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Reconverting the ‘IOR pond’ into India’s traditional sphere of influence – Firstpost

Reconverting the ‘IOR pond’ into India’s traditional sphere of influence – Firstpost



Coming as it does in the aftermath of the continuing developments along the northern land border, especially Bangladesh and Myanmar, New Delhi seems to have made substantial strategic gains in the southern Indian Ocean, which too had become a source of Chinese threat. The recent Delhi visits by Sri Lanka’s new president, Anura Kumara Dissanyake, preceded by his Maldivian counterpart, Mohamed Muizzu, may have opened up possibilities that, when logically followed up by the parties concerned, can reconvert the shared Indian Ocean Region into India’s ‘traditional sphere of influence’.

India had lost the post-war ownership of the phraseology after the Cold War, especially following the unprecedented economic crisis of the late eighties. Looking back, it would seem successive governments had deliberately looked away when the international community, especially the nation’s new friends in the West, their analysts and journalists, deliberately or otherwise, stopped referring to the IOR in these parts as India’s ‘traditional sphere of influence’, or even anything resembling or closer to the phraseology.

Truth be acknowledged, the slide in this regard had begun at least a decade before traditional adversary China, in the midst of its seaside geo-strategic expansion to these parts, claimed that ‘the Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean’. It is another matter: China itself continues to claim ownership and title to the South China Sea and the East China Sea, despite strong protests and limited naval responses from littoral nations, especially some member nations of the ASEAN bloc.

Setting a trap

Today, after the state visits of the two southern neighbourhood leaders, respectively in December and October, India can hope for bilateral defence cooperation to ensure the security of the shared waters, especially involving non-regional powers like China. The US will remain an ‘Indian Ocean power’ owing to the pre-existence of the Diego Garcia military base, so will France, thanks to its continuing colonisation of the Reunion Island, at the mouth of what otherwise is the ‘Indian Ocean pond’, which runs all the way up to the Indian shores.

In fact, with strategic friends in the US and France and its own naval-cum-air presence in the Andaman and Lakshadweep Island groups, India can set a trap for any common adversarial power, throw a security threat to the nation from the seaside, and at the same time challenge its geo-strategic supremacy in the region. China fits the bill, and it is more than what Pakistan used to be in the decades past. At least, Pakistan did not have and could not have afforded a grandiose geo-strategic plan for the seas far away from its coasts. It is unlike China, which now has fiscal and technical capabilities for such muscle-flexing, the world across that was absent even at the height of the 1962 war, which it won against India, along the land border.

The question for the smaller Indian Ocean neighbours is simple. As Sri Lanka and Maldives, for instance, concluded in the first decade of this century, when the world was opening up to the post-Cold War geo-strategic realities centred on China, smaller nations like theirs needed to work on regional security but could not afford it in any way. Leaning towards regional power India, which has inherent compulsions to secure the shared waters, should be the natural thing to do.

Picking up an extra-regional player, or playing favourites between India and that other power, was not on, especially in the name of these nations asserting their sovereignty and sovereign rights to take strategic decisions uninfluenced by India. As they are finding it out over the past decade and more, it has only complicated their security scenario without securing them anything, starting with the traditional economic security, too, which India (alone) had provided mostly through the difficult phases in their post-Independence history.

Maritime security

In New Delhi recently, Maldives’ Defence Minister Ghassan Maumoon reiterated the known Maldivian position that ‘India is the first responder’ for Maldives. As the son of the nation’s longest-serving president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Ghassan was not only stating the official position of the incumbent government of President Mohamed Muizzu. He was also possibly speaking from his father’s experience, when India despatched the IAF to abort a coup bid through what is known as ‘Operation Cactus’ in 1988.

Ghassan Maumoon’s visit has also followed up on the ‘Vision’ document released during President Muizzu’s state visit in October. Official statements during Ghassan’s visit—his first one to India as defence minister—also spoke about India equipping (and empowering!) Maldives to ensure the nation’s maritime security. The two sides are also seamlessly working on various projects, including the $500 million Thilamale civilian sea-bridge and the Maldivian Coast Guard harbour and repair facility.

The joint statement issued at the end of Sri Lanka’s Dissanayake’s Delhi visit said more than the Vision Document released during predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe’s 2023 visit. There is a specific section on bilateral defence cooperation in the joint statement, which was not there in the Vision Document. Addressing a joint news conference, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about a defence cooperation agreement early on and also hydrological cooperation.

