned fishing gear
that is destructive to the fisheries sector, catching beyond limits.
Highly subsidized fleets of thousands of foreign fishing vessels, from
countries where fish stocks are depleted, ply African waters every year,
including on the Indian Ocean facade of Africa, many of these, often ille-
gally. According to analyst André Standing, “in Africa the E.U. pays up
to 50% of the costs of E.U. access agreements on behalf of the fishing
fleet” (Standing, 2017). The Chinese government is behaving accord-
ingly and provides substantial subsidies, mostly in the form of cheaper
diesel (Mallory, 2016). According to Greenpeace, Chinese companies
misreport the size of their vessels by as much as 60%, thereby gaining
cheaper licences. This also enables them to dramatically increase their
catches beyond predicted levels as well as fish in areas reserved for smaller
vessels (Standing, 2017).
The illegal exploitation of African fisheries by foreign fishing compa-
nies not only deprives African governments of a highly valuable source of
revenue and proteins for their populations by depleting fish stocks but
it does exacerbate other sources of insecurity as well. In Somalia, for
example, piracy found its roots in the overfishing of Somali waters by
European and Asian fishing vessels (Hughes, 2011).2 The same weak or
absent governance which created the conditions for that sort of predation
was also ideal for the development of piracy which was initially a way for
local fishermen to compensate for their vanishing source of income before
becoming a matter of organized crime.
In a context of growing competition for the control of the Indian
Ocean, the issue takes an additional, strategic, significance. The fishing
industry is increasingly becoming a tool for China to exercise de facto
control over the Exclusive Economic Zones of African states. The
2 The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimated at
the time that around 700 foreign fishing vessels were engaged in unlicensed fishing in
Somali waters. Besides, the alleged dumping of hazardous waste by Swiss and Italian firms
following the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 was also blamed.
phenomenon is not specific to the Indian Ocean nor to its African shores,
but is particularly relevant in the area. Many countries have been directly
or indirectly involved in IUU Fishing but China is the only one to use its
flotillas of fishing vessels as instruments of its geostrategic ambitions.
One recent example illustrates the argument as well as the Chinese
methods: On 5 September 2018, China and Madagascar signed a frame-
work agreement for the development of the “Blue economy” on the
island. Although the official document was never published, some of
its clauses were made public. The US$ 2.7 billion ten-year agreement
included the construction of shipyards, the development of fishing, the
creation of aquaculture farms, the control of illegal and illegal fishing
and the creation of maritime training centres (Chesel & Hussenot-
Desenonges, 2019). Approximately 700 million dollars were to be
devoted over three years to the exploitation of fishery resources in Mala-
gasy territorial waters in return for Chinese investments. Nearly 330
Chinese trawlers had to be armed for this purpose for annual catches
estimated to be unofficially 130,000 tonnes. Signed two days before the
resignation of President Rajaonarimampianina, who had left to campaign,
the agreement quickly met with opposition from fishing communities,
scientists and, more broadly, from civil society (Caramel, 2018).
The implementation of this agreement would have almost doubled the
tonnage of catches taken annually in the Madagascan EEZ even though
Madagascar does not have the capacity allowing it to carry out real assess-
ments of its fish stocks. But its consequences would have gone much
further. Willingly or unwillingly, its depletion of the fish stocks would
have pushed local fishermen into adjacent EEZ of the scattered islands.
Following the presidential election of 2018, the agreement was
suspended by the new government. But the Chinese move illustrates
Beijing’s intentions. Besides grabbing the resources, China would have
acquired a decisive influence over Madagascar maritime affairs, pushing
moreover Malgache fishermen in adjacent EEZ and potentially exacer-
bating local territorial disputes, possibly with France at a time when the
competition for the control of the Mozambique strait is rising.
The Evolving Strategic Threats in Maritime Affairs and Their

Response
Indian Ocean African states did not participate in the maritime response
to piracy which emerged from 2006 onward. Combined Maritime Task
Force 150, set up in 2006 to combat terrorism, started targeting pirates as

well (American Forces Press Service, 2009). Combined Task Force 151,
or EU operation Atalanta, dedicated specifically to counter piracy, did
not include any significant African ships. This does not mean that African
states played no role in the subsequent reduction of piracy. Ethiopia’s and
Kenya’s military intervention on the ground in Somalia did contribute
significantly to reducing the piracy problem (Miyandazi, 2012). The
maritime security of the continent, though, was re-established thanks to
external actors. Among them, China engaged for the first time in an
operational mission outside of its claimed territorial waters. In December
2008, the navy of the People’s Republic of China (People’s Liberation
Army Navy, or PLAN) deployed a task force, made up of two guided
missile destroyers and a supply ship, to participate in international anti-
piracy operations off the coast of Somalia (Kaufman, 2009). Although
encouraged at the time by western powers, this engagement dramatically
changed the strategic dynamic in the Indian Ocean.
But of particular interest is the fact that in maritime affairs, the lines
between traditional and non-traditional security, military affairs and law
and order issues, are increasingly blurred. The security of the sea lanes
of communications is no longer limited to their protection against the
military of the enemy state. It does include their protection against non-
state actors, pirates or terrorists. The novelty resides less in the nature
of the threat—pirates have always been a threat to commercial ships and
maritime warfare for the control of the seas is as old as international poli-
tics—than in the fact that the response to the threat has become the space
where the rivalry takes place.
The blurring of the lines between strategic and non-strategic issues
should in theory facilitate African efforts to develop, over time, a greater
degree of strategic autonomy in maritime affairs. Although a military
threat on the sea lanes of communications cannot be dismissed, the power
dynamic is at play through the occupation of the cooperative space. But
the nature of the threat makes the reappropriation of their respective EEZ
by the African states of the Indian Ocean the key to their maritime future.
This reappropriation supposes both a normative framework and the exis-
tence of capabilities related to maritime domain surveillance (radars and
coast guard vessels) as well as small-scale economic and security cooper-
ation, which are both more affordable than a blue water navy and can
be developed cooperatively. Efforts in that direction over the past decade
have been significant. Even if maritime security is still a policy area under
development and remains insufficient to ensure Indian Ocean Africa a

real maritime autonomy, the region is progressively emerging out of sea
blindness.
A Burgeoning African Maritime

Security Architecture
Maritime security architecture is a novelty for Indian Ocean African States.
If Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa were part of the “core group states”
which, in March 1997, presided over the creation of the Indian Ocean
Rim Association for Regional Cooperation—later to become the Indian
Ocean Rim association (IORA) as it is known today—, it is only in
2013, during the Indian presidency of the organization, that maritime
safety and security became a core activity of its agenda. The upsurge
of maritime piracy in the western Indian Ocean after 2005 led African
decision makers to recognize the importance of the seas as a source of
political and economic insecurity. The signing of the “Code of Conduct
concerning the Repression of Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships
in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden”, also referred to as
the “Djibouti Code of Conduct”, on 29 January 2009 was the outcome
of this collective awakening. Africa was waking up to the importance of
maritime security.
On that day, representatives of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar,
Maldives, Seychelles, Somalia, the United Republic of Tanzania, Yemen,
Comoros, Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Saudi
Arabia, South Africa, Sudan and the UAE declared their intention to
cooperate in the repression of piracy and armed robbery against ships in a
manner consistent with international law (International Maritime Organi-
zation, 2009).3 The Code also provided a framework for communication
3 The Djibouti Code of Conduct, in its article 9, provided for: (a) the investigation,
arrest and prosecution of persons reasonably suspected of having committed acts of piracy
and armed robbery against ships, including those inciting or intentionally facilitating such
acts; (b) the interdiction and seizure of suspects ships and property on board such ships;
(c) the rescue of ships, persons and property subject to piracy and armed robbery and
the facilitation of proper care, treatment and repatriation of seafarers, fishermen, other
shipboard personnel and passengers subject to such acts, particularly those who have
been subjected to violence and (d) the conduct of shared operations—both among signa-
tory States and with navies from countries outside the region—such as nominating law
and cooperation. Of particular significance was piracy-related informa-

tion sharing which was to be implemented through a common network
established in 2011, and strategic partnerships with both UN agencies
and the EU for training and capacity building (International Maritime
Organization, 2015).4
By allowing the conduct of shared operations with navies from outside
the region, the code provided the basis for regional cooperation so far
limited or inexistent. This led to a substantial reduction of piracy acts in
the Western Indian Ocean, notably in the Horn of Africa, although other
factors played a role as well. Piracy is sometimes described as a land-based
problem with maritime symptoms but other sources of a more maritime
nature, such as over, or illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing fuel
piracy as well. The traffic of heroin over water also increased dramatically
in recent years in the East and Indian Ocean island States.
Soon, the Djibouti Code of Conduct proved insufficient and had to
be amended. A revised version, the “Jeddah Amendment to the Djibouti
Code of Conduct” was signed in January of that year. It considerably
expanded the scope of the code to include all acts of criminality in the
maritime environment, including illicit maritime activities such as illegal,
unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing illegal trade in wildlife, arms
trafficking, crude oil theft, smuggling and illegal dumping of toxic waste,
trafficking in narcotics and psychotropic substances as well as human traf-
ficking. All African coastal and island states did sign the revised code
(International Maritime Organization, 2015).
In January 2014 though, the African Union adopted the 2050 Africa’s
Integrated Maritime Security Strategy (2050 AIM Strategy), an Africa-
wide integrated maritime security strategy. Unlike the Djibouti Code of
Conduct which focussed exclusively on the Indian Ocean, the strategy
did take into account the totality of Africa’s maritime domain, including
the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, as well as Africa’s inland
waterways.
More importantly the 2050 AIM Strategy did put the sustain-
able development of the African Blue Economy at its core. It did
see the maritime space as a source of development and potential for
enforcement or other authorized officials to embark on patrol ships or aircraft of another

signatory.
4 Three information centers were established respectively in Mombasa (Kenya), Dar es
Salaam (Tanzania) and Sana’s (Yemen).
wealth creation, a way for Africa to use “its own resources to take its
rightful place in a multipolar, inter-reliant and more equitable world”
(African Union, 2012). Research and innovation, competitiveness, job
creation, international trade, maritime infrastructure, transport, informa-
tion, communication, technology and logistics were all stated objectives
of the strategy.
As a consequence, unlike the Djibouti Code of Conduct, whose initial
version focussed exclusively on piracy and armed robbery at sea, the
2050 AIM Strategy included other illicit activities at sea from the onset,
including IUU Fishing and overfishing as well as environmental crime. It
subsequently influenced the Jeddah Amendment to the Djibouti Code of
Conduct (African Union, 2012).
However, practical translations of these declarations of intent into
actual policies have proven limited or difficult at best. In Southern Africa,
following the rise of piracy in the Indian Ocean in the first decade of
the twenty-first century, the Southern African Development Commu-
nity (SADC)5 also adopted its own maritime security strategy during the
summit of Heads of States held in Luanda in August 2011 (Kornagay, 8:1,
2012).6 Based on two major components, military deterrence and intelli-
gence gathering, it was thought of as a tripartite cooperation between
South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania. However, it was designed,
implemented and paid for entirely by South Africa, and hardly reflected
any real maritime awareness or capabilities of the other members of SADC
(Borges-Coelho, 2013). In Eastern Africa, the East African Community
(EAC), which includes two coastal states, Kenya and Tanzania, is relying
essentially on external programmes including, on occasion, law enforce-
ment services offered by the international navies stationed at the Horn of
Africa (Hamad, 15:2, 2016).
5 Created in 1979 and headquartered in Gaborone (Botswana), the Southern African

