Sea Control - Sea Control 276 - India's Strategy for the Indian Ocean Region with Dr. Rohan Mukherjee

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Links1. "Keeping China Out, the United States In, and Pakistan Down: India’s Strategy for the Indian Ocean Region," by Dr. Rohan Mukherjee, Asia Policy, Volume 16, Number 3, July 2021. 

Hey folks, Sherrod here. Today I'm joined by Dr. Rohan Mukherjee, and we'll be discussing India's strategy for the Indian Ocean region. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. We just launched the call for submissions for the SimSec Forum for Authors and Readers over at the main website. If there is a particular piece that you enjoyed this year, nominate it, and if it gets enough votes, you can hear the author present his or her work. We've also officially put out our call for articles for the end-of-year fiction contest. Go over to simsec.org for full details. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, Shemites, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Dr. Rohan Mukherjee. We'll be discussing his contribution to the Strategic Futures for the Indian Ocean Roundtable, entitled Keeping China Out, the United States In, and Pakistan Down, India's Strategy for the Indian Ocean Region. Rohan, welcome aboard. Could you please tell us a little bit about your background? Sure. Thank you for having me on the podcast. I am an assistant professor of political science at Yale and U.S. College in Singapore, which is an institution that's a partnership between Yale University in the United States

and the National University of Singapore. In Singapore, I focus on international relations, specifically rising powers and their impact on international order and security. At Yale Indian University College, I teach courses on introductory courses on IR, also an advanced seminar on India as a rising power. And finally, I'm designing a new course, which I'm pretty excited about for next semester, which is on technology and international security, which seems to be on everyone's minds these days. Yeah, I mean, we're just wrapping up Emerging Technologies Week here

at SimSec. So that fits right in with where we are as an organization. But thank you for coming on. As a reminder, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So first question to you then, Rohan, you started your piece by stating India is a rising power with gaps in the translation of its economic potential to its military power. So what are some of those gaps? Yeah, so I guess I should qualify that a little by saying there are obviously gaps, but these gaps in many areas have been sort of being addressed by, are being addressed by the government and other actors in India and are slowly sort of closing over time, but they still exist and I think are important to flag. I think on the

economy itself, there's all this talk of India having a demographic dividend, right? This idea that India has a very young population that in a sense can serve as the engine for economic growth. But on the other hand, you have sort of an economy that struggles to provide job opportunities for the large numbers of graduates that are coming out of the Indian higher education system. There are issues about quality of employment, quality of living and so on. So there's always this gap between sort of India's potential and its ability to translate that potential. It's not unusual. You see it in the area of private enterprise as well, where, you know, there's always been the massive growth of private enterprise and private savings and so on over the last 30 years

since the beginning of economic liberalization in India. But on the other hand, you have a lot of red tape regulation. The state is still really involved in the economy. It doesn't quite free up private enterprise the way you'd want it to. So there's always these gaps, you know, between intent and or goals and the translation of those goals. On the military side, I would say, you know, the Indian armed forces are fairly battle-ready and hardened, but they're often bogged down by sort of bloated, you know, bloat in terms of salaries and pensions. They have issues with regard to excessive dependence on imports. You know, there's a sort of struggling domestic defense industry that's trying to get off the ground, and the

government's trying really hard to sort of push it. There are procurement issues, you know, mired in delays, corruption, allegations of corruption, and lots of politics. there are civil military issues as other people have highlighted where there's sort of excessive control by the civilian leadership in some areas while complete lack of attention to others and finally I think you know India's state building project and I think this is an important one still remains somewhat incomplete compared to other countries and I think this is a featured shares with China and Russia as well which is there are large parts of the country or not large but significant parts of the country that are still not yet within the ambit of state control

the way they would like it to be, you know, in the northeast part of the country, in Kashmir and so on. And so internal security occupies the armed forces to a great extent, which, you know, again, creates gaps between the ability of the armed forces to address external threats, their doctrines and what they can actually do. So that's really what I was going for when I was talking about the significant gaps. What are the external trends driving Indian strategy? So in the piece, I talk about the relative change in capabilities between the U.S. and China in this region. I think, as we all know, China's power and its ability to project power has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 30 years.

