Time to Shift Focus to the Maritime Sphere

The Hindu     1st October 2020     Save    

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.