Development Community (SADC) is a regional organization of Southern African countries
that works to promote economic cooperation and integration as well as political and
security among the member states. Its 16 member states are Angola, Botswana, Comoros,
Eswatini, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius,
Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
6 Interestingly though, the first reaction to external pressures on South Africa to
contribute to the emerging anti-piracy coalition was to demur into a retreat from engage-
ment. Its position evolved when the phenomenon escalated and started migrating towards
the Mozambique channel.
The Enduring Limitations

of African Naval Capabilities
Interestingly, African initiatives have been motivated by concerns about
sovereignty and security. The comprehensive approach adopted in 2050
AIM Strategy had been influenced by the thinking that an agenda
focussed exclusively on piracy and armed robbery at sea would be biased
in favour of the developed maritime states aiming at protecting their own
trading interests (Egede, 30:2, 2018). The development of an African
maritime security architecture for the Indian Ocean remains however
impeded by limited capabilities. Assertions of independence and the will-
ingness to protect sovereignty are hardly matched by capabilities. Except
for South Africa, navies of the continent have been and remain limited.
In 2002, in a strategic document entitled “Leadmark: The Navy’s
Strategy for 2020”, the Canadian Navy published typology ranking navies
from the world. Based on their investigation, the South African Navy
ranks first in the region and is considered a “medium regional force
projection navy”. These navies possessed the ability to project force into
the adjoining ocean basin. While they did have the capacity to exercise
these further afield, for whatever reason, they did not do so on a regular
basis.
The Kenyan navy falls under the category of “offshore territorial
defence navies” with relatively high levels of capability in defencive
(and constabulary) operations up to about 200 miles from their shores,
thanks to the sustainability offered by frigates or large corvette vessels
and (or) a capable submarine force. The navies of Eritrea, Mauritius
and Tanzania qualify as “constabulary navies”, meaning significant fleets
not intended to fight, but to act purely in a constabulary role. The
navies of the Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique, the Seychelles and
Djibouti are described as “token navies”, with some minimal capability,
often consisting of little more than a formal organizational structure
and a few coastal craft. These navies, the world’s smallest and weakest,
could not aspire to anything but the most limited constabulary function
(Directorate for Maritime Strategy [Canada], 2002).
The Prolongation of External Dependency

As a result, Indian Ocean Africa remains almost entirely dependent on
the external world for its own maritime security. African naval forces were
notably absent from the three naval operations that were established to
ensure maritime security off the Horn of Africa, the European’s Union
EUNAVFOR Operation Atalanta, NATO’s Operation Ocean SHIELD
and the Combined Maritime Task Force (CTF 151). The Seychelles were
the only African which contributed to the Combined Maritime Task Force
151.
Operation Copper is an anti-piracy operation launched by South Africa,
Mozambique and Tanzania in 2011 that has been regularly extended ever
since, with the exception of 2012 when the operation had to be stopped
due to its excessive drain of resources from the South African navy—in the
Mozambique Channel. It is the only fully African operation in the Indian
Ocean. It was moreover conducted exclusively by Pretoria, despite South
Africa’s best effort to mutualize the operation (DefenceWeb, 2018).
Individual states opt for bilateral agreements with extra-regional
powers such as the US, China, India or the EU. France—with which even
South Africa entertains maritime cooperation despite complex political
relationships—is a special case, as it claims to be a regional state because
of its presence in La Reunion, Mayotte and the scattered islands but is not
yet fully recognized as such by some African countries (see Chapter 5).
The irony is that the dependency of the African Indian Ocean states
on external powers for their own maritime security is a problem for the
latter as well, as they have to mobilize substantial parts of their own naval
resources to ensure the security of the sea lanes of communication. This
has led to a series of programmes for capacity building of various scope
and ambition, often conducted on a bilateral basis with few instances of
regional experiences.
The “MASE Program to promote Maritime Security in the Eastern
and Southern Africa and Indian Ocean Region”, funded by the EAU,
and which lasted from 2012 to 2020 is one such example. Its overall
objective was to enhance maritime security in the region and to create a
favourable environment for its economic development. More specifically
it intended to strengthen the capacity of the regional states and organi-
zations in the implementation of the Regional Strategy and Action Plan
against Piracy and for Maritime Security. It involved various development
initiatives, from vocational training to national and regional capacities in
legal matters, intelligence and regional coordination (European External
Action Service, 2016).
The Critical Maritime Routes of the Indian Ocean (CRIMARIO)
programme was another such example. Initiated and funded by the EU,
it did aim at strengthening maritime safety and security in the wider IO

region by supporting coastal countries in enhancing maritime situational
awareness (MSA) through web-based information sharing and incident
management networks, as well as interagency workshops, training and
capacity building (European External Action Service, 2016). At the end
of the CRIMARIO programme, in December 2019, the responsibility
was passed to the Indian Ocean Commission.
African Search for Maritime Strategic Autonomy

Indian Ocean Africa is therefore looking for its own strategic autonomy,
although in a paradoxical way. It does so through a normative effort and,
whenever possible, mutualization of its limited capacities. But capacity
building has to be conducted through international cooperation. Yet, it
is still at the early stage of the process and has therefore to navigate
through a set of constraints related to the model of developments for their
maritime capabilities as well as the identification of its potential partners.
Kenya and the Seychelles: Establishing Control Over Their Own Waters
With a coastline of 600 kms and an EEZ of some 142,000 km2 , Kenya
has suffered from the Somalian protracted crisis. The upsurge of maritime
piracy in the western Indian Ocean in the mid-2000 had significant nega-
tive economic consequences for Kenya. At its height, piracy did cost
the Kenyan shipping industry between US$ 300 million and US$ 400
million per annum. Between 2008 and 2012, cruise liner visits dropped
from 35 to zero (Otto, 2012). Moreover, it took ships 11 days to reach
the Middle-East from Mombasa, a distance that usually took four days,
involving additional costs of shipping.
Like most of its littoral neighbours, Kenya has also faced with other
maritime threats to its national security, such as small arms smuggling,
drug and human trafficking illegal fishing and trawling, as well as envi-
ronmental damages of various sources. All these developments illustrated
Kenya’s inability to police its own waters.
As a result, a series of institutional, legal and regulatory measures was
put in place. Kenyan policy makers engaged in a significant effort of
maritime security capacity building, including the installation of a radar
station operated by the Kenyan Navy and the procurement of high-speed
boats for patrolling littoral waters. Undertaken with the bilateral cooper-
ation of a series of external actors (Denmark, Norway, South Africa, the
United Kingdom and the United States), the effort focussed primarily
on building coastal patrol capability, enhancing the judicial capacities to
prosecute and imprison maritime criminal and training and equipment
provision to enhance Maritime Domain Awareness (SAFE SEAS, 2017).
However, Kenya keeps suffering from low Maritime Domain Aware-
ness (MDA), inadequate trained staff as well as from a lack of effective
equipment and low budget allocations for maritime security.
The Seychelles is another example of an African state trying to
re-establish control over its own waters through mutualisation and inter-
national cooperation. With 1.37 million square kilometres of seas (both
territorial waters and EEZ) and only 455 kms of land area and a popu-
lation of less than 100,000 inhabitants, the archipelago is particularly
vulnerable to any threat coming from the sea. In 2009, ten vessels were
attacked in Seychelles’ waters, leading to the loss of millions of dollars in
tourism and fisheries revenues, while trafficking of all kinds, in particular
narcotics, increased dramatically.
The country had to expand more resources on sea patrols. But aware
of their limited resources, decision makers prioritized regional and inter-
national cooperation in their security operations while amending its penal
code in order to enhance its capacity to prosecute pirates. The Seychelles
now hosts the headquarters of the E.U. funded Regional Center for Oper-
ation Coordination (RCOC) which coordinates the operational response
to maritime crimes in the western Indian Ocean. It is therefore part of a
network which includes Comoros, Djibouti, France (La Réunion), Kenya,
Madagascar, Mauritius, Somalia and Tanzania. India and Pakistan have
also cooperated with the Seychelles on maritime security concerns. The
Seychelles have also participated in Cutlass Express exercise, organized
by the United States to enhance law enforcement in the region with
the participation of the RCOC members, Australia, Canada, Denmark,
Djibouti, Mozambique, Somalia, the Netherlands and Turkey (Africa
Center for Strategic Studies, 2018).
South Africa: In Search of a Maritime Posture

In this context, South Africa deserves a particular examination as it epito-
mizes the difficulties of African Indian Ocean to take ownership of its own
maritime security, despite its requirements and potential. South Africa is
the second economy of Africa, second only to Nigeria and by far the
largest of Eastern and Southern Africa. Even though its growth rates
have substantially declined over the years, the structure of its economy,
still dominated by exports of minerals and energy resources, makes it
heavily dependent on the sea. Its navy is the only real blue water navy on
the African shores of the Indian Ocean and remains arguably, the most
capable naval force of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet its role in the securitization
of the Indian Ocean remains limited.
South Africa’s economy is one of the largest of the African continent
where it does compete with Nigeria, and at times, Egypt. It is consid-
ered a prominent emerging country and is a member of the BRICS with
Brazil, China, India and Russia. However, the South African economy is
in decline. This decline started in the 1970 with the first oil shock. But
25 years after the end of the apartheid regime and a successful transition
to democracy, South Africa’s economy is still in decline, despite the boom
of the export of raw materials in the mid-2000 (Pons-Vignon, 3(3):119,
2014).
The country experienced recessions in the mid-1990s and at the end
of the 2000s, while economic growth reached 5% for only three years.
It has since remained stagnant and was below 0.7% at the end of 2019
(International Monetary Fund, 2019). The reasons behind these lasting
difficulties of the South African economy fall beyond the scope of this
volume but it is interesting to observe that South Africa’s dependency to
raw material exports, one of its supposed weaknesses, is also a dependency
over the seas and as such should have turned South Africa into a maritime
power.
Historically, the South African Navy has been a maritime power and
was traditionally considered the “Guardian of the Cape Sea Route”. Its
actual role evolved over the years, linked to the reopening of the Suez
canal as well as the evolution of the Cold War in which South Africa
sided with the West. Successive budget cuts in the late 1970s, as well as
between 1990 and 1994, during the transitional period from apartheid to
democracy, reduced its role to no more than a coastal force.
The current South African Navy, which was integrated into the South
African National Defence Force (SANDF) soon after the democratic
transition, is the outcome of the ambitious and controversial Strategic
Defence Procurement (SDP) package announced in September 1999 by
the first post-apartheid government. The South African Navy received
four MEKO A200SAN frigates, commissioned in 2005, three type
209/1400 submarines, commissioned in 2004 and four Westland Super