And this has shifted the balance of power in the region and made it harder for the United States to at least unilaterally deter China in the region, in the Indian Ocean region. And so other actors such as India have to share more of this burden, whereas earlier they might have relied on the U.S. to do all of it. And so in that sense, that's an important driver shaping India's sort of defense policy, national security efforts and so on. India has experienced the effects of China's drives firsthand. I mean, it's had an ongoing border dispute for the longest time with troop incursions happening frequently, even more so since the early 2010s and, of course, culminating most recently in the border standoff in Ladakh in 2020, which is still going on. This engagement is still in process. So China's BRI has expanded into India's neighborhood and taken a lot of India's neighbors into its sort of trajectory and sort of caused a loosening of regional dependencies on India.

So India has to now worry about whether its neighbors will remain within its sphere of influence or not. And of course, there's the imbalanced trade that India engages in with China, you know, in that India imports far more from China than it does, than it sends to China in terms of exports. Really some of the China's rights. Of course, there's India's ongoing rivalry with Pakistan, which features into this because Pakistan is one of China's closest allies and the sort of loosening of regional dependencies in South Asia. So what's behind your assertion that U.S. capabilities and interests in the Indian Ocean region are declining? I could buy that the capabilities might be declining, but the interest only seems to be increasing. So I think one has to separate the, when we think of the Indo-Pacific, we have to separate the Indo from the Pacific when we think of this particular question of interests. A naval presence, you know, does exist, of course, an American naval presence exists here. But I think there is a decline in interests, which will shape a lot of what's to come in the next few decades.

You know, as part of this broader exercise that I contributed to, Arzan Tharapore and David Brewster point out that, you know, in 1990, the Gulf, the Persian Gulf accounted for almost 25% of domestic oil consumption in the U.S. That's down to 5% now, right? So U.S. interests are naturally declining over time and sort of maintaining access to, you know, hydrocarbons in the region. There's an increase if you look at the U.S. prioritization of theaters. I mean, East Asia and Russia are clearly far more important. If you just look at the potential flashpoints, you have Taiwan, you have Hong Kong, you have the Senkaku Islands, you have the South China Sea. It's hard to see why the U.S. would prioritize the Indian Ocean region when everything's happening, all the action is, in a sense, in the Pacific, right, or in that theater, in the South and East China Seas. And finally, I think the most recent events, right, the exit from Afghanistan means, you know, a lower U.S. presence, less need for military and logistical support in the Northwestern Indian Ocean region.

and so you know in some sense we should I expect at least that U.S. interest in this region even through a domestic political lens will decline over time and lastly China is in a big way you know at this point at least winning the diplomatic and economic contest right I mean China's relations with countries in the Indian Ocean region is just growing steadily based on the back of sort of massive infrastructural investments capital inflows trade and so on So it's really hard for me to see. It's hard for me to sort of see whether the United States can really sustain that level of interest as it has in the past. Let me ask you a question, a follow up question here, not on what we discussed previously, but just about the lens that you view the region through. Because you started your answer by talking about the Arabian Gulf, and that is not something that I would typically associate.

I understand it as a peripheral concern when I consider the Indian Ocean region. But the way you address it is the very first thing that you bring up is like, do you consider that as a central portion of the Indian Ocean region and U.S. interest in that region? Not necessarily. I think it is important in that a lot of shipping passes through that region. And for the United States, that has been always an important thing. But part of the goal of sort of the U.S. naval presence in the region, it was always focused in that region to ensure the security of those sea lines in some sense. And so that's why I sort of started there, kind of thinking about how to separate geopolitically the Indian Ocean from the Pacific Ocean in some sense. For me, the boundaries start, you know, in a sense, on the western coast of Africa, the Gulf, and then moving, you know, further, I'm sorry, the eastern coast of Africa and the Gulf and moving further eastward, you know, up to at least the Malacca Straits, I would say are the Indian Ocean region. And so that's the domain that I'm thinking of when I think of U.S. interests at times.

