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Op-ed: Regional activism of Indian Navy

Izhar-ul-Hasan

Since the end of Cold War, India has mounted a serious endeavour to project a benign and protective image towards the entire Indian Ocean
littoral with the notable exception of Pakistan

From its very inception, Indian Navy has attempted to show its outreach as the natural guardian of sea-lanes in the Indian Ocean. During the Cold War, India’s visible tilt towards the now defunct Soviet Union made it suspect not only in the eyes of the West (primarily NATO countries), but also Australia, Japan and Indonesia, besides other littoral states of the Indian Ocean. These countries were wary of the growing strength of New Delhi’s naval power without a commensurate and discernable threat to India’s maritime interest. It was for this reason that forces created under the CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) and SEATO (Southeast Asian Treaty Organization) contrived a balance in the Indian Ocean to counter the potential Indo-Soviet naval combine. Later, the US Navy established a permanent presence at Diego Garcia to safeguard its interests in the Indian Ocean. Geographically, Indian Ocean has four closure-prone bottlenecks — Gulf of Aden, Straits of Hormuz, Malacca Straits and Sunda Straits, which can be blocked by a strong naval force and freeze general trade and oil transportation through the sea-lanes.

But the end of the Cold War, with its new security alignments, has brought about a change in outlook towards the role of Indian Navy. Now, the West and even Australia, consider India the logical naval power to police the Indian Ocean. Soon after the United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan in October 1990, an overt warming of naval relations between India and the US became evident. This began with joint naval exercises between the navies of the two states. Since then, India has mounted a serious endeavor to project a benign and protective image towards the entire Indian Ocean littoral with the notable exception of Pakistan. While the Indian Navy has sought to reach the Middle East countries with innumerable flag-showing goodwill visits, its policy to the East has been considerably more pro-active.

Naval contacts on a smaller scale have been a norm for many a year, but vigorous attempts have consistently been made to assemble regional navies for multinational as well as bilateral exercises to project at least a non-hostile, if not altogether a harmonious maritime environment. The first such contact was codenamed ‘Milan 2000’, which facilitated some sort of presence from Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Singapore and, of course, India. The event was of no small importance in so far as it went a long way in establishing a semblance of big brotherly image for the Indian Naval might, albeit in an atmosphere of cordiality.

This is in fact the sum total of India’s overtures on the Western rim. The inculcation of good neighbourly ambiance seems to have paid off. The Indian Navy has successfully managed to mask its coercive potential which it is capable of unleashing by virtue of its size and composition. The beneficial spin off of these shrewdly orchestrated chess-moves can also be gauged from the fact that India has put together an imposing infrastructure and a mix of Air, Amphibious and Naval forces under a unified command at Andaman Islands without triggering off any trepidation or protest from Indonesia or Malaysia, which are only a short hop away.

The Indian aims and aspiration are likely to gain further impetus as it plans to continue with consolidating its presence through a replay of the same game plan. Another similar joint maritime exercise, designed ‘Milan 2003’ is planned in the first half of next year. Once again, the idea is to continue building the image of its presence and send out the signal that the Indian Navy’s strength gives it the option of enforcing a local sphere of influence at the time and place of its choosing but doing so without alarming the Ocean’s littoral.

In addition to these actions close to home, India is also reaching out to extra-regional navies and waters. The media recently published reports about a bilateral exercise between Indian and French Navies.

Codenamed ‘Varuna 02’, it is a significant first for the Indian Navy by virtue of the fact that its aircraft carrier ‘Viraat’ will practice its skills against a carrier of French Navy. The exercise could also be a precedent for similar interaction with other advanced navies. The Indian Navy will reach yet another milestone when it participates with observer status in another exercise called ‘Pacific Reach’ in which playing countries consist of the United States, Australia, South Korea, Singapore and host Japan. These strides add up to mean that India has virtually obtained the credentials of a power that might well be internationally accepted as the Indian Ocean’s policeman.

What are the consequences of these developments for Pakistan? Pakistan Navy is the only non-invitee to these parties. This is not only because of adversarial relations between the two countries but also a deliberate attempt to create more friends in the Indian Ocean littoral at the expense of Pakistan. Since Pakistan does not have the same outreach as the Indian Navy, it cannot neutralize the latter’s maneuvers. Yet, Pakistan is the only country that is truly aware of the capability and mal-intention of India and the real reasons behind its power projection.

There is no doubt about the offensive and power projection ingredients of Indian Naval capability and this capability has a uniform application for the whole region. This is a dangerous situation. Pakistan is not only the odd man out it has been completely isolated. Moreover, its failure to make a convincing case of India’s ill-intentioned capability being focused at one or more of the rim-land states is indeed a serious setback. Pakistan alone has the minimum capability to challenge Indian Navy’s assignment as the enforcer of Indian Ocean. Although, the material resources of other navies singly cannot restrain India from exhibiting its real face — bully in the garb of big brother — together that objective can be achieved. A concerted effort, therefore, to bring this realization home to other region’s prospective effectees must remain the core of Pakistan’s reasoning and policy.

As for the ground reality, Pakistan Navy may be small and, theoretically, may not seem capable of posing a challenge to the preponderance of Indian Navy, but even the Indians realize that it will never accept their mastery of Indian Ocean. That fact is unlikely to change regardless of whatever they have so far managed to achieve in the direction of power projection.

The writer is a retired Rear Admiral. A veteran of over 40 years in service, he held several senior field and staff appointments at Naval and Joint Staff Headquarters. He has also been on the faculties of Armed Forces War College and National Defence College

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