Lynx maritime helicopters (Baker, 65:2, 2012). It is equipped as, and has
somehow recovered its status as a “counternavy” force, a navy structured
and equipped to give South Africa the ability to engage in battle against
an enemy naval force.
Even so, the contribution of the South African navy to African
maritime security has been very limited. Most of the shorter range assets
that would be best suited for the kind of challenges South Africa faces
(IUU fishing, trafficking; piracy), are obsolete and insufficient in number.
As a result, anti-piracy operations are conducted with (relatively) new but
inadequate equipment. Operation Copper, for example, involved only a
single frigate, carrying a contingent of special forces on station, at any one
time. This then implies additional costs at a time when the South Africa
navy is facing increasingly severe budgetary constraints, as well as a lack
of political will to intervene beyond its own home waters (Baker, 65:2,
2012). In this perspective, it is significant that South Africa did not partic-
ipate in the anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia but also that
South Africa has not always been able to complete its own operational
agenda with SADC in the past few years.
The South African Navy’s main role seems to be naval diplomacy, to
raise its regional and international profile. South Africa does cooperate
mostly with BRICS countries in naval matters and conducted the first-ever
trilateral exercise with China and Russia in November 2019 off the Cape
of Good Hope. Ironically very little is conducted with African countries.
South Africa, the bearer of the anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism flag,
cooperates mostly with the existing and emerging great maritime powers,
none of which are African, in particular in the Indian Ocean.
Africa and the “New” Indian Ocean:

Playing the India–China Rivalry
Maritime weaknesses make Eastern and Southern Africa particularly
vulnerable to the changing strategic dynamics in the Indian Ocean where
the United States is still the dominant actor but where new players are
competing to build their own areas of influence, the Sino-Indian rivalry
being clearly the structuring relationship in the strategic development of
the region. China is obviously one of the main drivers of change in the
regional strategic environment, where it does challenge established posi-
tions, especially India’s. The two countries are indeed fast emerging as
major maritime powers in the region.
But several new non-traditional players, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE
or Turkey, have also become active, projecting their own rivalries in the
Persian Gulf to the African shores as shown in Chapter 6. African states
are gradually waking up to the reality of this new power game. But
this means that they have to define their role in a multipolar Indian
Ocean where traditional major and middle powers (US, India, China,
Australia, France and Japan) still play the dominant part while smaller
non-traditional players increasingly make their presence felt.
This raises the question of the role of the Indian Ocean African states.
They chose projects based on their own interests. Overall they do have
agency in the process and they sometimes opposed the constructions of
foreign facilities on their territories.
China in East and Southern Africa

China’s presence in Africa is not a new phenomenon. It is intimately asso-
ciated with the independence process of the African states. From the 1955
Bandung conference until the 1990s, China posed as the anti-imperialist
herald and the leader of the developing world (Antil, 2018). However,
even though Beijing did support a few armed liberation movements
(Antil, 2018), weak economic capabilities considerably limited China’s
policies scope and impact. It is only in the 1990s, after the end of the
Cold War, and long after the beginning of China’s economic reforms, that
Beijing started defining the contours of a new Africa policy. Its economic
growth made it imperative for China to secure its supply of energy and
raw materials (China became a net importer of oil in 1993). Angola and
Sudan became two major energy suppliers. In the following two decades,
China became Africa’s largest single-country economic partner.
Many Eastern and Southern African leaders welcomed China’s BRI
promises to build much-needed connectivity infrastructures, which did
emancipate them from any conditionality associated to Western invest-
ments. Authoritarian governments found additional sources of satisfaction
in the procurement of Chinese security technologies allowing for tighter
control of their populations. East Africa became a critical ring in the
global supply chain over which Beijing is trying to assert control.
But the Chinese presence also involved serious risks for the prosperity
and sovereignty of some Eastern African states. The massive offloading
of excess capacities in the region distorted the local economies. In 2017,
Kenya’s cement exports to the region dropped by 40% due to the flood
of Chinese cement in the country. Soon China operated a diversion of
trade to its benefit. Tanzania’s import from China increased by 60% while
only by 4% from Kenya, traditionally one of its main providers. Local
manufacturers also accuse Chinese firms of importing labour from China.
In Tanzania, the construction of the port of Bagamoyo by the Chinese
was suspended in 2019 by President John Magufuli, who found the
conditions of the project unacceptable. They would have given China
control over the port, including on future investments, for 99 years, while
asking for guarantees from the Tanzanian government against any losses
during the project implementation as well as tax waivers.
But if the question of whether China in Africa is a win-win situation for
development or a new colonialism is still debated, some countries find it
beneficial to work with China, including in military matters. In November
2019, South Africa, China and Russia held their first-ever trilateral naval
exercise off the South African coast. The display of force close to the
Mozambique channel where power competition is increasing was prob-
ably aimed at Western states rather than at African neighbour states but it
also meant that South Africa was comfortable enough to cooperate with
China in military matters even though this was partly balanced by an equal
willingness to cooperate with India as well.
The Search for Balancers: India and Japan

If some African strongmen are seduced by the Chinese authoritarian
model of development, many African countries resemble India’s multi-
ethnic democracy, including the rights and poverty challenges it faces,
more so than China’s political authoritarianism. India can—in the words

of African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina—be “a devel-
oping beacon for the rest of the world”. Indeed, African leaders have tried
to use the India–China rivalry to their own benefit.
The Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) constitutes an interesting
example of the potentialities as well as the limits of this competition.
India initially tried to counter China’s growing influence in Indian Ocean
Africa through military cooperation only to realize that the latter alone
was unlikely to fulfil the expectations of these Indian Ocean African states
when China could offer similar training and assets. India could expect
to match China only if it was able to deliver in the field of infrastruc-
tures, something it could not do alone. In this perspective India–Japan
cooperation takes a special significance.
The concept of an AAGC was the outcome of the India–Japan dialogue
on Africa initiated in 2010, was announced in 2016 at a meeting of the
board of governors of the Africa Development Bank held in India. The
corridor was supposed to be built on four pillars (development and coop-
eration, quality infrastructure enhancement of skills and capacities and
people to people partnerships while its geographical focus included Africa,
India and South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania). The AAGC
differed from the BRI in fundamental ways. AAGC intended to promote
a broader spectrum of cooperation projects and programmes focussed on
the development of Africa’s human resources when the BRI concentrated
on infrastructure and check book diplomacy (Bathia, 2017).
In theory the AAGC provided an alternative development mechanism
on African territory. However, timing is the essence of the game. India
and Japan, both have longstanding ties with Africa, but they are relatively
latecomers in a game in which China has already shown some of its cards.
Irrespective of its intrinsic value, the AAGC is still a promise that African
leaders have to balance against the reality of Chinese achievements.
Domestic political antagonisms, more than strategic calculations, also
played a role in African choices. As narrated by analyst Neil Melvin from
the Stockholm-based SIPRI institute, India and the Seychelles agreed,
in 2015, to jointly develop a military facility on the Seychelles’ island of
Assumption, and deployed advanced maritime reconnaissance and surveil-
lance planes to the Seychelles in March 2016. In January 2018, the
agreement was updated to accommodate the following domestic opposi-
tion to the 2015 deal. India was allowed to build an airstrip and a jetty for
its naval forces on Assumption. But in June 2018, with growing domestic
opposition to the updates base agreement, the President of the Seychelles

announced that the country would not proceed with the development of
joint facilities with India and that it would instead build its own military
installation on Assumption Island. A few days later, however, the Indian
Prime Minister and the Seychellois President announced that they would
continue to cooperate on developing a naval base on Assumption Island
while keeping “each other’s interests” in mind.
Conclusion
In this new multipolar Indian Ocean, it is unclear whether Indian Ocean
Africa will be able to assert its own interests. Truly the on-going power
game in the Indian Ocean is opening up new possibilities. It offers a
chance to many Indian Ocean African states to acquire badly needed
infrastructure to exploit their economic potential more fully. Similarly,
in the security, in particular maritime security, domain they can benefit
from training and, at the margin, from some equipment. In that sense
they have reaped some benefits from the present situation.
But at the same time, they have too often been divided to play the
power competition to their own advantage. This competition among
themselves annihilates the potential benefits they could possibly get
out of the larger one. Internal divisions and/or the appropriation of
power by rent seeking elites, prevent the appropriation of the benefit of
international cooperation for the national interest.
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CHAPTER 9
Rethinking the Indian Ocean Security

Architecture
As this book evidenced, dynamics have been and are still shifting in
the Indian Ocean. If the development of substantial parts of the region
remains characterized by the permanent tension between the unity and
the fragmentation of the IOR, the area is no longer perceived as a mere
gateway between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
First, the rise of the Indo-Pacific concept in policy circles has a direct
consequence on the region as it elevates the profile of the Indian Ocean.
The China question and the consequent reconfiguration of regional poli-
cies are central to this evolution. But despite the convenient and rather
popular narrative of the last decade, the Indian Ocean has not turned into
center stage for the US–China global competition. In some ways, China’s
willingness to establish long term access in the area may resonate with
Soviet policies of the past. However, it is definitely following a different
path: it is charting its own course based on political and economic realities
of the twenty-first century.
Second, the book has also shown that the region can no longer be char-
acterized as a potential security vacuum. The regional dynamic fuelled by
China’s rise has been the cause of a new arms race in the Indian Ocean
and partly drove the emergence of new actors. Moreover, local states,
regional powers, and external players—whether the US, European, Asian
or Middle Eastern countries—have all increased their presence. This emer-
gence of new actors has generated a frantic search for new partnerships,