And what's your assessment of the Indian Navy's ability to contribute in a conflict in that region with China? Yeah, this is a complex question with probably a lot of moving parts and parts that are changing pretty quickly over time. So I guess a lot would depend on what domain that conflict would take place in. I mean, at the moment, given the standoff in the Himalayas, a few Indian strategists are arguing that India should somehow horizontally escalate by interdicting Chinese shipping or taking some ascending flotillas into the South China Sea and so on. I think those are bad ideas because the goal should not be to escalate a conflict or a potential situation in China. And also because the Indian Navy is not very well equipped yet for sustained out-of-area operations. So to actually go into the South China Sea and kick things off is not the best response to Chinese troop incursions in Ladakh, right? So having said that, I think within the northern regions of the Indian Ocean, India has invested heavily in sort of patrolling checkpoints, maritime domain awareness, network of radars, their surveillance aircraft and so on, acquiring from the United States as well.

And so in that sense, India is increasingly well equipped to inflict costs on any PLA Navy effort to coerce countries in India's maritime neighborhood. So this, I would say, is largely a sea denial strategy. um of course the indian navy actually desires to control and sees it as something very valuable uh it's but it's much less clear to me that they can actually dominate any portion of the indian ocean region for a sustained period of time or for that matter engage in expeditionary missions right um with offensive intent so so there's still there's still significant gaps in what the navy can do but again that is something that's changing you know with aircraft carriers coming online a strong argument for a third aircraft carrier in india right now there's

being the strong debate at least. So in a maritime conflict, I think India would maximize its chances much more by working with like-minded navies like the US, Japan and Australia to push back a Chinese advance. And the Chinese advance would in any case be quite stretched in this region,

given that China's only base is in Djibouti. And so in that sense, India would have a natural home base advantage, but the ability to prosecute an actual conflict would require, I think, interoperability with other navies, which is what India is investing in through a host of exercises and other efforts. You described India as having developed into a sovereignty hawk in the years following the end of the Cold War. What does that phrase mean?

And has your assessment changed since Modri took power? Yeah, so I think that there are sort of two broad understandings of sovereignty the way I see it in the international system. One is the sort of classical Westphalian, very absolute understanding of sovereignty, which is that a state should have absolute control of what goes on within its borders. The other is the more contingent idea, I think, that's championed more by Western countries like the United States or Canada, which is that sovereignty is contingent, that it's contingent on a state's ability to treat its citizens' basic human rights with respect in the sense that don't kill your own citizens. It's really quite simple. So India, I think, takes a very West

failing approach. And again, in this, it is like Russia and China in this regard as well, because of the sort of variable control that India has on its more peripheral territory. So within its own territory, the more peripheral regions, there are a number of secessionist movements, insurgencies and so on that are active in these regions. I think India is wary of endorsing anything that looks like humanitarian intervention or responsibility to protect and so on, multilateral peacekeeping, because there's a worry that it always might be turned around against India. However, during the Cold War, India was actually quite active in intervening in other countries. So if you think about Bangladesh in 1971, the Bangladesh War,

you think about Sri Lanka in the 1980s, the Maldives coup of 1988, where India was invited to intervene. So in a sense, it's an interesting contrast, because after you have that during the Cold War, and then you have the post-Cold War moment, or the post-Cold War decades, let's say now, where India has been extremely reluctant to directly intervene in other countries. It didn't really directly militarily intervene in the Sri Lankan civil war as it ended in the mid-2000s. It stayed away from the Maldives, militarily at least, through repeated political crises between 2012 and 2018. And so in a sense, it's turned into what I would call a sovereignty hawk, and that one that jealously guards sovereignty. Now, with Prime Minister Modi coming in,

