Chinese and Indian Geopolitical Competition
in the Indian Ocean Region
William L. Dowdy, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science
Alabama State University
partial draft in preparation for the:
International Political Science Association
World Congress, Madrid, July 2012
1
Introduction
During the Cold War, the Indian Ocean region became a competitive arena in
which the two principal protagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union, sought
political influence and strategic advantage. Their competition was principally naval in
character, with task forces from the two superpowers regularly operating in the region
and seeking access rights for their respective fleets.
The U.S., as an historical maritime nation with the world's most powerful navy,
had the advantage, both in ships and in seamanship. It also enjoyed greater success in
achieving access agreements in the Persian Gulf, on the Horn of Africa, and in Diego
Garcia, a British-owned archipelago off the west coast of India. Meanwhile, the Soviets
operated from anchorages off Socotra in the Gulf of Aden and from the east coast of
India, principally out of Vishakapatnam (Vizag). Their historical impulse to gain warmwater ports was a secondary priority to show-the-flag missions and oceanographic
mapping, perhaps to abet their search for U.S. ballistic missile submarines which they
suspected or knew to be operating in the Indian Ocean in support of America's nuclear
deterrence strategy.
To be sure, other external powers were interested in projecting power and
influence into the Indian Ocean. The Peoples Republic of China extended economic
assistance to selected east African states and to non-Indian South Asia, especially
Pakistan, Burma, and Indonesia during early stages of the Cold War. The erstwhile
colonial powers, Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands were also external
players, but their influence waned as the Cold War progressed.
In the second decade of the 21st Century, there is a renewed competition for
power and influence in the Indian Ocean region. The principal protagonists now and for
the foreseeable future are India and China. Both are enhancing their naval capabilities,
seeking access rights, and increasing their potential to project power with much greater
strategic reach. The United States, with its long-time reliance on imported oil, its recent
involvement in two Persian Gulf wars, and in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, remains a
key actor in the region. The British and French, despite recent naval deployments
against Red Sea pirates, are now bit players.
Analysts differ on the principal motivations of Chinese and Indian assertiveness
in the Indian Ocean. Some suggest that their motives are principally economic in nature,
with the oil of the Persian Gulf figuring critically into their ongoing industrialization and
development programs. Secure access to the region's oil -- the Gulf alone has by many
estimates almost two-thirds of the world's proven reserves -- is an increasing strategic
imperative as those two Asian powers dramatically increase their imports of oil to fuel
their expanding economies. Other analysts -- seeing an unfolding "Asian century" -2
identify China and India as the all-but-inevitable regional hegemons of the future. That
both states have historical memories of more glorious epochs and civilizations fuels
their current and prospective competition for influence in the Indian Ocean, according to
these analysts.
This paper will seek to describe and interpret the nature and prospects of
renewed geostrategic competition in the Indian Ocean region. Just as The Indian
Ocean: Perspectives on a Strategic Arena -- a book published by Duke University Press
in 1985 and co-edited by the author of this paper -- focused on the Cold War rivalry in
the region between two principal protagonists, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so too will
this paper and a new book in progress focus on the rivalry between two current
protagonists: China and India. As before, there will be other actors (both internal and
external to the Indian Ocean region) with other interests to take into account, but the
China-India competition looks to be the most consequential for the region and, perhaps,
for the entire world in the 21st Century.
The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as Analytical Concept and Reality1
The academic study of regions within the field of International Relations (IR) is
primarily a post-World War II endeavor. It may be traced in part to the "area studies"
approach that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, inspired more by a specialized interest
in the characteristics of a particular area (e.g., its culture) than by a more generalized
interest in global affairs. But international relations within regions and between/among
regions increasingly became an object of analysis by IR specialists. For example,
"Western Europe" and "Eastern Europe" achieved modern regional identities as a
consequence of the bipolar Cold War. The coming to independence in the 1950s and
1960s of large numbers of former colonies also generated additional regional
consciousness (both internally and externally). "Southeast Asia" and parts of Africa
("East Africa," "West Africa," etc.) were added to "Latin America" and the "Middle East"
as regions of study by IR specialists. Indeed, regions have come to be seen as
analytically useful intermediate foci of attention at a level above states and below the
world as a whole.
In addition to mainly descriptive studies of the international relations of regions,
there is a modest body of literature that takes a more systematic approach to analysis of
the behavior of regional states and other regional actors, from the analytical perspective
of "general systems theory" (GST). Working from the conception of the world as "the
international system," scholars have applied general systems concepts to analyses of
1
The discussion in this subsection is informed in part by William L. Dowdy, "The Indian Ocean Region as Concept
and Reality," The Indian Ocean: Perspectives on a Strategic Arena. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press,
1985, pp. 3-23.
3
geographically distinct (and otherwise distinct) sets of states and non-state actors
variously referred to as "subordinate systems," or "regional subsystems" of the
international or global system.2 These subsystems are themselves generically systems.
Typically, subsystem studies have considered both disintegrative and integrative
developments, both conflict and cooperation. They have gone beyond the area studies
tradition of intense interest in one particular area for its own sake toward a "heightened
interest in relationships between the global system and regional subsystems"3 -relationships virtually unexplored by area specialists.
