Time to Shift Focus to the Maritime Sphere

Context: India’s excessive focus on the continental sphere since Independence has not yielded great returns in terms of secure borders, healthy relations with its neighbours, or deterrence stability vis-à-vis adversaries. The need of the hour is to change the strategic focus.

Current state of India’s Continental Strategy:

• Ongoing border stalemate: China is pushing back India’s claims on Aksai Chin and India is defending against China’s expansive territorial claims and their slow but aggressive implementation.

• Heating up of Pakistan Front: Cease?re violations on the Line of Control (LoC) have spiked since last year, as has the in?ltration of terrorists across the LoC. 

• Change in the status of Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan’s alternation of its political map has made the contestation between the two fiercer.

• Collusion between Pakistan and China: to contain and pressurize India from both sides.

• Changes in Afghanistan: 

• Withdrawal of the United States: means a loss of a valuable friend in the region.

• Rise of Taliban: with whom India has very little contact, may turn the geopolitical tide against India.

• Converging interests of Pakistan, China and Russia: in the region due to the withdrawal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

• Dampened “Mission Central Asia”: The change of the geopolitical landscape in Afghanistan and the frictions in Iran- India relations will further dampen India’s ‘Mission Central Asia’. 

Way Forward:

• Dealing creatively with India’s continental dilemmas: India must seek ways and political will to break up the ‘nutcracker situation’ that the Pakistani and Chinese strategies have forced India into.

• Dealing with Pakistan: Pressure from Pakistan could be eased by addressing the Kashmir question.

• Creating a modicum of normalcy on the LoC: by activating existing mechanism for, E.g. Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) hotline. 

• Shifting focus from continental sphere to the maritime sphere: Fast-tracking on both ideational and practical fronts
• India had started to think in this direction with the Ministry of External A?airs (MEA) establishing a new division to deal with the Indo-Paci?c in April 2019. 

• Advantages of Maritime Strategy:

• Wide open opportunities: for India to undertake coalition building, rule setting and other forms of strategic exploration.
• India will benefit from being at the center of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical imagination in the midst of ocean-spanning from “the shores of Africa to that of Americas”.
• Growing great power interest in the maritime sphere: For, E.g. Germany recently released its Indo-Pacific guidelines following the example of France. 
• It will enhance India’s influence and potentially checkmate the Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea region by attracting the Euro-American powers to push back Chinese unilateralism.

• Presence of trade lines and complex geopolitics around it makes maritime space lot more important to China, due to the presence of maritime chokepoints.

• • • India’s Indo-Pacific engagements will help dissuade Beijing from salami-slicing Indian territory in the high Himalayas.

• Think Beyond the Divisions:
  • Ideate on the current and future maritime challenges, consolidate military and non-military tools, engage strategic partners and publish a comprehensive vision document on the Indo-Pacific. 

• The decision in 2019 to elevate the Quad meetings among India, Japan, the United States and Australia to the ministerial level is a step-in right direction.

• Appoint a special envoy for Indo-Pacific affairs.

Conclusion: It is high time that India shifted its almost exclusive focus from the continental space to the maritime space, stitching together a maritime grand strategy.