that may again change. We've seen, I think, the Doklam crisis of 2017, where Indian and Chinese troops kind of faced off at the tri-junction of the border with Bhutan was very interesting because Indian troops actually crossed the international boundary to sort of challenge Chinese troops or at least stand off against them on a plateau that was actually contested by China and Bhutan, right? So in a sense, that was a violation of sovereignty, although it wasn't described as that in the media or elsewhere. Similarly, in 2019, when there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir, India launched an airstrike

on Pakistan's soil, right? This was, again, the first time since the war of 1971 that India had struck Pakistani soil. Prior to that, attacks had been on terrorist camps within sort of Pakistan-occupied parts of Kashmir, right? So, again, we see this sort of growing willingness to transgress boundaries for the sake of national security. I think we might see more of that with the Ladakh crisis and, you know, if it sort of heats up again. And so I think that is accompanied by the internal consolidation of India's state building project under Modi. And I think these two things are connected in that if you see the legal changes to the status of Pishni that took place in October 2019, where the statehood of the region was dissolved and it became a directly federally controlled territory, right?

So as India becomes more secure in its ability to hold on to its part, the sort of peripheries, its extremities, I think it will be more comfortable with also not being a sovereignty halt. So things are, I think, changing on that front. What's the danger for India in attempting to set red lines in the Indian Ocean region, whether that's red lines oriented in the direction of China or Pakistan? The danger, I mean, obviously, I think I mentioned this in my piece as well. Political relationships are a very key part of the equation for India's Indian Ocean strategy, primarily because it is the weaker power compared to China. India does not have the very deep

pockets that China has to throw cash around in the region. What it does have is a set of historical and political relationships with countries and cultural ties that it can leverage in a sense to preempt or to at least block or impose costs on China's diplomatic inroads in the region. And so So those relationships would be jeopardized if India started to set down red lines, because red lines mean you engage your credibility in a sense. And if the adversary crosses those red lines, you have to take action. And often the third parties that are implicated in that are smaller countries. You know, if we think about the Cold War and the proxy wars that were fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, the biggest sufferers in that were many countries, poor countries in different parts of the world.

But similarly, I think in India's neighborhood, smaller, weaker countries would become the focus of it. And so the scenario that is laid out in the exercise that I was a part of suggested a future scenario where India sets down a red line with the Maldives and China gets involved and India actually engages in a military intervention in the Maldives. And so that kind of a scenario would certainly alienate India's neighbors, but also I think alienate India's great power partners like France and the United States and Japan and so on, who want stability in the region. They want India to be, as they say, a net security provider. They don't want India to be causing trouble while responding to China. They want India to deter China without escalating conflict. So these are, I think, some of the dangers that setting down red lines can bring. What's the West of Singapore scenario? Yeah, so this was entirely designed by Arzan Tharapur and David Brewster in the exercise. I thought it's very interesting. It's essentially a future scenario where they lay out a bunch of conditions that come to fruition, including a budgetary crisis in the United States post-COVID, a new nuclear deal with Iran, a labor government in the United Kingdom that returns the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, which then asks for Diego Garcia to be evacuated. and China sort of becoming more aggressive around Taiwan, right?