Some of the characteristics generally associated with the systems perspective,4
both implicitly and explicitly employed in this paper are:
1) the notion that a system (or regional subsystem, e.g., the Indian Ocean
Region) is more than simply the sum of its parts. It is both an analytical construct
consisting of its components and also the transactions between and among those
components. Much of the essence of international relations consists of linkages,
interactions, reactions, and interdependencies -- more than merely the sum, for
example, of all relevant state foreign policies (diplomatic, economic, security, etc.).
2) Various actors (state decision-makers, non-state organizations, etc.) are
assumed from a systems perspective to be conditioned and constrained by the
characteristics of the system in which they operate. Therefore, international behavior
and its outcomes may be explained in part by systems-level forces. Moreover, just as
the structure of the system affects interacting units, so too do the interactions of units
affect the system's structure. Influences and constraints flow in both directions; the
relationship between the system and its component parts is dynamic and reciprocal.
3) Even in the field of international relations, there are areas of coherence and
orderliness in the midst of apparent randomness and diversity. Systems thinking is
meant to be "an attack on the problem of complexity." 5
2
For path breaking work in the application of systems analysis to the study of regions see, for example, Leonard
Binder, "The Middle East as a Subordinate International System," World Politics 10 (April 1958); Michael Brecher,
"International Relations and Asian Studies: The Subordinate State System of Southern Asia," World Politics 15
(January 1963); William Zartman, "Africa as a Subordinate State System in International Relations," International
Organization 21 (Summer 1967); Larry W. Bowman, "The Subordinate State System of Southern Africa,"
International Studies Quarterly 13 (September 1968); Michael Banks, "Systems Analysis and the Study of Regions,"
International Studies Quarterly 13 (December 1969); and Donald C. Hellmann, "The Emergence of an East Asian
International System," International Studies Quarterly 13 (December 1969).
3
Hellmann, "The Emergence of an East Asian International System," p. 423.
4
See A.D. Hall and R.E. Fagen, "Definition of a System," General Systems Yearbook 1 (1956) and Charles A.
McClellan, Theory and the International System. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
5
M.B. Nicholson and P.A. Reynolds, "General Systems, The International System, and The Eastonian Analysis,"
Political Studies 15 (February 1967), p. 14.
4
The concept of an Indian Ocean Region clearly exists in the minds of analysts
who are attempting to describe and explain the characteristics of that geographic area
and the actions and interactions of both internal and external actors. There has been a
modest and increasing body of academic studies regarding the IOR. One has only to
point to the Journal of The Indian Ocean Region, published by Routledge for the Indian
Ocean Research Group (IORG) of Western Australia, or to The Indian Ocean World
Center located at McGill University of Canada, or to the Indian Ocean Studies Group
(IOSG) at the U.S. Naval War College to demonstrate that the notion -- the concept -- of
an Indian Ocean Region has an analytical reality.
That an IOR has an objective reality for policy makers and official policy
implementers is equally demonstrable. The Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional
Cooperation (IOR-ARC), founded in 1995 and consisting of 18 Indian Ocean state
members, is a case in point. So too is the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS),
founded in 2008 and numbering 32 littoral state members. More on these two
organizations is forthcoming below.
The Indian Ocean Region: Geographical Extent and Modern History
For purposes of this paper and consistent with common usage, the "Indian
Ocean Region" is defined as the Ocean itself, together with all islands therein, as well
as all littoral states. Included from west to east are the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the
Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea, and the Timor and
Arafura Seas. The IOR extends roughly from 30 degrees north latitude to 50 degrees
south latitude. Its western and eastern boundaries are best defined by the rim lands of
northeast, east, and southern Africa and by the Malay Peninsula, Indonesian
Archipelago, and island continent of Australia. Access points to the India Ocean are
through the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the northwest, around the Cape of
Good Hope in the southwest, through the Strait of Malacca, lesser Indonesian straits, or
the Torres Strait -- all in the eastern Indian Ocean, or by passing south of Australia in
the extreme southeast. The Indian Ocean, the world's third largest ocean, is bounded
by five continents and inclusive of nearly 40 sovereign states. (See map below.)
The "modern" history of the Indian Ocean began with the rounding of the
southern tip of the continent of Africa by Vasco Da Gama in 1497 enroute to India,
which he reached near Calicut on the southwest coast in May 1498. Portugal's
consequent dominance in the region was eclipsed successively by the Netherlands,
France, Great Britain, and the United States. The British maintained the longest
Western presence and, arguably, left the longest-lasting legacy. The U.S. influence
since World War II, and more conspicuously since the British withdrawal from "east of
Suez" -- announced in 1968 and essentially completed by 1972 -- has been in a sense a
continuation of the British legacy, albeit with a Yankee accent.
5
SOURCE: International Maritime Bureau
6
Origins of the Current Indian - Chinese Geopolitical Competition in the IOR
India
For most of its 65 years of independence, India's defense and national security
priorities were focused on the subcontinent itself, with Pakistan the chief adversary and
opponent in two major wars. Prime Minister Nehru, during the early years of
independence, and the early years of the Cold War, was passionately determined to
maintain India's hard-won independence. That in turn led him to a foreign policy of
nonalignment, though to Western democracies, especially the U.S., it looked like an
inexplicable and frustrating neutrality in the contest with Soviet authoritarianism.