In between, the Maldives has also been reassuring New Delhi that the previous year’s permission for China to berth a ‘research ship’, otherwise a ‘spy ship’, was only for re-stocking and rotation of personnel and did not involve any hydrological research. It is not unlikely that before long, India engages Maldives in similar bilateral cooperation in hydrological studies, which the Muizzu government had refused to extend beyond the inherited three-year period last year.

Through all this, India seems to have deliberately drawn a distinction between bilateral agreements with smaller Ocean neighbours and the mandate of the larger ‘Colombo Security Conclave’ (CSC). From the looks of it, the CSC would remain restricted to regional cooperation, mostly in terms of non-traditional security concerns, including human security, cybersecurity, rescue operations, and accidental oil pollution.

Against this, defence cooperation, as understood, would be bilateral in nature. There seems to be a clear message that India is not attempting to misuse or abuse its location advantage and size(s) to emerge as a ‘regional power’ and dominate the neighbours. The second scenario, as imagined by some sections in these nations, is behind their constant demand for their governments asserting their sovereignty and sovereign rights.

By remaining proactive in supporting the region’s nations to explore seabeds for invaluable minerals that can change the fate of their sagging economies, New Delhi also seems to play a positive role in denying access to China, or any other extra-regional power, that wants to exploit the helplessness of such nations. India understands that smaller neighbours need support and assistance to become economically viable and that their sovereignty and territorial integrity are not for any extra-regional power to trifle within their moments of economic weakness, which remain periodic just now.

National consensus

Through all these, India has ground support from the people in the Maldives and more so Sri Lanka. They have understood the emotional bonding from across the ocean shores when it comes to rushing Covid-era medical care and subsequent economic assistance when the two nations got stuck in the middle. The bonding, they understand, is between the peoples, too, and goes beyond New Delhi’s security concerns, which are labelled as the Indian motive.

Because the peoples in these two nations acknowledge that India’s aid and assistance are altruistic and that their nations are not being made a pawn in New Delhi’s geo-strategic games, their governments, representing the will of those people, have also taken the cue. It will take some time for the parties concerned to straighten feathers that have ruffled over a period of time.

But the idea is for them to make it happen—and also institutionalise them in ways that they are not torpedoed by future governments in those countries. It is not an Indian concern. Whichever party or government is in power, the nation’s geo-strategic and geo-political positions are rarely challenged or altered. Despite domestic political upheavals to the contrary, there is a visible national consensus in economic and security matters.

Yet, India too will have to ensure that the presence and/or dominance of friendly powers in these parts does not interfere with its own revived national pride in projecting the shared IOR as New Delhi’s ‘traditional sphere of influence’. In this, the French presence in Reunion is less invasive than that of the US in Diego Garcia. No, it is not about the Cold War arrival of the US military in these parts, to a permanent base, and Nixon’s White House despatching the Seventh Fleet to stall or at least delay India’s victory in the momentous ‘Bangladesh War’, 1971.

Instead, it is about the US wanting to play a continual, independent role in these parts despite having offloaded its own geo-strategic responsibilities aimed at American dominance across the world to India. It is unlike what India had experienced during the Cold War era, when the erstwhile Soviet Union appreciated and abided by India’s position on matters in South Asia.

For India, to ensure regional security in the broader sense and sound genuine and independent and not be seen as imposing its relatively limited concerns on the neighbourhood, it has to ensure that not only an adversarial China but also a friendly US limit its geopolitical outreach and military presence. Rather, the US should align its policies and projects in the region to those of India, and not the other way round—which is what it looks like thus far.

Going beyond the Maldives and Sri Lanka, there is Mauritius, whose agreement with the one-time British colonial power to take ownership of the Chagos Islands, with Diego Garcia as the main attraction, has run into difficulties of its own, owing to a change of elected government in Port Louis. Senior policy aides of the US President-elect, Donald Trump, are unhappy with the unsigned agreement for their own reasons, while the Muizzu government in the Maldives has reopened claims to the Chagos, which the previous Solih dispensation had settled in favour of Mauritius.

All of it is going to take time and effort, and India seems prepared for a long haul, through the short and medium phases, at least. It is here that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent declaration that ‘India won’t be intimidated to conform’ and that there can be ‘no veto on our choices’ would come to be tested—and also come to be of great use!

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.



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