Switzerland AG 2022
locally and externally. Yet the latter should not be confused for a willing-
ness to look for alternatives to the US, which remains the sole regional
superpower.
Rather, this search for partnerships should be understood as both an
attempt to assuage US concerns regarding burden sharing and a desire to
diversify strategic options. It coexists moreover with a constant willing-
ness, not only to avoid confrontation with China but to even be perceived
as too confrontational vis-a-vis China. In this perspective each potential
new partnership is assessed through a cost and benefit assessment. But the
inflation of partnerships in the Indian Ocean does not automatically lead
to a more coherent regional security architecture.
Additionally, we tried as much as possible to cross all the different
perspectives on the Indian Ocean because of the multiplicity of initiatives
in that area. Local and external players still weigh their options in light
of the evolution of the US–China–India triangle, and as a result, ties are
not binding and do not equate mutual security commitments. They rather
reflect a trend that could be defined as competitive bilateralism and which
could in fact prevent the building or the strengthening of multilateral
mechanisms—such as IORA—to address future challenges in the region
as it brings with it capabilities incommensurate with the ones of most
local actors.
Indeed, the present situation in the Indian Ocean is not simply the late
substitution of China to the Soviet Union. Previous chapters have under-
lined how changes in the Indian Ocean are in many ways the consequence
of China’s rise but are also part of a broader geopolitical phenomenon.
This phenomenon cannot be summed up simply by the emergence of
some actors or the relative decline of others. It is also a qualitative change
involving a redefinition of the actors’ interests leading to new alignments
and relationships. But while past attempts to build a security architec-
ture in the Indian Ocean failed because of limited political, military, and
economic capacities, it is unclear whether the contemporary environment
might pave the way for a more credible framework.
Only a few pan-Indian Ocean organizations exist today and in the
case of several subregional organizations, their activities and member-
ship sometimes overlap with larger ones. In fact, they compete with one
another rather than cooperate. ASEAN, IORA, BIMSTEC and SADC
although not identical partly share similar objectives in the Indian Ocean
but hardly interact with one another. In the South-West of the Indian
9 RETHINKING THE INDIAN OCEAN SECURITY ARCHITECTURE 207
Ocean, the absence of cooperation between the Indian Ocean Commis-

sion (IOC) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), which share
a similar membership—all members of the IOC are members of IORA
and agenda, and whose headquarters in Mauritius are only a few hundred
metres away is symptomatic of this situation. This reflects the difficulty,
if not the quasi impossibility, to turn the Indian Ocean into a political
entity. This endeavour has for a long time been considered as futile. With
the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as the dominant structuring strategic
concept, it is now considered in a different perspective. The real challenge
is becoming the integration of the operational capacities of these organi-
zations into the larger strategic Indo-Pacific framework. Existing regional
rivalries still complicate matters, but are sometimes subsumed in higher
stakes cooperations with larger powers. The Indian Ocean regionalism is
still to be built but can neither be resumed to a simple addition of existing
subregional organizations nor to a subset of the Indo-Pacific but the latter
could in effect become the unifier of the region.
In that perspective, this concluding chapter will analyse the conse-
quences of this ongoing dynamics and their interactions for the Indian
Ocean region’ governance. It will examine the prospects for the building
of a comprehensive regional security architecture—as well as the institu-
tional shape it could or should take—and its articulation with the larger
strategic dynamic. Building on the previous chapters, it argues that the
crucial challenge for the future stability of the Indian Ocean is to mobilize
the economic and military capacities of the local and external stake-
holders and turn them into instruments of governance, instead of tools of
competition. It argues that the appropriate response to the Chinese chal-
lenge—or threat, depending on one’s perception—will not be found in
an open confrontation as many scenarios written by the US Department
of Defense tend to assume.
Beijing’s strategy with partners in the area aims to build economic
dependence and de facto political alignment. In fact, the success of
this regional policy benefits from the fragmentation of the IOR: the
more divided the countries are, the more likely China is to frame their
economic and diplomatic agendas. Therefore, responding to this Chinese
assertiveness should not rely on a risky confrontational strategy but
should reinforce multilateral mechanisms of regulation in the Indian
Ocean and an effort to develop a common Indian Ocean identity. In
other words, it would be unrealistic and dangerous to deny Chinese
ships access to the area but creating multiple diplomatic arrangements
driven by a common purpose—the political and economic stability of the

region—could alleviate the risks of future conflicts.
Ultimately the dynamics of the new Indian Ocean are leading to
the emergence of a multi-layered Indian Ocean architecture in which
regional organizations could become one of many different instruments
for multilateral cooperation. Meanwhile, the US would remain the ulti-
mate security guarantor, but in a posture characterized by the search
for indispensability rather than dominance. This American posture may
fuel the uncertainty of the local actors but it would insure the lasting
pre-eminence of Washington.
In between, a coalition of the middle powers, including both resident
and non-resident Indian Ocean countries, is gradually taking shape, acting
as a federating force of the local actors, while linking them up to the
larger strategic problem, i.e. the emergence of a China-led regional order.
External actors do remain the key to the future of the IOR but their
relative contribution is diminishing. In the process, the nature of Indian
Ocean regionalism is changing, moving away, even if in a very uneven
way, from post-colonial concerns to the reappropriation of the region.
This remains however an uncertain endeavour. The emerging trilat-
eral partnerships described in the previous chapters are all officially meant
to reinforce existing institutions. In reality, they complement as much as
they increase the capacity of these institutions. But it remains to be seen
whether the current and renewed interest of larger powers in regional
institutions will translate into consequential capacity building.
Eventually, the success or the failure of this endeavour will define the
ability of all littoral states to exercise their sovereign rights. But integrating
major powers such as the US and China into a regional governance frame-
work will also generate the risk of the latter being hijacked by the bipolar
competition. This can only be prevented by the ability of middle powers
of the IOR to shape this framework, either at the multilateral level or
through bilateral initiatives, while building stable relations with the US
and China. In practice, this balanced position makes the middle powers
of the IOR, the de facto core of potential future regional arrangements,
either formally or informally.
The Future of Regionalism in the Indian Ocean

As we have evidenced throughout the book, the push for regional institu-
tions dedicated to governance in the Indian Ocean is a new phenomenon.
Until today, there are relatively few multilateral initiatives in the Indian
Ocean Region that are specifically designed to facilitate maritime coop-
eration. IORA remains the only region-wide body designed to facilitate
regional dialogue at the government-to-government level but its member-
ship does not include all Indian Ocean littoral states. Meanwhile, IONS
is the only IOR-wide organization, charged specifically with maritime
security through exchanges between senior naval and maritime security
officials.
But IORA or IONS have often proven remarkably ineffective in tack-
ling maritime issues. The main challenge for these existing institutions is
that the impetus for cooperation in the Indian Ocean is dwarfed by the
increasing polarization of the region. In this perspective, China’s proposal
of a maritime silk road in the Indian Ocean has generated the fear that
Beijing’s regional ambitions may actually drive a new cycle of regionalism
in that domain. As a result, “regional institutions like the IORA […] face
the challenge of identifying security issues which have broad acceptance
in line with the political and operational sensitivities of the member coun-
tries” (Bateman, Gamage, & Chan, 2017). The broader the membership
the larger the problem is. Moreover, the fundamental tension between
state sovereignty and rules-based regionalism is made even more complex
by China’s growing presence.
The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA)

IORA, initially known as Indian Ocean Association for Regional Coop-
eration (IOR-ARC) emerged as a consequence of the Cold War and the
willingness to emulate in the area the regional multilateralism that had
proven successful in the Asia–Pacific region. As we consider the future
of governance in the region, it is worth coming back to the beginnings
of an organization like IORA. It was first suggested by South Africa
Foreign Minister, Pik Botha to his Indian Counterpart in 1993. It was
reiterated in 1995 by Nelson Mandela, during a visit to India where he
declared that “the natural urge of the facts of history and geography
(…) should broaden itself to include the concept of an Indian Ocean
Rim for socio-economic co-operation and other peaceful endeavours.
Recent changes in the international system demand that the countries
of the Indian Ocean shall become a single platform” (IORA, 2020).
Soon, South Africa, just out of apartheid and looking for opportuni-
ties to engage in global economic and political affairs, joined hands with
India. The latter was then still isolated despite its attempts to associate
itself to Southeast Asia through its Look-East Policy and its desire to
build regional cooperation mechanisms with five other Indian Ocean
littoral states (Australia, Kenya, Mauritius, Oman and Singapore). Two
meetings followed in 1995 and 1996, during which the objectives and
charter of the new organization were decided while the seven “core group
states” were joined by Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Tanzania,
Madagascar and Mozambique.1 The IOR-ARC was formally launched in
March 1997, with the objective of promoting trade cooperation through
trade liberalization, investment and economic cooperation.2
Open regionalism and minimum institutionalization were the main
characteristics of the new organization which operated through
consensus. The Council of Ministers, comprising the Foreign Ministers
of member states, was the highest decision-making body. However, the
Committee of Senior Officials, which did oversee the overall functioning
was the real governing body of a structure which also included two
working groups, one on trade and the other consisting of ambassadors
of the member states while an Indian Ocean Rim Academic group was
designed to be the intellectual arm of the organization. An Indian Ocean
Rim Business Forum was also created to represent the private sector
(Rumley & Doyle, 2015). In order to engage certain outside powers with
strong stakes in the region, five states (China, Egypt, France, Japan and
the UK) were initially invited as dialogue partners (Mitra, 2020).3
A decade later, however, Indian academic, G.V.C. Naidu, could state
that “it is hard to find an assessment of the Indian Ocean Associa-
tion for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) that is charitable, for there
is hardly anything that the Association can boast of by way of tangible
achievements in its decade and a half of existence” (Rumley & Doyle,
2015). Naidu’s comments reflected a shared perception of the IOR-
ARC’s under-achievement, which led to a renewed resolve to strengthen
the Association and its activities. IOR-ARC was renamed as IORA on 1
1 The initial 14 members soon became 19. At the time of writing the total membership
has reached 23, France having been accepted in December 2020.
2 It should be noted that Several of the initial 14 member states had been left out of
Southeast Asian Regional Trade Agreements (RTA).
3 France, which always contested the qualification of “outside power” itself because of
its presence in La Réunion, became à full member in December 2020.
November 2013 when Australia took over as the chair, with the intent
to turn the Association into a more effective, efficient and functional
organization.
The new phase culminated in March 2017 with the organization in
Jakarta of the first-ever IORA Leaders Summit. Dubbed as a landmark
of the renewal of the members’ commitment to IORA cooperation,
the Summit produced the so-called Jakarta Concord, a strategic vision
document which listed IORA main objectives (IORA, 2017b),4 accom-
panied by a Plan of action with its own set of priority areas and short,
medium and long-term initiatives (IORA, 2017b). The focus on security
issues, terrorism in particular, marked a departure from the tradition-
ally economy-centred agenda of the Association. For some observers, the
Jakarta IORA’s Leaders Summit signaled also the beginning of an Indian
Ocean maritime regionalism. Issues associated with the Indian Ocean
(maritime safety and security, fisheries management, disaster risk manage-
ment, tourism and blue economy) were central to the IORA project
(Islam, 38:2, April, 2017).
However maritime regionalism remains mostly aspirational in the
IORA context. The lack of institutional coherence, identity and resources
has been responsible for this state of affairs. For instance, the absence of a
common identity among the member states prevented the emergence of a
common narrative and there is no such thing as a shared vision underpin-
ning the IORA. Moreover, as stated by Singaporian analyst Kwa Chong
Guan, the disparities between the small states (Comoros, Mauritius and
the Seychelles), on the one side, and the large continental powers such as
India, Iran or Australia, India having a population of around 1.3 billion
when the Maldives’s is about 500,000—“make for very different visions
of what IORA is about” (Bateman et al., 2017). Three economies (i.e.
Australia, India and Indonesia) dominate the region and account for 63
percent of the total GDP of IORA (Islam, 38:2, April, 2017), while the
lack of economic complementarity inhibited the development of regional
4 The Jakarta Concord listed nine main objectives for IORA’s action in the region:
Promoting maritime security and safety; Enhancing trade and investment; Promoting
sustainable and responsible fisheries management and development; Enhancing disaster
risk management; Strengthening academic, science and technology cooperation; Fostering
tourism and cultural exchanges; Harnessing and developing cross cutting issues and
priority objectives; Broadening IORA’s external engagements; Strengthening IORA’s
institutions.
cooperation. Intra-regional trade increased, but mostly as a result of the