India's disastrous and humiliating border conflict with the Peoples Republic of
China in 1962 "marked nothing short of a watershed in the structure and conduct of
India's foreign and security policies. In the immediate aftermath of this military debacle
Nehru overcame his staunch objections to military spending . . . . India embarked on a
substantial program of military modernization."6 The navy received only a modest
increase, while India committed to the creation of a million-man army with 10 new
mountain divisions, as well as a 45-squadron air force with supersonic aircraft.7
In 1971, "despite India's professed commitment to nonalignment it signed a 20year pact of 'peace, friendship and cooperation' with the Soviet Union" 8 ostensibly to
protect its northern flank from China. The breakaway of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in
the same year, abetted by New Delhi, established India as the strongest power by far
on the subcontinent, thus allaying some of the anxieties vis-a-vis the rump state of
Pakistan, although Kashmir continued to fester.
The third period in India's foreign policy history according to Ganguly and Pardesi
began with the collapse of the Soviet Union (almost exactly 20 years into the 20-year
treaty of peace, friendship, and cooperation!). Not only had the transformation of the
international system left India without its Soviet patron, New Delhi was faced
simultaneously with a financial crisis resulting from circumstances surrounding the
Persian Gulf War of 1991. India had depleted its treasury reserves by buying highpriced spot market oil; it was forced to repatriate over 100,000 workers from the Gulf on
short notice, and, with their return to India, their remittances to the Indian treasury
ceased. The confluence of these three developments placed the country in dire
financial straits.9
6
Sumit Ganguly and Manjeet S. Pardesi, "Explaining Sixty Years of India's Foreign Policy," India Review, vol. 8, no. 1
(January-March 2009), Routledge reprint, p. 8.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., p. 9.
9
Ibid., p. 11.
7
In a fortuitous turn of events, India's financial crisis of the early 1990s induced
erstwhile Finance Minister (and current Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh to advocate
dramatic changes to the country's domestic and international economic policies.10 By
reducing or eliminating a tangled set of regulations, licensing requirements, permits, and
quotas that had not only stifled domestic economic growth but virtually shut out
foreigninvestors, India set its economy on a path that has resulted in remarkable growth
over the past two decades. With the move away from virtual autarky to increasing
interdependence (two-way trade) within the global economy and growing reliance on
imported energy to fuel its booming economic growth, Indian defense planners began to
devote more of the national security budget to the navy.
The election of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to government
in March 1998 resulted in a 14 percent increase in overall defense spending in its first
defense budget (1998-99). The navy received a still bigger increase of 17 percent,
bringing its overall share to a new high of 14.5 percent.11 "There was a sense of the
key strategic space to be won or lost in the Indian Ocean, to be controlled by India or
controlled by others."12 A May 1998 internal study by the navy emphasized that "the
Indian Navy must have sufficient maritime power not only to be able to defend and
further India's maritime interests, but also to deter a military maritime challenge posed
by any littoral nation, or combination of littoral nations of the Indian Ocean Region
(IOR), and also to be able to significantly raise the threshold of intervention or coercion
by extra-regional powers"13 -- the last phrase, a-not-so-veiled reference to China in
particular, according to David Scott, cited below.
Indian governments since 1998, whether led by the (BJP), or the Congress Party
since 2004, have continued the transformation of the Indian navy from a coastal force
previously obsessed with Pakistan to a true "blue water navy" capable of distant and
extended operations within the Indian Ocean and beyond. By 2006, India had the
world's fourth largest navy with 137 ships, including an aircraft carrier with 55 aircraft
embarked, submarines, and advanced stealth frigates.14 As of 2012, the Indian Navy
has 15 submarines, of which one has nuclear propulsion; one aircraft carrier; 10
destroyers; 10 frigates; 26 corvettes; eight mine-sweepers; 17 amphibious vessels; and
49 logistics and support vessels.15
10
Ibid., p. 12.
11
David Scott, "India's 'Grand Strategy' for the Indian Ocean: Mahanian Visions," Asia-Pacific Review, vol 13, no. 2
(2006), p. 107.
12
Ibid.
13
Indian Navy, Strategic Defence Review: The Maritime Dimension, 20 May 1998, p. 34, as quoted in Scott, op.cit.
14
Scott, "India's 'Grand Strategy' for the Indian Ocean," p. 98.
15
International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2012, U.K.: Routledge Journals, pp.244-45.
8
Remaining topics to be addressed to complete this paper:

Origins of the Current Indian - Chinese Geopolitical Competition in the IOR
China

Current Nature and Status of the Sino-Indian IOR Competition
China's "String of Pearls"
India's "Necklace of Diamonds"


Future Prospects for the Competition
Regional and Global Implications of the Sino-Indian Naval Competition
in the Indian Ocean Region
Potential Negative Consequences
Potential Positive Consequences

Author's Conclusions
9