So there's a set of conditions that, in a sense, is pushing the United States out of the Indian Ocean region and drawing it more into the Pacific region because of all the stuff that's going on. And so the U.S. in this scenario responds by withdrawing the bulk of its military forces from west of Singapore, right? So they all move to the Pacific,

and this includes withdrawing from the Persian Gulf and David Garcia, and reallocating resources to the Western Pacific. And the implication for that, that I was considering was, what does it mean for regional partners of the United States, like India and Australia, but really, in my case, India. And in that situation, you know, what happens if something like Ladakh really sparks up? What would India do when it can no longer rely on, let's say, the US presence in the Indian Ocean, while being engaged in a crisis with China. And if, you know, China starts moving in a larger way into the Indian Ocean, that really creates problems in a West of Singapore scenario. And how would you describe India's role in the

Quad? I think India plays an important role in the Quad. It's obviously a regional security provider. It wants to be that over time. It's happy to sort of take on some of those costs and burdens of countering and competing with China's rise. It's the only country that's currently eyeball to eyeball with Chinese forces, you know, in the Himalayas. Its proximity gives significant potential to the Quad to impose costs on China, again, to deter China from taking certain actions. India's growing power also allows it to engage diplomatically with countries in the Indian Ocean region. So in that sense, I would say India is quite a heavyweight in the Quad. It's also nuclear power. That's something to remember with regard to Japan and Australia, which are not.

And so it can also engage in nuclear deterrence to some extent. India was initially skeptical of the Quad. And when it first came about, or the early, early stages of the Quad, which was in 2007, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggested it, it was hesitant to include Australia in the Malabar, naval exercises, but has since come around. And I think that's really a signal of how much of this is driven by India's relationship with China. I think that if India's relations with China were not so sour at the moment

or hadn't soured over the course of the last decade, India would not be so heavily invested in the Quad. I think the economic partnership with China is so valuable that India doesn't necessarily want to go all in on the Quad. So in that sense, this is a delicate balancing act that India's engaged in, which is obviously in the moments when things are bad with China,

India really invests a lot more in the port, right? But when things are not so bad or when there are moments that India can reconcile. So if you remember after the Doklam crisis of 2017, Prime Minister Modi and Xi Jinping engaged in two high-level summits, one in 2018, one in 2019, trying to sort of put the relationship back on track.

That didn't work because then you had the incursions of 2020. And so in some sense, India has realized that until the relations with China are better, it has to invest in a sort of strategic counterweight. And the Quad is the perfect one for that. And then final question, what part of India's strategy is aimed specifically at keeping Pakistan down? I think there's probably a couple of things here. One is deterring any sort of adventurism by the Pakistan military of the kind that we saw during the Kargil War of 1999.

There was the Indian establishment was taken by surprise. So you want to kind of deter those kinds of challenges. The other is to punish Pakistan for sort of allowing terrorist groups to operate within its territory that target India in Kashmir, but also elsewhere in Indian territory. And to do that, I think India kind of, obviously, aside from the military options such as airstrikes and striking terrorist camps and all of that, also tries to lean on the U.S. to pressure Pakistan to curb its support for terrorism. And I think the U.S. has its own interest in doing that. But of course, there is a limit to how far the U.S. can push an ally like Pakistan that has been so critical to its operations in Afghanistan and so on. India also leans, tries to lean on multilateral frameworks, trying to sort of influence the IMF or the Financial Action Task Force

to reduce Pakistan's access to, or to create disincentives for Pakistan to sort of sponsor terrorism in the region by trying to punish it financially by cutting off its access to loans and financial instruments. And so those are really, I guess, the tools that India has. But again, as India is a nuclear power, so is Pakistan. So it's really hard. Ultimately, there are limits to how much you can do to keep Pakistan down. And so while there are these efforts, the success of the strategy is still an open question. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Rohan Mukherjee.

Rohan, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? So I'm on Twitter. I tweet at Rohan underscore M-U-K-H. That's it, Rohan Muk. And I'm working on a book actually that is due to come out next year, which looks at how the desire for status or symbolic equality with great powers

shapes rising power behavior towards an international order. So it's hopefully out in fall of 2022 with Cambridge University Press, and I'm really excited about that. So please look out for it. I look forward to reading it and helping you publicize a little bit, and maybe you'll come on and talk with us about it. But thank you very much for joining us today. To the listeners, thank you for tuning in.

We'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © transcript Emily Beynon