liberalization policies of its members, and not of IORA initiatives.
More importantly maritime law has constrained IORA’s agenda: the
United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) state that
littoral states have no legitimate claim beyond their national 12 miles
zone, and their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), thus limiting the scope
of actual maritime regionalism.
Finally, IORA itself is its own worst enemy as its decision-making
process constitutes an inhibiting factor. IORA is a consensus-based orga-
nization, which allows any state to block a decision not to its liking, and
de facto paralyzing the Association. Finally, the lack of resources, which
is often invoked as a major constraint “on the ability of member states
to participate in or to fund IORA activities” (Islam, 38:2, April, 2017)
reflects the weak capacity of the member states but also a lack of involve-
ment. All in all, the combination of weak resources and limited activities
has complicated the Association’s relationship with its dialogue partners,
but also opened room for their own competition for influence, even from
the margins.
The Creation of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium and the Quest
for a Naval Community
Besides the traditional reasons invoked to explain IORA’s shortcom-
ings, many observers also put the blame on its inefficiencies or on its
incomplete membership. The absence of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia (Islam,
38:2, April, 2017), and more generally the lack of inclusivity of the
organization, are supposedly, reasons for potential future deadlocks. But
membership in the other pan-Indian Ocean organization, the Indian
Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), even if limited to the navies of Indian
Ocean countries, tells a different story. Almost all resident countries of
the Indian Ocean with the exception of Somalia and the Comoros, but
including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Myanmar which are not IORA
members, are represented. Eight non-regional powers (China, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Madagascar, the Netherlands, Russia and Spain) have the
status of observer. Yet, inclusivity does not guarantee any more efficiency.
Since 2008, IONS has functioned as an open and inclusive forum
for the navies of the Indian Ocean to initiate discussion and, when-
ever possible, cooperation on regionally relevant maritime security issues.
Through IONS, its founder, the Indian Navy, intended to strengthen

its relations with the littoral states of the IOR, fulfilling its vision of a
rules-based and stable maritime order, while establishing the pillars of its
leadership to the region. But besides owning more responsibilities, some
analysts saw the creation of the IONS as a way for India to help coun-
terbalancing China’s growing presence in the region, in a context where
Delhi was not able to do so on its own.
As stated in its Charter, IONS aimed to achieve “a shared under-
standing of maritime security issues among the Indian Ocean littoral
navies, to strengthen the capability of all littoral nation states of the Indian
Ocean to address present and anticipated challenges to maritime secu-
rity, to establish a variety of multilateral maritime cooperative mechanisms
designed to mitigate maritime security concerns among Members, and
to develop interoperability in terms of doctrines and procedures, so as
to provide speedy, responsive and effective Humanitarian Assistance and
Disaster Relief (HADR) throughout the Indian Ocean Region” (Indian
Ocean Naval Symposium, January, 2016).
These objectives constitute a good measure of IONS achievements.
Views of local observers on these achievements vary greatly but usually
balance between lukewarm support and full disappointment. Unsurpris-
ingly, the lower the expectations are, the higher the satisfaction will be
as the first category of observers tend to look at IONS through its
symbolic dimensions. For instance, Pakistan’s assessment of the IONS
tends to be quite favourable. Islamabad sees it as “a robust interac-
tive forum for generating greater mutual understanding to the ultimate
benefit of the region and for brainstorming solutions to maritime issues
of common interest” (Singh Sawan, 2020). Indeed, Pakistani authorities
which refused to participate until 2014 do not expect more from IONS
than its own recognition as a naval regional actor. In reality, there has
been little evidence of cooperation inspired by IONS.
The initiative was originally meant to regulate maritime activities such
as Coordinated Patrols (CORPATS), Maritime Interdiction and Search
and Rescue operations and thus to advance a rules-based maritime order.
India initially intended to project the idea of a naval community, based
on inclusivity and coordination, in order to deal with risks and threats,
while IONS broad membership would ensure that no single power could
dominate the IOR (DAS, 2018). However, inclusivity had its downside.
In a context characterized by the diversity of size, capabilities, identi-
ties and consequently, maritime visions of IONS members, it reflected
a lack of trust which translated into insufficient political will, which in

turn provided for weak coordination.
IONS remains a multilateral grouping loosely structured, not by
neglect but by design, in order to accommodate the asymmetry of capa-
bilities and the conflicting claims of its members. Unlike organizations
with alliance discipline and treaty obligations, and in which the threat
of a common enemy binds the members together, IONS members have
little in common except in fact for, a number of them, their enmity. Non-
traditional security issues around which the activities of the Symposium
are structured act as the smallest common denominator. Loose structures
and weak obligations are the only way to maintain a semblance of unity.
In effect, IONS was not without utility. It did become a forum of
exchange for the navies of the Indian Ocean. But the sense of community
that it intended to create remained limited and never allowed its members
to overcome deeply entrenched enmities. Moreover, its multilateral nature
quickly became a facade. Actual activities were conducted at the bilateral
or trilateral level. IONS became a barometre of the evolution of regional
bilateral relationships as well as an instrument for political signalling, but
the normative project underlying the endeavour got diluted in the process
(Panda, 2017).5 As a consequence, IONS continues to suffer from its
diffuse and nebulous organizational character.
But if it did, until recently, languished in a state of relative insti-
tutional torpor, the situation is gradually changing with the evolution
of the regional landscape and the exploitation of the need to combat
non-traditional security issues for larger strategic purposes, as illustrated
by the construction by China of a large military base in Djibouti after
it was invited to contribute to anti-piracy operations in the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb.
5 One such example was the holding of the International Maritime Search and Rescue
Exercise (IMMSAREX) held in November 2017 under the aegis of IONS with the partici-
pation of India and China (only an observer in the Symposium), and announced in August
of the same year, while tensions between Delhi and Beijing were running high amid the
standoff of their respective armies on the Doklam plateau in Bhuttan.
The Reinvestment of Western Powers

in the Indian Ocean Architecture
If Indian Ocean regionalism is a recent phenomenon, the renewed
commitment of Western powers is even more recent, and directly asso-
ciated with China’s increased presence. Countries like Australia, which at
some point entertained the idea of turning IORA into an APEC of the
Indian Ocean (Brewster, 2017), were always an integral part of it. Others
were sceptical about institutions that they saw as dysfunctional and not
terribly useful. But Indian Ocean actors themselves were reluctant to give
a greater role to countries like France and the United Kingdom that they
still saw as colonial powers. In the mind of a number of littoral and island
states, an institution like IORA was no less than an Indian Ocean version
of “Asia for the Asian”. That is until the China question changed their
perspective.
The reinvestment of Western powers took two specific forms: first, the
application for membership (whatever its nature) in the existing Indian
Ocean institutions followed by greater activism within that framework;
second, the development in parallel of new ad hoc formats of cooperation
involving regional and non-regional like-minded actors. Both approaches
influence one another. The creation of new cooperation frameworks is for
instance driven by the realization of western powers that pre-existing insti-
tutions cannot guarantee regional stability. But they still maintain their
desire to contribute to the strengthening of these institutions.
The status of IORA dialogue partners reflects the fundamental ambiva-
lence that its members entertain with external powers. Faced with a lack
of resources, the Association expects their contributions but denies them
any say in the decision-making process. Historically, until the admission
of France in December 2020, all IORA members had experienced colo-
nial domination, and the desire to create a distinct Indian Ocean identity
explains this willingness to insure that the Indian Ocean littoral and island
states remained at the helm. But this vulnerability to external influences
competed with the growing realization of both IORA’s own impotence
and the need to engage more substantially with its dialogue partners if it
intended to achieve its own objectives.
Dialogue partners, on the other hand, found no incentive to contribute
more actively to IORA. If their funding was always welcome, bureaucratic
hurdles made the implementation of any practical project complicated and
it diluted any sense of achievement. Paradoxically though demands for
greater participation kept growing. At the time of writing, Russia is still a

candidate for the status of dialogue partner, while countries like Myanmar,
Pakistan or Saudi Arabia are still awaiting their membership.
This relative surge of international interest has much less to do with
the Association itself than the evolution of global politics and concerns
about the Indian Ocean, suddenly conferring a strategic dimension to the
priorities and activities of the IORA. However, in this process, IORA is
valued less as a platform for action, than as one allowing countries to
assert their presence and status, and, also, to monitor other powers. The
evolving strategic significance of the Indian Ocean Region has resulted in
a competition for regional influence in which IORA has emerged as a tool
to develop one’s influence or to neutralize that of the competing powers.
IORA’s renewed attractivity is therefore the consequence of the shifting
regional geopolitics.
External Powers and the Strategies of Memberships with IORA

China’s investment in the IORA began before it made its presence felt
in the Indian Ocean. Beijing has been participating in the Association’s
deliberations since it was inducted as a Dialogue partner in 2000. Its
support to IORA reflected the level of its involvement in the Indian
Ocean ever since. It kept a low profile in the early 2000s when its pres-
ence was still limited but became more active subsequently. Indeed, its
policy interests vis-à-vis IORA are more realistically related to its wider
geopolitical ambitions. China is the country which does respond to the
connectivity needs of a number of IORA members and it was able to
connect its own economic and naval interests with the Indian Ocean
Region long before it launched the BRI in 2013. As a result, IORA
provides Beijing with a platform, to give visibility at a fairly low cost, to
its multifaceted soft power approaches in the Indian Ocean and enables it
to buy some goodwill from its members. China does understand that its
participation as a dialogue partner does indeed help to be recognized as
an Indian Ocean actor.
The US has traditionally been a coalition builder in the Indian
Ocean, the main example being the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF),
commanded by a US Navy vice admiral. But for a long time, the US
had no interest in the IORA. Neither was the Eastern coast of Africa
of sufficient strategic significance, nor the IORA of any importance
for Washington. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made
the point that “as soon as he talked to US Secretary of State, Hillary

Clinton, about the IOR-ARC, she immediately steered the conversation
to Baghdad” (Rumley & Doyle, 2015).
It was only in the early 2010s, when China became more active in
the Indian Ocean that the US expressed more interest. The strength-
ening of cooperative activities led by resident Indian Ocean stakeholders
made regional institutions more interesting, providing an opportunity for
the United States to “participate without leading” (Samaranayake, 2014),
a somewhat new experience for Washington. The United States then
became a dialogue partner of IORA in 2012. Formal observer status still
eludes the United States in IONS though, even if it sends naval officers
to observe meetings.
France is another, yet different case, struggling not for presence but for
status as a resident country of the Indian Ocean. On 17 December 2020,
it was accepted as the 23rd member state of IORA. France was a dialogue
partner of the Association since its creation on the basis of its territories
in the Indian Ocean.6 For a long time, Paris did not pay more attention
to IORA than any other dialogue partner. It applied for full membership
only in 2015 at the Padang Ministerial meeting. The motivations which
led France to apply for membership were not fundamentally different
from the ones which had led it to initially accept Dialogue partner status.
Paris wanted to be recognized as a resident country of the Indian Ocean
and not as an external power. But for the most part, IORA members saw
France as an external power with possessions in the Indian Ocean, a not
so oblique reference to what is still considered by some IORA members
as a colonial presence.7
Paris has always been able to manage these competing claims bilater-
ally. What prompted France to seek a higher status was the new situation
created by the emergence of new actors in the Indian Ocean, in partic-
ular China, which also led to a change of perception of France and a
greater acceptance by a majority of IORA members. France’s accession
6 French territories in the South-west Indian Ocean include La Réunion, Mayotte, the
Scattered Islands (Les Glorieuses, Juan de Nova, Bassas de India, Europa) in the Channel
of Mozambique, and Tromelin. They also include Adelie Land, the Crozet Islands, the
Kerguelen Islands, as well as the Saint Paul and Amstrerdam; Islands in the Southern
Indian Ocean.
7 The French sovereignty over Tromelin is contested by Mauritius and Madagascar
which also claims the Scattered Island, and over Mayotte by the Comoros.
to full membership was particularly significant from that perspective. It

was accepted on the basis of the La Reunion territories, which de facto
meant that the competing claims on Tromelin, Mayotte and the Scat-
tered Islands still held, and therefore that France was still considered a
colonial power by a significant number of IORA members. This percep-
tion is slowly dissipating under the pressure of the new strategic reality.
The most significant example of this evolution is the change of posture
from both India and Australia, which, for a long time, tolerated, more
than they accepted, France in both the Pacific and the Indian Oceans.
Interestingly they, together with the UAE, became France’s staunchest
allies in the Association and actively supported its candidacy.
The Implications of New Cooperation Formats in the IOR

Indian Ocean regionalism itself is evolving. In 2013, German scholar
Christian Wagner could write that “more than 15 years after the creation
of the Indian Ocean Rim—Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-
ARC), regionalism in that part of the world still seemed to be a vague
concept” (Schöttli, 2020). This is no longer the case.
Indian Ocean regionalism is still searching for its identity but the
trajectory has become clearer. The question today is not whether it is
significant but whether it can develop and consolidate fast enough. Insti-
tution building in the Indian Ocean remains rather slow, partly due to
the differences in the strategic perspectives of its actors. The emergence
of new formats of cooperation are the outcome of this search. They are
still in their infancy and the prospects for their own development remain
a question mark, but their existence reflects the quest for a new strategic
quid pro quo. Just as the evolution of the Indian Ocean regionalism is
a reflection of the transformation of the larger geopolitical context, the
political dynamic which prompted this evolution was initiated outside the
Indian Ocean architecture, even though by actual or (then) would be
members.
On 9 September 2020, the Foreign Secretaries of Australia, France and
India held their first official trilateral meeting in an effort to strengthen
cooperation among the three countries. Strong convergences between
their respective visions of what an Indo-Pacific order should be, as well
as a series of spectacular bilateral rapprochements between the three
countries had made the meeting possible. According to the terms of
the joint communiqué, “the trilateral dialogue helped underscore the
goal of guaranteeing peace, security and adherence to international law

in the Indo-Pacific by drawing on the excellence of bilateral relations
between France, India and Australia” and emphasizing their will to “suc-
cessfully conclude concrete cooperation projects in the maritime sector
and those promoting global commons (climate, environment and biodi-
versity, health)” (French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, 2020).
The three Foreign Secretaries also discussed cooperation on marine global
commons; potential areas for practical partnership at the trilateral and
regional level, including through regional organizations such as tASEAN,
IORA and the Indian Ocean Commission.
The three countries have been working jointly within IORA ever since,
as they already were within the IONS framework but the main char-
acteristic of their association is less to be found in the trilateral format
itself than in the fact that they were projecting within the Indian Ocean
architecture a common issue of interest, namely the Indo-Pacific, whose
ramifications included, but went far beyond, the Indian Ocean.
Although any prediction as to what the final shape and results of
this diplomatic move may be, it is likely to impact the substance of
maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean. Maritime security has, for a
long time, been focussing mostly on the protection of the sea lanes of
communications. Even the focus on piracy, classified as a non-traditional
security issue, in the mid-2000 was thought as an extension of the issue
of freedom of navigation. However, the situation is evolving. The major
challenge lies now equally in the protection of the maritime space and
the protection of the maritime routes. In this context preventing or
repressing predatory practises matter as much as protecting the sea lanes
of communications. Freedom of navigation remains a central issue but
the protection of the EEZ, as well as the protection of the high seas are
becoming major concerns. This in turn is generating a new and different
relationship between the most and least powerful countries of IORA.
Most of IORA activities related to maritime security centre on non-
traditional security issues, in which non-state actors play the dominant
role. Piracy, maritime terrorism, illegal drug trafficking, arms robbery,
human trafficking, illegal unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing not
only threaten the shipping industry but also the well-being of the people
of the littoral and island states of the Indian Ocean. Quite naturally,
maritime cooperation within the IORA framework as well as between the
Association and its external dialogue partners focus on these, leaving hard
security to more powerful member states and external powers.
Formats such as the Australia–France–India trilateral dialogue, all

countries with significant economic, military and political capacities, are
likely to matter in this context. They are meant as an effort to federate
the internal efforts of the Association in maritime security which they
intend to make as comprehensive as possible. A similar effort is under-
taken within the IONS. But they are also likely to reinforce the link
between members and major external actors, most of which are already
dialogue partners of IORA. Indeed Indian Ocean middle powers do not
intend to remain passive players. But they are also aware that working
closely with each other is the condition for them to be able to, if not
influence the evolution of the relation between the US and China, at
least to mitigate the impact of the latter’s rivalry for themselves and their
Indian Ocean partners.
The Indian Ocean and the Pull

Towards the Indo-Pacific
Such cooperation formats are not exclusive from those more politically
charged. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) resurrected by the
US administration of President Trump in November 2017 was not meant
to address exclusively Indian Ocean issues, but the larger Indo-Pacific
(White House, 2021).8 But with its members being all Indian Ocean
actors (including Japan), it is a consequential format for the IOR. It is
indeed recognized as a factor of stability in the Indian Ocean by some of
its littoral states (ANI, 2021).
If the Quad is essentially a dialogue it is increasingly associated with
initiatives of diverse natures, including military ones. In fact, the majority
of the exercises conducted by its members have taken place in the Indian
Ocean. The US–India–Japan Malabar exercises took a new dimension in
2020 when it was joined by Australia. For the first time the format of
the naval drill matched the constitution of the Quad, even though the
participants refrained from qualifying it as the armed branch of the Quad.
Then, in April 2021, all four Quad members participated in the French
led Lapérouse exercise, a multinational naval drill conducted during the
annual Mission Jeanne d’Arc (Vavasseur, 2021).
8 In their 2021 joint statement, Quad leaders described “a shared vision for a free
and open Indo-Pacific”, expressing their desire “for a region that is free, open, inclusive,
healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion”.
In recent years, all participating countries made public their national

Indo-Pacific strategy, while their activities overlap with those of the Indian
Ocean institutions. This in turn pulls the Indian Ocean further into the
Indo-Pacific dynamic although sometimes in contradictory ways. Bilateral
relations between the Quad members and any of their potential partners
on the one side, and Indian Ocean smaller states on the other side, tend
to turn them into peon of the larger Indo-Pacific great game. Indeed, the
assumption according to which a more cooperative Indian Ocean is likely
to leave less space for great powers’ rivalries is questionable at best when
the increased cooperation is itself partly the result and structured along
the lines of this rivalry.
However, the pull towards the Indo-Pacific should not be seen exclu-
sively in negative terms. The risk is real of the Indian Ocean being
drawn into the polarization that increasingly characterizes the Indo-Pacific
region. In this context, however, the coalition of the middle powers
(Australia, France and India) which intends to structure the Indian Ocean
architecture, is a guarantee for the entire region as none of its members
wants to be trapped in a rising zero-sum-game between the US and
China—Japan’s perspective being no different. But simultaneously the
three of them have collectively the capacity to link up Indian Ocean
regionalism to the larger Indo-Pacific issue and make cooperation in
its institutions more effective and therefore more attractive to external
powers.
In that sense the current situation in the Indian Ocean is a paradox.
Its future depends partly on non-resident powers but the willingness of
the latter to contribute to a more effective Indian Ocean regionalism
depends on the resident powers to make it more attractive. Moreover
resident and non-resident powers collectively face the challenge to struc-
ture themselves in a way that is compatible with the US partnership but
is not hostile to China, already a complex endeavour in normal times,
but a quasi-impossible task in a situation of unprecedented polarization
between the two rivals.
Overall, with its various layers of organizations, and coalitions as
well as the emerging ad hoc operational formats, the developing model
resembles the one advocated by scholars Rory Medcalf and Raja Mohan
for the Indo-Pacific: “an array of overlapping coalitions that seek to
improve the national security of their members through flexible part-

nerships defined by geography, capabilities, interests or shared functional
objectives” (Medcalf & Mohan, 2014).
Conclusion
As stated by Australian analyst Lee Cordner, “for many, especially South
Asians, the Indian Ocean has historically been one of the region’s
strongest unifying factors. For centuries its waters have carried religions,
languages, traditions and indeed people across thousands of miles and
bound them together in a cultural brotherhood. According to those who
hold this view, it is only the failure of the inhabitants to record the
region’s maritime history that has deprived it of the status of a cohe-
sive regional entity. For most others, however, the IOR appears a largely
disaggregated oceanic and littoral zone, more a collection of subregions
than a coherent single region” (Cordner, 64:4, 2011).
These two visions fundamentally differ regarding the cause of this
situation. The former echoes the anti-colonial sentiments that have mobi-
lized the region against external powers. The latter simply observes the
fragmentation as the current state of play without attributing specific
responsibilities. However, they concur regarding the lack of cohesive-
ness of the Indian Ocean. It has been the core argument of this book
that the future of the Indian Ocean lies in the capacity of the regional
actors to reconcile and put the colonial past behind them in order to
build a regional order based on the redefinition of their relationships with
external powers. From that perspective, the evolving geostrategic context
constitutes an opportunity.
Over the past 20 years, the Indian Ocean has unquestionably gained
prominence as a focus of foreign policies. But the strategic landscape
these policies are supposed to address have changed much less than the
international context which it partly reflects.
At one level, it has always been recognized “that the nature of
challenges faced in IOR are such that they cannot be addressed or
redressed by any single country” (Schöttli, 2020). Shared coastlines,
similar geostrategic concerns as well as the need for conflict-free manage-
ment of cross boundary issues, should have led to the establishment of
common schemes. But even common security interests have been insuf-
ficient to build common regional security mechanisms. For example, the
anti-piracy coalitions surfacing in the late 2000s were initiatives of external
powers, even if regional countries did participate. Moreover, none of them

were conceived as permanent mechanisms. Deep asymmetries between
naval capabilities of the littoral states, and for many of them, the lack of
maritime experience as well as the huge imbalances between the regional
economies, explain this state of affairs.
At another level, the Indian Ocean has always been a zone of competi-
tion among major powers. The end of the Cold War stirred the fear that
the Indian Ocean may become a strategic vacuum. Instead, as demon-
strated in this book, the number of Indian Ocean actors has significantly
increased. Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,
as well as Australia, have become deeply involved in the Indian Ocean,
while the EU newly established strategy for cooperation in the Indian
Ocean could mark the beginning of an increased presence in the area.
More traditional actors, like India, the UK and France have intensified
their activities, both military and diplomatic, while the US remains a key
player.
The most significant change is of course the emergence of China as an
Indian Ocean actor. The growth of China’s energy demand and there-
fore its increased dependence on Gulf oil and gas supplies translated into
a more robust Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean, in part to secure
its sea lanes of communications. The change was perceived differently by
countries like India, always wary of Beijing’s policies and fearing encir-
clement and Western powers which seized piracy as an opportunity to
engage with China on maritime issues. The launching of the BRI, with
its maritime route across the Indian Ocean, created a phenomenon of
polarization—unseen so far in the region—between the potential benefi-
ciaries of the BRI and the others. Ultimately, China’s decision to build a
major military base in Djibouti did not totally reconcile the two perspec-
tives but changed the perception of some of its partners. China has been
seen as a potential threat by a majority of littoral and island states.
But the rise of China in the IOR has also changed the nature of the
strategic landscape. The central issue is no longer exclusively about naval
predominance but includes comprehensive maritime security in which the
need to address predatory practises combines with the need to manage the
growing militarization of the region. The association of resource grabbing
and military threat is not a novelty in the region and has characterized
colonialism. It is being reactivated today in a new form by China, which
ironically was once a champion of the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist
movement. This role reversal has reinforced new alignments and part-
nerships and generated new ones. India and the US, once “estranged
democracies” are now close partners in the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile,
France, a former colonial power, is increasingly accepted as a resident
country.
These developments have also created the foundations for a more
cooperative approach to maritime security in the Indian Ocean. The
combination of militarization and resource grabbing has redefined and
expanded the strategic problem from protecting maritime routes to
protecting maritime spaces. None of the actors, including the largest
powers are capable of fulfilling such a mission alone. The new Indian
Ocean therefore requires a new, pragmatic, multilateralism, involving
both littoral and external states for the protection of the common
maritime spaces.
In this endeavour, the protection of the EEZs will be central. To
achieve this objective, the weakness of many littoral states will require
a significant involvement in capacity building of the better endowed
littoral states of the Indian Ocean and the external powers. Maritime
domain awareness capacities, Coast Guards, Customs, need to be devel-
oped in order to allow for effective burden-sharing. In the meantime, the
development of blue water capacities is likely to continue unabated.
Indeed, the construction of the security architecture in the Indian
Ocean is slowly emerging from the implementation of multiple bilat-
eral partnerships. This situation precludes considering, as has sometimes
been suggested, the constitution of a “NATO of the sea” for the Indian
Ocean. Rather, it leads to considering the possibility of an approach
through a system of multi-layered regional, as well as thematic but non-
ideological, coalitions. The making of this architecture is only in its
beginning and might remain incomplete. It is however the direction in
which the Indian Ocean is currently moving and perhaps the only one
capable of guaranteeing its peaceful future.
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Index
A and India, 64, 65, 87, 107, 110,

Abe, Shinzo, 87 116, 165, 168–170, 172,
Aden, Gulf of, 19, 22, 27, 49, 103, 218–220
115, 159, 184, 188 and US, 64, 79, 86, 110, 115
African Union, 189, 190
Alindien, 108, 109 B
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 21, Bab-el-Mandeb, Strait of, 100, 132,
29, 62, 107, 164 136
Arc of crisis (concept), 72, 73, 75, 76, Balancing (strategy), 160
89, 101 Bangladesh, 11, 16, 20, 23, 26, 47,
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation 113, 154
Forum (APEC), 79, 92, 215 Bay of Bengal, 19, 24, 47, 54, 64,
110, 153, 154, 170, 171
Assab (military base), 136, 140
Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), 4, 5, 7,
Association of Southeast Asian Nations 10, 16, 17, 22, 23, 25, 26, 30,
(ASEAN), 6, 9, 12, 53, 55, 72, 36, 43, 48, 49, 52, 87, 91, 108,
86, 88, 91, 92, 108, 151–154, 130, 133, 139, 142, 155, 162,
156–159, 161, 163–165, 171, 179, 181, 198, 199, 216, 223
206 Berbera Port, 74, 136
Australia, 6, 8, 12, 58, 63–65, 79, 87, Biden, Joe, 81, 88, 92
107, 108, 110, 111, 151, 152, Bishop, Julie, 167
165–172, 194, 197, 210, 211, Blair, Tony, 111
215, 220, 221, 223 Braithwaite, Kenneth, 81
and China, 172 Burundi, 89, 179, 181–183
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 227
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
and Security Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91797-5
228 INDEX
Bush, George W., 71, 81, 83, 84, 86 135, 136, 141, 179, 188, 191,
Buzan, Barry, 9 194, 214, 223
Djibouti Code of Conduct, 188–190
Dubai Ports World, 129, 136
C
Cambodia, 88 E
Cameron, David, 104, 105 East African Community (EAC), 181,
Campbell, Kurt, 78, 81 190
Carter, Jimmy, 75, 76 East Asia Summit, 55, 162, 163
Chagos Archipelago, 3, 73, 103 Eritrea, 135, 136, 141, 145, 179,
Cheney, Dick, 86 188, 191
China Ethiopia, 74, 75, 89, 136, 141, 145,
and African countries, 197, 198 179, 187, 188
and ASEAN, 151, 154, 172 European Union (EU), 55, 106–108,
and Gulf countries, 142 110, 115, 116, 189, 192, 223
and India, 2, 3, 6, 11, 16, 30, 35, and operation Atalanta, 115, 187
50, 59, 62, 72, 77, 84, 91,
104, 114, 126, 133, 138, 139,
142, 145, 154, 161, 172, 179, F
197, 199, 214 Five Power Defence Arrangements
and US, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 35, 59, (FDPA), 110
60, 62, 72, 76, 80–82, 87, France, 6, 8–11, 29, 44, 51, 63,
91, 114, 115, 151, 153, 154, 86, 99, 100, 102, 105, 106,
158–160, 162, 173, 205, 208, 108–117, 142, 167, 170, 186,
220, 221 192, 194, 197, 210, 215, 217,
China–Pakistan Economic Corridor 218, 221, 223, 224
(CPEC), 16, 24, 25, 43, 60 and Australia, 65, 107, 170, 218,
Christmas Island, 107, 166 220
Clinton, Hillary, 79, 83, 88, 217 and India, 12, 107, 110, 172,
Cocos Island, 107, 166 218–220
Cold War, 47, 49, 53, 55, 71–73, 75, Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 31, 55,
76, 81, 143, 151, 153, 160, 171, 135, 139
195, 197, 209, 223
Commonwealth, 113 G
Comoros, 36, 179, 188, 190, 191, Gargash, Anwar, 143
194, 211, 212, 217 Gates, Robert, 77, 133
Germany, 85, 86, 104, 105, 212
Good Hope, Cape of, 54, 196
D Gorbachev, Mikhail, 33
Diego Garcia, 4, 73, 103, 115 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 6,
Djibouti, 2, 11, 16–18, 22, 23, 26, 55, 56, 91, 128, 132, 134, 135,
36, 44, 48, 51, 89, 102, 109, 139, 140, 142–144
INDEX 229
Gulf of Aden, 19, 22, 27, 49, 54, Indian Ocean Rim Association
103, 115, 159, 184, 188 (IORA), 7, 31, 44, 53, 58, 86,
Gwadar, 16, 22, 23, 25, 43, 130 92, 108, 141, 142, 159, 163–
165, 188, 206, 207, 209–212,
215–220
H Indonesia, 6, 16, 23, 53, 54, 63, 65,
Hambantota, 16, 23 88, 135, 152, 153, 156–158,
Hedging (strategy), 63, 144, 145 160–165, 167, 168, 171, 172,
Himalayas, 46, 50, 62 210, 211
Hong-Kong, 105, 115 Indo-Pacific, 5, 6, 11, 45, 53, 54, 57,
Hormuz Strait, 48, 54, 90, 128, 129, 65, 72, 78–88, 92, 101, 102,
132 107, 108, 115, 116, 142, 151,
Horn of Africa, 2, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 156, 162, 164, 166, 167, 170,
44, 74, 75, 89, 90, 102, 103, 179, 205, 207, 218–221
109, 114, 125, 126, 135, 136, Indo-Pacific Command
139–141, 184, 189, 190, 192 (INDOPACOM), 78, 80,
Hu, Jintao, 21 82, 89
Iran, 26, 32–35, 56, 74, 75, 90, 91,
127, 129, 132, 211
I Islam, 77, 125, 211, 212
India, 1–3, 5, 8–11, 15–17, 21–25,
29–33, 35, 37, 43–67, 71, 72,
76, 79, 82–86, 105–108, 111, J
126–128, 132–134, 138–140, Japan, 5, 8, 11, 44, 53, 63–65,
142, 143, 151–154, 160, 79, 86, 87, 107, 110, 128,
161, 163, 164, 167–169, 171, 153–157, 166, 168, 170, 172,
172, 184, 194, 195, 197–200, 183, 197–199, 210, 212, 220,
209–211, 213, 218, 223 221
and Africa, 58 Johnson, Boris, 100, 105
and China, 2, 4, 6, 16, 30, 35, 50,
59, 62, 77, 84, 91, 104, 126,
K
142, 154, 161, 172, 173, 179,
Kenya, 11, 16, 23, 74, 89, 110, 131,
181, 197, 199
179, 182, 184, 187–191, 193,
and US, 4, 6, 30, 47, 59–62, 72,
194, 198, 210
79, 83–86, 156, 160, 224
Kerry, John, 79
Indian Navy, 29, 36, 46, 47, 50, 51,
Khan, Imran, 144
54, 55, 58, 62–64, 85, 110, 213
Kicklighter, Claude, 60
Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), 31,
Koizumi, Junichiro, 64
193, 207, 219
Kra Canal, 154–156
Indian Ocean Naval Symposium
(IONS), 7, 44, 55, 58, 59,
85, 110, 141, 159, 163, 209, L
212–214, 217, 219, 220 Ladakh, 47, 51, 62
230 INDEX
Laos, 88 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty

Le Drian, Jean-Yves, 106 Organization), 34, 86, 116, 192,
Lombok Strait, 54, 161 224
Look-East Policy, 134, 160, 210 New Zealand, 111, 153, 170
Look-West Policy, 44, 134
M O
Macron, Emmanuel, 63, 107, 108, Obama, Barack, 61, 62, 78–81, 83,
170 90, 132–134
Madagascar, 28, 29, 31, 36, 179, 186, Oman, 34, 44, 56, 74, 110, 113,
188, 190, 191, 194, 210, 212, 127–130, 135, 139, 141, 144,
217 188, 210
Malabar exercises, 60, 64, 168, 220
Malacca Strait, 20, 21, 54, 59, 100,
152–154, 156–158, 160, 161, P
163, 171, 172 Pakistan, 10, 11, 16, 20, 22–26, 32,
Malaysia, 6, 23, 53, 73, 88, 111, 112, 33, 35, 43–48, 50, 51, 56, 91,
135, 152, 153, 155–158, 160, 101, 111–113, 126, 130, 134,
163, 167, 171, 210 139–144, 194, 212, 213, 216
Maldives, 23, 30, 31, 33, 44, 52, 73, Panikkar, K.M., 1, 46
137–139, 188, 211 Parly, Florence, 116
Marsudi, Retno, 167 Payne, Marise, 65, 169, 170
Mattis, James, 80, 81, 116, 162 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 16,
Mauritius, 30, 31, 52, 57, 58, 103, 19, 20, 26, 34, 47, 107
179, 180, 188, 190, 191, 194, Persian Gulf, 2, 4, 5, 7, 15, 43, 73,
207, 210, 211, 217 75, 76, 89–91, 101, 102, 109,
Mayotte, 102, 107, 114, 179, 192, 126, 166, 197
217, 218 Piracy, 2, 21, 22, 49, 63, 71, 89, 100,
May, Theresa, 100, 104 102, 103, 109, 115, 126, 128,
Modi, Narendra, 5, 43, 44, 49, 54, 132, 153, 156–159, 163, 180,
56, 57, 60, 62, 64, 83, 85, 105, 183–193, 196, 219, 223
134, 143, 172 Pompeo, Mike, 92
Mozambique, 102, 179, 181, 182,
184, 186, 188, 190–192, 194,
210, 217
Myanmar, 11, 16, 22–26, 60, 152, Q
154, 212, 216 Qatar, 12, 55, 112, 113, 125,
128–130, 132, 133, 137, 138,
141, 142, 144, 180
N Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
Nahyan, Mohammed bin Zayed, 113, (QUAD), 65, 72, 86–88, 110,
134, 136 116, 168, 220, 221
INDEX 231
R South Africa, 12, 26, 33, 34, 58,

Raisina Dialogue, 65, 169 179, 180, 183, 188, 190–192,
Reunion, La, 102, 107, 114, 179, 194–196, 198, 209
192, 218 South China Sea, 2, 16, 17, 28,
Rudd, Kevin, 87, 168, 216 33, 54, 61, 63, 77, 82, 106,
Rumsfeld, Donald, 155 151–154, 156, 159, 161, 163,
Russia, 26, 32–36, 56, 66, 85, 133, 164, 168, 171
179, 195, 196, 198, 212, 216 South Korea, 128, 153
Rwanda, 179, 181–183 Sri Lanka, 3, 11, 16, 31, 52, 154,
167, 210
String of Pearls (concept), 22, 23, 77,
S 78
Saran, Shyam, 66
Sarkozy, Nicolas, 109, 111, 127
T
Saudi Arabia, 12, 34, 36, 44, 55, 91,
Taiwan, 53
103, 111, 125, 128–130, 132,
Tanzania, 3, 16, 179, 184, 189–192,
133, 135–137, 139–141, 143,
194, 198, 210
144, 180, 188, 197, 212, 216,
Tillerson, Rex, 79, 80
223
Trump, Donald, 35, 62, 72, 78–81,
Saud, Mohammed bin Salman, 130,
83–86, 88, 92, 115, 138, 142,
136, 144
220
Security and Growth for All in the Turkey, 36, 85, 137, 180, 194, 197
Region (SAGAR) initiative, 45 Turnbull, Malcolm, 170
Security community, 3, 9
Security complex, 9, 12, 17
Seychelles, 16, 30, 31, 33, 44, U
52, 137, 138, 179, 180, 188, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
190–194, 199, 200, 211 (USSR), 33, 47, 71, 73–76, 143
Shanghai Cooperation Organization United Arab Emirates (UAE), 10, 12,
(SCO), 35 16, 44, 55, 56, 91, 108–110,
Shangri-La Summit, 81 113, 114, 116, 125–130,
Sharif, Nawaz, 25 132–144, 180, 183, 188, 197,
Singapore, 10, 16, 21, 53, 54, 63, 73, 218, 223
81, 88, 107, 111–113, 129, 131, United Kingdom (UK), 6, 8, 9,
134, 135, 152, 153, 155–161, 11, 46, 71, 73, 86, 99–101,
163, 167, 172, 210 103–105, 108, 110–116, 125,
Singh, Jaswant, 56 126, 131, 194, 210, 215, 223
Singh, Manmohan, 55, 56, 60, 134 and China, 104
Somalia, 2, 33, 49, 74, 89, 101, 110, and Gulf countries, 142
136–138, 141, 159, 179, 181, and India, 105
182, 184, 185, 187, 188, 193, United States (US)
194, 196, 212 and ASEAN, 88, 151
232 INDEX
and Australia, 64, 79, 86, 110, 115, W

171 Wells, Alice, 87
and China, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 35, 37, Wen, Jiabao, 22, 49
59, 60, 62, 72, 76, 80–83, 87, Widodo, Joko, 162, 165, 168
91, 114, 115, 151, 153, 154, Wilson, Harold, 71, 126
157–160, 162, 173, 205, 208,
220, 221
and Gulf countries, 90, 91, 131, X
142 Xi, Jinping, 17, 23, 24, 60, 108
and India, 4, 6, 21, 30, 37, 47, Xinjiang, 22, 24
59–62, 72, 79, 83–86, 114,
156, 160, 220, 224
US–China–India triangle, 4, 7, 72, Y
89, 117, 142, 144, 206 Yemen, 26, 82, 90, 135, 136, 139,
140, 142–144, 188, 189, 210
V
Vietnam, 33, 79, 88, 107 Z
Votel, Joseph, 90 Zheng, He, 15

The Indian Ocean As A New Political and Security Region: Frédéric Grare Jean-Loup Samaan

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The Indian Ocean

Frédéric Grare · Jean-Loup Samaan

The Indian Ocean

ISBN 978-3-030-91796-8 ISBN 978-3-030-91797-5 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Maram_shutterstock.com

meetings, who have inspired the authors, through their publications,

Frédéric Grare is Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on

Jean-Loup Samaan is a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute

research advisor at the NATO Defense College (2011–2016), and asso-

AFRICOM US Africa Command

MoU Memorandum of Understanding

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

The regional powers therefore anticipated a Chinese threat, in the conti-

Unpacking the Dynamics of the New Indian Ocean

regional politics of these small states by linking them to Beijing’s agenda.

Pacific theatre. As our research explains, the US remains the indispens-

monograph but rather as a mosaic that arranges together national strate-

Structure of the Book

has been involved in the funding and construction of several commer-

Chapter 6 investigates the rise of Gulf Arab monarchies in the area.

Woo, S. (2003). Triangle research and understanding Northeast Asian politics.

The Advent of China’s Indian Ocean

Although Chinese officials like to boast about the voyages of Admiral

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

decades. China is attempting to fill the strategic vacuum it believes will

China’s Evolving Naval

Colombo and the denial of an existing Chinese “strategy” in the region.

Maritime Concerns and Responses in China’s Defence White Papers

depth for offshore defensive operations” (Information Office of the State

the combination of offshore water defence with ‘open seas protection’”

The Determinants of China’s Presence in the Indian Ocean

Yet subsequent development should have led China to adopt a more

The Indian Ocean: From the String

The term “String of Pearls”, coined by US defence contractor Booz

border, the construction of a highway between Lahore and Karachi as well

The Looming Military Dimension

Changing the Nature of the Strategic

China’s Indian Ocean Diplomacy

China’s Engagement with the Smaller Indian Ocean States

seeking supply facilities at appropriate harbours in order to support its

Federating the Revisionist Powers of the Indian Ocean: Pakistan,

a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and

The Future of China’s

fragmentation of the region is only adding to the problem while the

historic but leonine fishing agreement in the waters of Madagascar EEZ.

Information Office of the States Council of the People’s Republic of China.

Mahadevan, P. (2014). China in the Indian Ocean: Part of a larger PLAN

Shubham. (2018). Is China behind Seychelles’ decision to scrap India’s military

Between East and West, India’s Revived

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 43

Indian governments had already acknowledged by the mid-2000s the

The Strategic Determinants of India’s Policies

responsible for India’s colonization by the UK (Panikkar, 1945). Indeed

The China Factor

a source of concern for India which is only partly mitigated by Pakistan’s

they ultimately pursued similar and complementary objectives: enclosing

The India–China Naval Equation in the Indian Ocean

signed a pact with France for the production of a constellation of satellites

Small and Island States: The New

Redefining India’s Indian Ocean Policy

Looking and Acting East in the Indian Ocean

India Looks West: Tightening Relations with the Gulf Countries

The Quest for Indian Ocean Unity: