Naval War College Review

Volume 59
Article 6
Number 2 Spring

2006

India in the Indian Ocean

Donald L. Berlin

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Berlin: India in the Indian Ocean

INDIA IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

Donald L. Berlin

O ne of the key milestones in world history has been the rise to prominence
of new and influential states in world affairs. The recent trajectories of
China and India suggest strongly that these states will play a more powerful role
1
in the world in the coming decades. One recent analysis, for example, judges
that “the likely emergence of China and India . . . as new global players—similar
to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United
States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape, with
2
impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the two previous centuries.”
India’s rise, of course, has been heralded before—perhaps prematurely. How-
ever, its ascent now seems assured in light of changes in India’s economic and
political mind-set, especially the advent of better economic policies and a diplo-
macy emphasizing realism. More fundamentally, In-
Dr. Berlin is a professor at the College of Security dia’s continued economic rise also is favored by the
Studies, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hono-
lulu. Dr. Berlin served with the Defense Intelligence scale and intensity of globalization in the contempo-
Agency from 1976 to 1998 and has been a faculty mem- rary world.
ber of the Joint Military Intelligence College in Wash-
India also is no longer geopolitically contained in
ington, D.C. He was commissioned a second lieutenant
in the U.S. Air Force in 1968, serving in a variety of South Asia, as it was in the Cold War, when its alignment
assignments, including duty in air intelligence in the with the Soviet Union caused the United States and
Vietnam War and as a reserve intelligence officer at
China, with the help of Pakistan, to contain India.
National Defense University. He holds a PhD in inter-
national studies from the University of South Carolina Finally, the sea change in Indian-U.S. relations, espe-
(1982) and an MA in national security and strategic cially since 9/11, has made it easier for India to enter into
studies from the Naval War College (1998).
close political and security cooperation with America’s
Naval War College Review, Spring 2006, Vol. 59, No. 2 friends and allies in the Asia-Pacific.3

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 59

Much of the literature on India has focused on its recent economic vitality, es-
pecially its highly successful knowledge-based industrial sector. The nature and
implications of India’s strategic goals and behavior have received somewhat less
4
attention. Those implications, however, will be felt globally—at the United Na-
tions, in places as distant as Europe and Latin America, and within international
economic institutions. It also will be manifest on the continent of Asia, from Af-
ghanistan through Central Asia to Japan. Finally, and most of all, the rise of India
will have consequences in the broad belt of nations from South Africa to Austra-
lia that constitute the Indian Ocean littoral and region.
5
For India, this maritime and southward focus is not entirely new. However, it
has been increasing due to New Delhi’s embrace of globalization and of the
global marketplace, the advent of a new Indian self-confidence emphasizing se-
curity activism over continental self-defense, and the waning of the Pakistan
problem as India’s relative power has increased. Other, older, factors influencing
this trend are similar to those that once conditioned British thinking about the
defense of India: the natural protection afforded the subcontinent by the Hima-
layan mountain chain, and the problem confronting most would-be invaders of
long lines of communications—the latter a factor that certainly impeded Japan’s
6
advance toward India in World War II.
The December 2004 tsunami that devastated many of the coasts of the Indian
Ocean (IO) turned the world’s attention to a geographic zone that New Delhi in-
7
creasingly sees as critically important and strategically challenging. The publi-
cation of India’s new Maritime Doctrine is quite explicit on the central status of the
Indian Ocean in Indian strategic thought and on India’s determination to consti-
tute the most important influence in the region as a whole. The appearance of
this official paper complements a variety of actions by India that underscore
8
New Delhi’s ambitions and intent in the region.

WHY THE OCEAN IS INDIAN

Why does New Delhi care about the Indian Ocean region? India is, after all, a
large nation, a subcontinent in itself. Why is it driven to exercise itself in a larger
arena, one larger in fact than the South Asian subregion?

The reality is that while India is a “continental” power, it occupies a central posi-
tion in the IO region, a fact that will exercise an increasingly profound influence
on—indeed almost determine—India’s security environment. Writing in the
1940s, K. M. Pannikar argued that “while to other countries the Indian Ocean is
only one of the important oceanic areas, to India it is a vital sea. Her lifelines are

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Berlin: India in the Indian Ocean
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW

concentrated in that area, her freedom is dependent on the freedom of that wa-
ter surface. No industrial development, no commercial growth, no stable politi-
9
cal structure is possible for her unless her shores are protected.” This was also
emphasized in the most recent Annual Report of India’s Defence Ministry, which
noted that “India is strategically located vis-à-vis both continental Asia as well as
10
the Indian Ocean Region.”
From New Delhi’s perspective, key security considerations include the acces-
sibility of the Indian Ocean to the fleets of the world’s most powerful states; the
large Islamic populations on the shores of the ocean and in its hinterland; the oil
wealth of the Persian Gulf; the proliferation of conventional military power and
nuclear weapons among the region’s states; the importance of key straits for India’s
maritime security; and the historical tendency of continental Asian peoples or
powers (the Indo-Aryans, the Mongols, Russia) to spill periodically out of Inner
11
Asia in the direction of the Indian Ocean. The position of India in this environ-
ment has sometimes been compared to that of Italy in the Mediterranean, only
on an immense scale. To this list may be added the general consideration that, in
the words of India’s navy chief, Indians “live in uncertain times and in a rough
neighborhood. A scan of the littoral shows that, with the exception of a few
countries, all others are afflicted with one or more of the ailments of poverty,
backwardness, fundamentalism, terrorism or internal insurgency. A number of
territorial and maritime disputes linger on. . . . Most of the conflicts since the end
12
of the Cold War have also taken place in or around the [Indian Ocean region].”
Confronted by this environment, India—like other states that are geographi-
cally large and also ambitious—believes that its security will be best guaranteed
by enlarging its security perimeter and, specifically, achieving a position of in-
fluence in the larger region that encompasses the Indian Ocean. As one promi-
nent American scholar recently noted, “Especially powerful states are strongly
13
inclined to seek regional hegemony.”
Unsurprisingly, New Delhi regards the Indian Ocean as its backyard and
deems it both natural and desirable that India function as, eventually, the leader
and the predominant influence in this region—the world’s only region and
ocean named after a single state. This is what the United States set out to do in
North America and the Western Hemisphere at an early stage in America’s “rise
to power”: “American foreign policy throughout the nineteenth century had one
14
overarching goal: achieving hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.” Similarly,
in the expansive view of many Indians, India’s security perimeter should extend
from the Strait of Malacca to the Strait of Hormuz and from the coast of Africa
to the western shores of Australia. For some Indians, the emphasis is on the
northern Indian Ocean, but for others the realm includes even the “Indian
15
Ocean” coast of Antarctica.

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 61

In this same vein, one—probably not atypical—Indian scholar judges that “a

rising India will aspire to become the regional hegemon of South Asia and the
Indian Ocean Region, and an extraregional power in the Middle East, Central
Asia and Southeast Asia. Ceteris paribus, a rising India will try to establish re-
gional hegemony just like all the other rising powers have since Napoleonic
times, with the long term goal of achieving great power status on an Asian and
16
perhaps even global scale.”
India’s strategic elite, moreover, in some ways regards the nation as the heir of
the British Raj, the power and influence of which in the nineteenth century often
extended to the distant shores of the Indian Ocean, the “British Lake.” Writing
about the hill station and summer capital of Simla in that period, historian
James Morris has observed:
The world recognized that India was a great Power in itself. It was an Empire of its
own, active and passive. Most of the bigger nations had their representatives at Simla,

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and the little hill station on the ridge cast its summer shadow wide. Its writ ran to the
Red Sea one way, the frontiers of Siam on the other. Aden, Perim, Socotra, Burma,
Somaliland were all governed from India. Indian currency was the legal tender of
Zanzibar and British East Africa; Indian mints coined the dollars of Singapore and
Hong Kong.
It was from Simla, in the summer time, that the British supervised the eastern half of
their Empire. Upon the power and wealth of India depended the security of the east-
ern trade, of Australia and New Zealand, of the great commercial enterprises of the
Far East. The strength of India, so many strategists thought, alone prevented Russia
from spilling through the Himalayan passes into Southeast Asia, and the preoccupa-
17
tions of generals in Simla were important to the whole world.

Historian Ashley Jackson is even more explicit in highlighting the Indian di-
mension in all of this. He writes that
India under the Raj was a subimperial force autonomous of London whose weight
was felt from the Swahili coast to the Persian Gulf and eastward to the Straits of
Malacca. There was, in fact, an “Empire of the Raj” until at least the First World War,
in which Indian foreign policy interests were powerfully expressed and represented
in the Gulf and on the Arabian and Swahili coasts, often in conflict with other British
imperial interests.18

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this imperial “Indian” posture in the Indian Ocean re-
19
flects the strategic vision of many influential Indians today.
A second motive for India, and one obviously related to the foregoing, stems
from anxiety about the role, or potential role, of external powers in the Indian
Ocean. The late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru summed up India’s concerns
in this regard: “History has shown that whatever power controls the Indian
Ocean has, in the first instance, India’s sea borne trade at her mercy and, in the
second, India’s very independence itself.” This remains India’s view. The Indian
Maritime Doctrine asserts: “All major powers of this century will seek a toehold
in the Indian Ocean Region. Thus, Japan, the EU, and China, and a reinvigorated
Russia can be expected to show presence in these waters either independently or
through politico-security arrangements.” There is, moreover, “an increasing
tendency of extra regional powers of military intervention in [IO] littoral coun-
tries to contain what they see as a conflict situation.”
India’s concern about external powers in the Indian Ocean mainly relates to
China and the United States. The Sino-Indian relationship has improved since
India’s war with China in 1962 and the Indian prime minister’s 1998 letter to the
20
U.S. president justifying India’s nuclear tests in terms of the Chinese “threat.”
Most recently, the Chinese premier paid a state visit to India in April 2005, dur-
ing which the two sides agreed to, among various other steps, the establishment

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 63

of a “Strategic and Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Prosperity.” Chinese

and Indian naval units also exercised together for the first time in November 2005.
However, and notwithstanding the probably episodic progress registered of
late, China and India likely will remain long-term rivals, vying for the same strate-
gic space in Asia. Beijing, according to former Indian external affairs minister
Jaswant Singh, is the “principal variable in the calculus of Indian foreign and de-
21
fense policy.” In the words of one Indian scholar, China’s “rise will increasingly
challenge Asian and global security. Just as India bore the brunt of the rise of inter-
national terrorism because of its geographical location, it will be frontally affected
by the growing power of a next door . . . empire practicing classical balance-
22
of-power politics.”
Another observer has recently judged that “there is no sign of China giving up
its ‘contain India’ strategy which takes several forms: an unresolved territorial
dispute; arms sales to and military alliances with ‘India-wary countries’ (Paki-
stan, Bangladesh, Burma and now Nepal); nuclear and missile proliferation in
India’s neighborhood (Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia); and opposition to In-
23
dia’s membership in global and regional organizations.” Most recently, India’s
defense minister said in September 2005 that the Sino-Indian “situation has not
improved. Massive preparations and deployments by China in the Tibetan and
Sikkim border areas near Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin . . . has created
24
an alarming situation.”
Narrowing its focus to the IO, India cannot help but be wary of the growing
25
capability of China’s navy and of Beijing’s growing maritime presence. In the
Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, especially, New Delhi is sensitive to a variety of
Chinese naval or maritime activities that observers have characterized collec-
26
tively as a “string of pearls” strategy or a “preparation of the battlefield.” For
Beijing, this process has entailed achieving the capability, and thereby the op-
tion, to deploy or station naval power in this region in the future. A key focus in
this connection is Burma (Myanmar), where Chinese engineers and military
personnel have long been engaged in airfield, road, railroad, pipeline, and port
construction aimed at better connecting China with the Indian Ocean, both by
sea and directly overland.
Some of this activity, moreover, spills over onto Burma’s offshore islands,
including St. Matthews, near the mouth of the Malacca Strait, and the Coco
Islands (Indian until their transfer to Burma in the 1950s), in the Bay of Bengal.
On the latter, China is suspected of maintaining a communications monitoring
facility that collects intelligence on Indian naval operations and missile testing.
In addition to this “presence” in Burma, China is pursuing a variety of infra-
structure links with Southeast Asia through the Greater Mekong Subregion pro-
gram and is building container ports in Bangladesh at Chittagong, and in Sri

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Lanka at Hambantota—directly astride the main east-west shipping route

across the Indian Ocean. Elsewhere, and perhaps most ominously for India,
27
China is constructing a large new naval base for Pakistan at Gwadar.
India also remains somewhat nervous about the large U.S. military presence in
the Indian Ocean to India’s west—in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. India’s
Maritime Doctrine observes that “the unfolding events consequent to the war in
Afghanistan has brought the threats emanating on our Western shores into
sharper focus. The growing US and western presence and deployment of naval
forces, the battle for oil dominance and its control in the littoral and hinterland . . .
are factors that are likely to have a long-term impact on the overall security envi-
ronment in the [Indian Ocean region].” In similar fashion, the 2004–2005 Annual
Report of India’s Defense Ministry states, “The Indian Navy maintained its per-
sonnel and equipment in a high state of combat preparedness due to the contin-
ued presence of multinational maritime forces in the Indian Ocean Region
28
resulting in a fast pace of activities in the area.”
On the other hand, the continuing development of ties with the United States
lately seems to have moderated Indian sensitivity to the U.S. presence in the Ara-
bian Sea. In September and October 2005, for example, the two sides conducted
their first naval maneuvers—MALABAR 05—employing U.S. and Indian aircraft
carriers, and this occurred in the Arabian Sea. Many Indians, moreover, also rec-
ognize that because of Washington’s desire to draw closer to India in response to
overlapping “China” and “terrorism” concerns, the increased American role in
the Indian Ocean region lately has increased India’s “strategic space” and political-
military relevance. Any decrease in the level of U.S. involvement in the region
also would increase pressure here from China. Wariness about China also is a
factor in recent Indian efforts to increase Japan’s profile in the IO. This was most
recently made manifest by the March 2005 Indo-Japanese agreement to develop
29
jointly natural gas resources in the strategically sensitive Andaman Sea. In any
case, as one retired Indian diplomat recently commented, “asking outside pow-
ers to stay away is a pipe dream.”
Of particular note, this last realization has led New Delhi to discard its tradi-
tional rhetoric about the Indian Ocean as a “zone of peace.” That language,
along with “nonalignment” and a diplomatic approach marked by preachiness
and a “moral” dimension, were the policies of an India that was weak. That India
now belongs to history: “India has moved from its past emphasis on the power
30
of the argument to a new stress on the argument of power.”
A third factor animating Indian interest in the Indian Ocean region is anxiety
about the threat posed by Pakistan and, more broadly, Islam in a region that is
home to much of the world’s Muslim population. Formerly this may not have
been an important consideration. Today, however, Islamic civilization often

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 65

finds itself at odds with the West and with largely Hindu India, and this conflict
frequently will play out in the Indian Ocean region. India’s Maritime Doctrine,
for example, observed “the growing assertion of fundamentalist militancy fu-
eled by jihadi fervor are factors that are likely to have a long-term impact on the
overall security environment in the [Indian Ocean region].” In a similar vein, In-
dia’s naval chief recently declared that the “epicenter of world terrorism lies in
31
our [India’s] immediate neighborhood.” India, however, will approach these
matters pragmatically, as illustrated by New Delhi’s close ties with Iran.
A fourth motive for India in the Indian Ocean is energy. As the fourth-largest
economy (in purchasing-power-parity terms) in the world, and one almost 70
percent dependent on foreign oil (the figure is expected to rise to 85 percent by
2020), India has an oil stake in the region that is significant and growing (see fig-
ure). Some Indian security analysts foresee energy security as India’s primary
strategic concern in the next twenty-five years and believe it must place itself on
a virtual wartime footing to address it. India must protect its offshore oil and gas
fields, ongoing deep-sea oil drilling projects in its vast exclusive economic zone,
and an extensive infrastructure of shore and offshore oil and gas wells, pumping
stations and telemetry posts, ports and pipeline grids, and refineries. Addi-
tionally, Indian public and private-sector oil companies have invested several
billion dollars in recent years in oil concessions in foreign countries, many of
them in the region, including Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, and Burma. These in-
vestments are perceived to need military protection.

INDIAN OIL PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION, 1980–2003 The foregoing con-

siderations are the
2500
primary ones for
2000 India in the region.
However, there also
1500 are important com-
mercial reasons for
1000 New Delhi to pur-
sue a robust Indian
500 Ocean strategy. In
the Indian v iew,
0 “the maritime arc
Source: U.S. Energy Dept., “International Petroleum Information,” Energy Information Administration, www.eia.doe.gov/ f ro m t h e Gu l f
emeu/cabs/india.htm.
through the Straits
of Malacca to the
Sea of Japan is the equivalent of the New Silk Route, and . . . total trade on this arc
is U.S. $1,800 billion.” In addition, large numbers of overseas Indians live in the

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region—3.5 million in the Gulf and Arab countries; they, and their remittances,
32
constitute a factor in Indian security thinking.
In light of these interests, India is pursuing a variety of policies aimed at im-
proving its strategic situation and at ensuring that its fears in the theater are not
realized. To these ends, New Delhi is forging a web of partnerships with certain
littoral states and major external powers, according to India’s foreign secretary,
to increase Indian influence in the region, acquire “more strategic space” and
33
“strategic autonomy,” and create a safety cushion for itself. One observer states:
“To spread its leverage, from Iran . . . to Myanmar and Vietnam, India is mixing
innovative diplomatic cocktails that blend trade agreements, direct investment,
34
military exercises, aid funds, energy cooperation and infrastructure-building.”
In addition, India is developing more capable naval and air forces, and it is utiliz-
ing these forces increasingly to shape India’s strategic environment.

THE U.S. RELATIONSHIP

India’s pursuit of closer ties with its neighbors in the region and with key exter-
nal actors in the region is not haphazard. Rather, and as one would expect, India
is systematically targeting states that will bring India specific and tangible secu-
rity and economic benefits.
The relationship with the United States is intended to enhance and magnify
India’s own power, and it constitutes perhaps the most important measure that
is intended, inter alia, to promote the realization of India’s agenda in the Indian
Ocean. The United States, of course, is the key external actor in the IO and has a
more significant military presence there—in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea,
Pakistan, east and northeast Africa, Singapore, and Diego Garcia—than it did
even a few years ago. Thus, America’s raw power in the region has made it imper-
ative that New Delhi, if it is to achieve its own regional goals, court the United
States—at least for some time. The U.S. connection, of course, also promotes In-
dian goals unrelated to the Indian Ocean.
This developing relationship has been abetted by common concerns about
international terrorism, religious extremism, and the rise of China. It also is a
fundamental departure from the past pattern of Indian foreign policy. Since
President William Clinton’s visit to India in 2000 (the first visit by a president in
decades) and, more recently, the realization by the George W. Bush administra-
tion of the importance of a rising India, as well as the 11 September 2001 terror-
ist attack on the United States, the two nations have embarked on a broad
program of cooperation in a variety of fields, especially security. This coopera-
tion has included Indian naval protection of U.S. shipping in the Malacca Strait
in 2002, a close partnership in responding to the 2004 tsunami, combined mil-
itary exercises, U.S. warship visits to India, a dialogue on missile defense,

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 67

American approval of India’s acquisition of Israeli-built Phalcon airborne

warning and control systems, and an offer to sell India a variety of military hard-
ware, including fighter aircraft and P-3 maritime patrol planes.
Indo-U.S. ties recently have advanced with particular speed. In March 2005, no-
tably, an American government spokesman stated that Washington’s “goal is to
help India become a major world power in the 21st century. We understand fully the
35
implications, including military implications, of that statement.” This declaration
was followed, in June 2005, by a bilateral accord, a ten-year “New Framework for the
U.S.-India Defense Relationship,” that strongly implies increasing levels of coopera-
tion in defense trade, including coproduction of military equipment, cooperation
on missile defense, the lifting of U.S. export controls on many sensitive military
technologies, and joint monitoring and protection of critical sea lanes.36
George Bush hosted a summit with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July
2005, promising to strive for full civil nuclear cooperation with India. In effect, the
president recognized India as a de facto, if not de jure, nuclear-weapon state and
placed New Delhi on the same platform as other nuclear-weapon states. India, re-
ciprocating, agreed to assume the same responsibilities and practices as any other
country with advanced nuclear technology. These include separating military and
civilian nuclear reactors and placing all civilian nuclear facilities under Inter-
national Atomic Energy Agency safeguards; implementing the Additional Proto-
col (which supplements the foregoing safeguards) with respect to civilian nuclear
facilities; continuing India’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing; working
with the United States for the implementation of a multilateral Fissile Material
Cut-Off Treaty; placing sensitive goods and technologies under export controls;
and adhering to the Missile Technology Control Regime and to Nuclear Suppliers
Group guidelines. The American and Indian delegations also agreed to further
measures to combat terrorism and deepen bilateral economic relations through
greater trade, investment, and technology collaboration. The United States and
India also signed a Science and Technology Framework Agreement and agreed to
build closer ties in space exploration, satellite navigation, and other areas in the
commercial space arena.
Notwithstanding this dramatic advance in relations, which—assuming even-
tual congressional approval of implementing legislation—establishes a very close
United States–India strategic relationship, some bilateral problems will persist.
One is Pakistan.
The U.S. administration’s policy now is to expand relations with both India
and Pakistan but to do so along distinct tracks and in differentiated ways, one
matching their respective geostrategic weights. From New Delhi’s perspec-
tive, this is a distinct advance. Nonetheless, there will remain a residual Indian
suspicion that any American efforts to assist Pakistan to become a successful

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state will represent means, potential or actual, of limiting Indian power in South
37
Asia and the Indian Ocean. Such concerns have been diminishing; nonetheless,
New Delhi will try to weaken or modify U.S. policies intended to strengthen
United States–Pakistan ties, including continuing plans to sell the latter a large
38
package of military equipment.
Other lingering problems in Indo-U.S. relations include New Delhi’s close
ties to Iran, apparently continuing Indian reservations about the large U.S. mili-
tary presence in Southwest Asia and the Persian Gulf, India’s pronounced empha-
sis on preserving its “strategic autonomy,” and a persistent disinclination on
India’s part to ally itself with American purposes. In the latter regard, India, like
China, Russia, and the European Union, will remain uncomfortable with a uni-
polar world and will do what it can to promote a multipolar order—in which it is
39
one of the poles. New Delhi, therefore, will need to proceed adeptly to ensure
that ties with the United States continue to develop and expand in such a way that
40
its own policies and ambitions in the Indian Ocean are buttressed and advanced.

TOWARD THE ARABIAN SEAS AND THE AFRICAN LITTORAL

In addition to the U.S. relationship, New Delhi is seeking to increase India’s pro-
file almost omnidirectionally from India’s shores. These efforts are intended to
advance broad economic or security interests, including the “security” of the
various “gates” to the Indian Ocean, and to cultivate ties with the nations adja-
cent to these choke points: the Strait of Hormuz (Iran), the Bab el Mandeb (Dji-
bouti and Eritrea), the Cape of Good Hope and the Mozambique Channel
(South Africa and Mozambique), and the Singapore and Malacca straits (Singa-
pore and Thailand), among others. Certain Indian strategic and diplomatic ini-
tiatives also are aimed at gaining partners or client states once having strong ties
41
with colonial or precolonial India.
As noted above, India’s Maritime Doctrine underscores the importance of the
Arabian Sea region in the Indian view and highlights a growing attentiveness to
challenges and opportunities arising there. Efforts by New Delhi to advance the
Indian cause to its “near West” and in the “Arabian Seas” subregion have focused
mainly on Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and several African states.
Indo-Pakistani relations have improved since early 2003, when Prime Minis-
ter Atal Bihari Vajpayee extended a “hand of friendship” to Pakistan; in January
2004, the two sides launched a peace process. India’s aims in the current diplo-
matic interchange are to lessen the likelihood of an Indo-Pakistani military con-
flict, reduce pressure in Kashmir, and—especially—increase India’s freedom to
pursue great-power status and to maneuver elsewhere in South Asia, the region,
and the world.

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India does not expect an end, for a very long time at best, to difficulties in its
relations with Pakistan. It is hoping, however, to manipulate the relationship in a
manner that will leave India stronger and Pakistan weaker at the end of the day.
As India is inherently the stronger party, any “closer” relationship between India
and Pakistan will, in the long run, increase Indian leverage with respect to Paki-
stan and decrease Islamabad’s ability to disregard Indian interests. As one Indian
observer recently said, “India’s long-term interest lies in changing Pakistan’s be-
42
havior.” The termination of support for perceived anti-Indian terrorism and
more restraint in Islamabad’s embrace of China, and eventually even the United
States, are among India’s goals.
Elsewhere in the Arabian Sea, India already has enjoyed considerable success
in wooing Iran. That state, with its Islamic government, seems a strange partner
for democratic India, but the two lands have long influenced each other in cul-
ture, language, and other fields, especially when the Mughals ruled India. India
and Iran also shared a border until 1947. Iran sees India as a strong partner that
will help Tehran avoid strategic isolation. In addition, economic cooperation
with New Delhi (and Beijing) dovetails with Iran’s own policy of shifting its oil
and gas trade to the Asian region so as to reduce its market dependence on the
West. For India, the relationship is part of a broader long-term effort, involving
various diplomatic and other measures in Afghanistan and Central Asia, to en-
circle and contain Pakistan.
Obviously, New Delhi also regards the Iranian connection as helping with its
own energy needs. Deepening ties have been reflected in the growth of trade and
particularly in a January 2005 deal with the National Iranian Oil Company to
import five million tons of liquefied gas annually for twenty-five years. An In-
dian company will get a 20 percent share in the development of Iran’s biggest on-
shore oil field, Yadavaran, which is operated by China’s state oil company, as well
as 100 percent rights in the Juefeir oil field. India and Iran also have been cooper-
ating on the North-South Transportation Corridor, a project to link Mumbai—
via Bandar Abbas—with Europe. There also is discussion of the development of
a land corridor that would allow goods to move from India’s Punjab through Pa-
43
kistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan, then on to Europe. India and Iran also have been
pursuing an ambitious project to build a 2,700-kilometer pipeline from Iran
through Pakistan to India that would allow New Delhi to import liquefied natu-
44
ral gas. If finalized soon, the pipeline would be operational by 2010. (The
United States has warned India and Pakistan that the project could violate the
45
Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996.)
Security ties with Iran have been advancing as well. The parties have forged
an accord that gives Iran some access to Indian military technology. There are
reports—officially denied—that it also gives India access to Iranian military

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bases in the event of war with Pakistan. Other recent developments include the
first Indo-Iranian combined naval exercises and an Indian effort to upgrade the
Iranian port of Chahbahar, a move that could foreshadow its use eventually by
the Indian Navy. This latter initiative presumably also responds to China’s devel-
opment, noted above, of a Pakistani port and naval base at Gwadar, a hundred
46
miles east of Chahbahar.
The Indo-Iranian relationship is not without problems. Iran, of course, has
never been happy about India’s close ties with Israel. Most recently, Iran also was
angered by a 24 September 2005 vote cast by India in support of an International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution that potentially refers the Iranian nu-
clear weapons issue to the United Nations Security Council. The IAEA vote—
passed despite one “no” vote and abstentions from Russia, China, and Pakistan,
among others—follows several earlier hostile comments from India on the Ira-
nian nuclear issue, including one calling on Tehran to “honor the obligations
47
and agreements to which it is a party.”
The Indian vote was a blow to New Delhi’s relations with Tehran. However,
while it may augur a more circumscribed future for this connection, it is more
likely that the long-term effects of India’s vote will be limited. The bilateral rela-
tionship is too important for both parties, and New Delhi and Tehran will do
48
their best to ensure that ties remain on an even keel.
India, however, recently has tried to reduce its vulnerabilities in the oil-rich
but unstable Persian Gulf by moving beyond Iran and attempting to cultivate a
broader and more diverse set of relationships there. The most significant recent
development has been the new warmth in New Delhi’s ties with Saudi Arabia,
Iran’s traditional foe in the Gulf and India’s largest source of petroleum imports.
Reflecting the change in the temper of Indo-Saudi ties, the new Saudi king was
scheduled to be the main guest in New Delhi at the January 2006 Republic Day cele-
bration. This is a measure of the importance India attaches to its developing con-
nection to Riyadh and an initiative undoubtedly noticed by the leadership in Iran.
Moving farther westward, another key nexus is with Israel. While formal dip-
lomatic ties date only from 1992, the two states have had important connections
at least since the early 1980s. In recent years, numerous senior Israeli and Indian
officials have exchanged visits, and military relations have become so close as to
be tantamount to a military alliance. In 2003, following Pakistan’s shoot-down
of an “Indian” unmanned aircraft manufactured (and perhaps operated) by Is-
rael, President Pervez Musharraf complained “that the cooperation between India
and Israel not only relates to Pakistan, but the Middle East region as a whole.” Is-
rael is now India’s second-largest arms supplier after Russia, and India is Israel’s
49
largest defense market and second-largest Asian trading partner (after Japan).
According to one estimate, India will purchase some fifteen billion dollars’

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50
worth of Israeli arms over the next few years. The two sides recently agreed to a
combined air exercise pitting Israeli F-16s against Indian Su-30MKIs (an ad-
51
vanced derivative of the Soviet Su-27 Flanker).
Israel possesses an Indian Ocean footprint that apparently encompasses the
Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern entrance to the Red Sea and a key choke point, and
52
probably points beyond. India’s aim here is to link itself with another powerful
state whose sphere thus intersects its own. At the same time, New Delhi also seeks
the advanced military equipment, training, and other help—probably including
technology and advice on nuclear weapons and missiles—that Israel can sell or
provide. The official publication of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, World
Affairs, claims that India is acquiring technology from Israel for its Agni-III mis-
sile as well as for a miniature nuclear warhead—which India would need were it to
deploy a sea-based (i.e., Indian Ocean–based) strategic nuclear deterrent.
Elsewhere in the western Indian Ocean, India forged its first military relation-
ship with a Gulf state in 2002 when New Delhi and Oman agreed to hold regular
combined exercises and cooperate in training and defense production. They also
initiated a regular strategic dialogue and, in 2003, signed a defense cooperation
pact. The pact provides for the export and import of weapons, military training,
and coordination of security-related issues. India and the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) also have signed a Framework Agreement for Economic Coop-
eration and have begun negotiations on a free trade pact. New Delhi’s connec-
tions with Oman and the five other GCC states, however, still are relatively
undeveloped. As one Indian observer noted recently, “With our growing depen-
dence on imported oil and gas, stability in this region is crucial for our welfare
and well-being. Around 3.7 million Indian nationals live in the six GCC coun-
tries. They remit around $8 billion annually. . . . The time has, perhaps, come for
us to fashion a new and more proactive ‘Look West’ policy to deal with the chal-
53
lenges that we now face to our west.” A month earlier, India’s commerce minis-
ter offered the same view: “India has successfully pursued a ‘look-east’ policy to
come closer to countries in Southeast Asia. We must similarly come closer to our
54
western neighbors in the Gulf.”
Farther afield, India’s ties with the states of Africa’s Indian Ocean coast still
are limited but are expanding. Reminiscent of India’s precolonial relationship
with coastal Africa, New Delhi’s key connections today are with some of the
states in the Horn of Africa, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, and especially
the so-called African Islands, including Mauritius and the Seychelles. In the
Horn, India is providing the force commander and the largest contingent of
troops in the UN mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea. India also just concluded sig-
nificant naval maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden, featuring drills with allied Task
Force Horn of Africa units and a port call in Djibouti.

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At the other end of the continent, a noteworthy connection is developing

with South Africa, through bilateral arrangements and a trilateral (India–
Brazil–South Africa) relationship. Developments in the security arena are striking
and were underscored in late 2004 when the Indian Air Force conducted a com-
bined air-defense exercise with its South African counterpart (and with partici-
pating American, German, and British elements)—the first combined air exercise
ever conducted by India on the African continent. The participating Indian
Mirage 2000 fighters deployed from north central India and flew—with help from
55
newly acquired Il-78 aerial tankers—to South Africa via Mauritius. India and
South Africa conducted combined naval drills off the African coast even more
recently, in June 2005.
A visit by India’s president to Tanzania in 2004 led to an agreement for in-
creased training of Tanzanian military personnel in India and more frequent
56
calls by Indian warships at Tanzanian ports. Farther south, Mozambique and
India recently agreed to continue the joint patrols off the Mozambican coast be-
gun during the African Union summit in Maputo in 2003. The governments also
have begun to negotiate a defense agreement. New Delhi’s links with the African
Islands also are deepening. Since early 2003, India has been patrolling the exclu-
sive economic zone of Mauritius, and it is negotiating a “comprehensive eco-
nomic cooperation and partnership” agreement with what an Indian
57
spokesperson calls this “gateway to the African continent.” In an April 2005
state visit, the Indian prime minister also reiterated India’s commitment to “the
defense, security and sovereignty of Mauritius.” India also has initialed a memo-
randum of understanding with the Seychelles on defense cooperation: patrols of
that nation’s territorial waters, training of Seychelles military personnel, and—
in early 2005—Indian donation of a patrol vessel to help with coastal defense.
India, finally, has been very active in forging a close relationship with the Mal-
dives, a connection undoubtedly reinforced by India’s considerable material and
other assistance in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami.
These island-nation initiatives were strengthened in September 2005 by the
creation of a new defense ministry office headed by a two-star admiral charged
with assisting such states. According to the Indian naval chief, these are “vital to
India” and “friendly and well disposed,” but their security remains fragile, and
58
therefore India cannot afford to see any hostile or inimical power threaten them.

IN THE BAY OF BENGAL AND “FURTHER INDIA”

Complementing its westward orientation, India also has been diligent in culti-
vating closer relations with a variety of states in the Bay of Bengal and in South-
east Asia, often under the aegis of New Delhi’s “Look East” policy.59 That
approach, initiated in the early 1990s against the backdrop of a struggling Indian

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 73

economy and the sudden

disappearance of the Cold
War framework, has been
a stunning diplomatic
success. As a consequence,
India’s ties with most of
the states of the Bay of
Bengal and Southeast Asia,
except possibly Bangla-
desh, are better than they
were only a few years ago.
India has built a strong
relationship with its im-
mediate neighbor to the
south, Sri Lanka. “India
and Sri Lanka have forged
new, close bonds. There is a
new respect for India,” ac-
cording to one Sri Lankan
60
observer. This “respect,”
moreover, is sometimes re-
flected in reluctance in Co-
lombo to challenge New
Delhi, even on issues, such
as the Sethusamudram Ca-
nal project, that could ad-
versely affect important Sri
Lankan interests. The Indo–Sri Lankan connection was solidified most recently
by disaster relief in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, but a string of develop-
ments had already promoted close relations. A free trade agreement that came
into force in 2000 has doubled bilateral commerce and increased significantly
India’s share of Sri Lanka’s trade. In addition, the two neighbors are moving
steadily toward a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). A
defense cooperation agreement will soon expand Indian training programs for
Sri Lankan troops, strengthen intelligence sharing, supply defense equipment
(including transport helicopters) to Colombo, and refit a Sri Lankan warship.
These states’ first combined military exercise, EKSATH, took place in December
2004 and involved the Indian Coast Guard and Sri Lankan Navy. (New Delhi,
however, has apparently rejected a Sri Lankan request for combined naval pa-
trols against the Tamil “Sea Tigers.”)61

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A memorandum provides for Indian help in reconstructing the vital Palaly

airstrip on the Jaffna Peninsula in northern Sri Lanka. Colombo has rebuffed an
Indian request that the field be reserved for use solely by Sri Lanka and India;
however, taken in conjunction with a recent maritime surveillance pact, the ac-
62
cord could imply Indian utilization of that base eventually. New Delhi also has
agreed to build a modern highway between Trincomalee, a Sinhalese pocket in
the Tamil north and east, and Anuradhapura, in the Sinhalese heartland. It will
be named after former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed by a
suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1991. India
likely also is contemplating the possibility of eventually using Trincomalee’s leg-
endary harbor. In a quiet deal in 2002, the Lanka Indian Oil Corporation, a
wholly owned Indian government subsidiary in Sri Lanka, was granted a thirty-
five-year lease of the China Bay tank farm at Trincomalee as part of its plan to
develop petroleum storage there. Also suggestive of wider Indian aims is the
possible construction of a Trincomalee offshoot of the proposed pipeline be-
tween the southern Indian cities of Chennai and Madurai and Sri Lanka’s capi-
tal, Colombo.
Another of India’s immediate neighbors is Bangladesh. The relationship has
long been strained by such issues as illegal Bangladeshi migration, trade, and
water use (notably New Delhi’s “River-Linking Project”), but some improve-
ment may be under way. Agreement by India and Bangladesh in January 2005 to
move forward with an “Eastern Corridor Pipeline” to bring gas from Burmese
fields through Bangladesh to India now appears to have been shelved. Notwith-
standing this setback, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh visited Dhaka in
conjunction with the thirteenth summit of the South Asian Association for Re-
gional Cooperation in November 2005 and has invited Bangladeshi prime min-
ister Kaleda Zia to visit India. One Bangladesh newspaper observed that “an
improvement in the bilateral ties is seemingly an important foreign policy . . .
[goal] that New Delhi wishes to achieve. . . . If India could put confidence build-
ing measures in place with Pakistan, its nuclear rival, we see no reason why Ban-
63
gladesh’s outstanding problems with India cannot be put behind.”
The “Look East” policy also has produced gains with the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). India became a sectoral partner in 1991, a
full dialogue partner in 1995, and a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum in
1996. In late 2004 India and ten ASEAN countries—meeting at the tenth sum-
mit in Vientiane—signed a historic pact for peace, progress, and shared prosper-
ity. They also pledged to cooperate in fighting international terrorism and
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The four-page accord and nine-
page action plan envisage cooperation in multilateral fora, particularly the
World Trade Organization; in addressing the challenges of economic, food,

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 75

human, and energy security; and in boosting trade, investment, tourism, cul-
ture, sports, and people-to-people contacts. The pact commits India to creating
a free trade area by 2011 with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singa-
pore, and by 2016 with the rest of ASEAN—the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos,
Burma, and Vietnam.
Within ASEAN, India has focused particularly on developing close ties with
Burma, Singapore, and, most recently, Thailand. Progress with Burma has been
significant since New Delhi began to engage that nation about a decade ago,
partly from concern about Chinese influence there. The emphasis now, however,
is not mainly defensive but reflects India’s regional ambitions, desire to use Ran-
goon from which to compete with China farther afield in Southeast Asia (in-
cluding the South China Sea), and interest in Burmese energy resources, as well
as its need to consolidate control in its own remote northeastern provinces.
Most recently, India’s position in Burma was strengthened when strongman
Khin Nyunt, known for pro-China inclinations, was deposed in October 2004
and placed under house arrest. Less than a week later, Than Shwe, head of
Burma’s ruling military junta, visited India and signed three agreements, includ-
ing a “Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of
Non-Traditional Security Issues.” The general also assured New Delhi that
Burma would not permit its territory to be used by any hostile element to harm
Indian interests. Soon thereafter, India and Burma launched coordinated mili-
64
tary operations against Manipuri and Naga rebels along the frontier.
Indo-Burmese ties also are advanced by both countries’ membership in the
Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Coopera-
tion (BIMSTEC), the first setting in which two ASEAN members have come to-
gether with three countries in South Asia for economic cooperation.
Significantly, neither China nor Pakistan is part of this grouping. These steps
and others—resumption of arms shipments to Burma, New Delhi’s acquisition
of an equity stake in a natural gas field off Burma’s coast, the proposed India-
Burma Gas Pipeline, the reopening of the Indian and Burmese consulates in
Mandalay and Kolkata, and a recent India-Burma naval exercise—all reflect a
significant deepening in Indo-Burmese relations in recent years.
Burma ties as well into larger Indian agendas, to which eastward transporta-
tion is vital. New Delhi is building a road—the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilat-
eral highway, a portion of the projected Asian Highway—connecting Calcutta
via Burma with Bangkok. India also is building roads to connect Mizoram with
Mandalay and has extended a fifty-six-million-dollar line of credit to Burma to
65
modernize the Mandalay-Rangoon railroad. New Delhi is likely also to carry
out port and transportation improvements at the mouth of the Kaladan River
(the Kaladan Multi-modal Transport Project) in western Burma, opening trade

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opportunities with Burma and Thailand and expanding access to India’s north-
east. In addition, New Delhi has begun to study the feasibility of building a
deep-water seaport at Dawei (Tavoy), on the Burmese coast, possibly allowing
access from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa to East Asian markets without
transiting the Malacca Straits. Taken together, these eastward transportation
plans will give India an alternative route to the Malacca Straits subregion as well
as land access to the South China Sea. They reflect a land-sea strategy for pro-
jecting Indian influence to the east—a strategy intended to counter China’s stra-
tegic ambitions in Southeast Asia and toward the Indian Ocean.
India’s perceived need to compete with China in Southeast Asia, particularly
in its littoral nations, has helped produce a courtship of Singapore. It also under-
scores the importance India attaches to key choke points—that it may need to
block a Chinese move toward or into the Indian Ocean (the principal mission of
the Indian bases in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands). Singapore is ideally situ-
ated to supplement the infrastructure in the Andamans; facilities there could, by
the same token, allow India to project power into the South China Sea and
against China. The Singapore relationship is modest but deepening. Trade has
been growing rapidly, surging by nearly 50 percent in 2004; a Comprehensive
Economic Cooperation Agreement in June 2005 should boost trade further. In
addition, a security pact in 2003 extended an existing program of combined na-
val exercises to encompass air and ground maneuvers and initiated a high-level
security dialogue and intelligence exchange. Singapore and India held their first
air exercise late in 2004 and their first ground exercises from February to April
66
2005, in India. Notably, in February and March 2005 their annual naval ma-
neuvers took place for the first time in the South China Sea (vice “Indian” waters).
New Delhi also has stated willingness—in principle—to allow the Singapore Air
Force to use Indian ranges on an extended basis.
The developing Indian relationship with Thailand, finally, is a recent one and
has been fed by, among other factors, Bangkok’s growing concern with Islamic
militants in Thailand’s south: “The Thais know they are in a difficult situation
and are looking left, right and center to see who is in the game on their side.” A
team of Indian intelligence officials visited Bangkok in November 2004; Thai-
land’s National Security Council chief reciprocated the following month. In ad-
dition, India’s military has been coordinating closely with Thailand’s navy and
coast guard in and near the Malacca Strait, signing a memorandum of under-
standing in May 2005. Thailand also has been cooperating more than previously
on matters related to the various insurgencies in India’s northeast.67 More
broadly, Bangkok welcomes the “rise of India,” given Thailand’s historical pref-
erence that no single power—not Britain or France in the nineteenth century,
and not China today—achieve hegemony in its neighborhood. In any case, says

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one Thai pundit, “Our ancestors taught us to enjoy noodles as well as curry
68
dishes.” To this end, Bangkok is pursuing what it calls a “Look West” policy, and
Thai officials have welcomed the Indian efforts to cultivate influence—poten-
tially at China’s expense—in Burma.

STRENGTHENING AND USING INDIA’S ARMED FORCES

Supplementing its diplomatic and political initiatives, India is shaping its grow-
ing military capability. These forces should be able, should the need arise, to:
keep China’s navy out of the Indian Ocean; enter the South China Sea and pro-
ject military power directly against the Chinese homeland; project military
power elsewhere in the Indian Ocean—at key choke points, on vital islands,
around the littoral, and along key sea routes; and—in a presumably altered stra-
tegic environment—pose an important potential constraint on the ability of the
U.S. Navy to operate in the IO. At present, the overall thrust is to get weapons to
project power, especially systems with greater lethality and reach. To this end,
India ordered $5.7 billion in weapons in 2004, overtaking China and Saudi Ara-
bia and becoming the developing world’s leading weapons buyer. Likewise, India
stands as the developing world’s biggest arms buyer for the eight-year period up
to 2004.69 The drive toward improved military capabilities is reflected in a vari-
70
ety of ongoing developments.
The most significant development will be a strengthened nuclear-weapon
strike capability relevant to the Indian Ocean as a whole. While land-based mis-
siles may yet assume significance in this regard, New Delhi mainly is focused on
equipping its navy and air force with nuclear capabilities that could be employed
in a contingency.
India’s intention to add a sea-based leg to its nuclear posture is longstanding
and was a prominent feature of the Draft Nuclear Doctrine promulgated by In-
dia’s National Security Advisory Board in 1999. The Cabinet Committee on Se-
curity also implicitly endorsed this goal in its 2003 restatement of many of the
Doctrine’s key points. Most recently, the new Indian Maritime Doctrine and the
naval service chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, affirmed in September 2005 the im-
71
portance of a sea-based leg.
Indian Airpower
Another key development is the acquisition of an air force with longer range. A
critical advance was the purchase in 2003 of Il-78 aerial tanker aircraft, New
Delhi’s first of the type. These tankers have supported the deployment of fighter
and transport aircraft to a variety of far-flung locations, including South Africa
and Alaska. Refueling also has recently allowed nonstop flights of Su-30s from
Pune, their main operating base southeast of Mumbai, to Car Nicobar in the Bay

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of Bengal, a potential staging location adjacent to the Strait of Malacca and the
South China Sea approaches to China’s populous heartland. A second airpower
force multiplier will be the acquisition in 2007 of three Phalcon airborne warn-
ing and control system (AWACS) aircraft. These AWACS platforms, designed for
360-degree surveillance out to 350 nautical miles, will detect aerial threats and
direct strike aircraft to targets. Like the tankers, the AWACS will not have a
mainly passive, defensive role; rather, they will allow other air assets to strike tar-
gets at greater distances and with much more effect. New Delhi also is develop-
ing an indigenous AWACS system, to be deployed by 2011. In addition, India’s
Tu-142M and Il-38 maritime surveillance/antisubmarine warfare aircraft all are
receiving upgrades. Finally, the Navy is raising three squadrons of Israeli-built
Heron II unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and probably will acquire P-3C
72
Orions from the United States.
India’s air force also will achieve greater range and lethality with the acquisi-
tion of a variety of new combat aircraft—many of them clearly intended for
strategic strike operations. In this regard, the planned acquisition of 190
long-range and air-refuelable Su-30 fighters (140 of which will be built from kits
in India) through 2018 is particularly striking. New Delhi also has begun up-
grading its fleet of Jaguar aircraft. The package—an almost definitive sign that
these aircraft will continue to have a nuclear strike mission—includes more
modern navigation systems, new electronic countermeasures gear, and new ar-
73
mament pods. As these aircraft are capable of air-to-air refueling, the Il-78s
significantly enhanced their radius of action. New Delhi also has ordered addi-
tional Jaguars (seventeen two-seat and twenty single-seat) from Hindustan
Aeronautics Limited.
In addition, India plans to get 126 new multirole combat aircraft from a for-
eign supplier, either Lockheed Martin (the F-16), Boeing/McDonnell-Douglas
(F-18 Hornet), Russia (MiG-35), Dassault Aviation of France (Mirage 2000-5),
or Gripen of Sweden. Some of these airframes will be assembled in India. If Mos-
cow and New Delhi can come to terms, at least four Tu-22M3s may be leased
from Russia. These Backfires have a range of almost seven thousand nautical
miles and can carry a payload of about twenty-five tons—the equivalent of two
dozen two-thousand-pound bombs, or a large number of standoff air-to-
ground missiles. India and Russia also are discussing the development and
coproduction of a fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
Many of these strike platforms will be equipped eventually with powerful, long-
range cruise missiles. The joint Indo-Russian Brahmos, with a 290-kilometer range
and supersonic speed, will be deployed first on Indian warships, but an aerial
version is planned. As one observer comments, “India’s co-development with
Russia of the Brahmos missile for India’s air (and naval) forces introduces . . . a

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highly lethal, hybrid (cruise plus ballistic) missile that is most likely to be used as
a conventional counterforce weapon against naval ships, ordnance storage facil-
ities, sensitive military production facilities, aircraft hangars, military commu-
74
nication nodes and command and control centers.”
A final aviation-related development, one reflecting the new over-the-horizon
focus of the Indian Air Force, is the expected formation—with Israeli help—of an
aerospace command that will feature a ground-based imagery center, intended to
leverage India’s growing space “footprint” for air force and missile targeting and
75
battlespace management. The new command will be linked to a military recon-
naissance satellite system, expected to be operational by 2007.76
Indian Seapower
India’s surface navy is to become more capable and lethal than today. India’s first
naval buildup occurred in the 1960s; there followed a period of robust growth in
the mid-1980s. The latter expansion, marked by a focus on power projection,
grew out of a perception of threat from the U.S. Navy, which was increasing its
presence in the Indian Ocean. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi warned, “The
ocean has brought conquerors to India in the past. Today we find it churning
77
with danger.” However, between 1988 and 1995 a retrenchment occurred, due
to the disintegration of the USSR, a financial crisis in India (and East Asia), de-
mands for social investment, and a virtually worldwide deemphasis on military
expenditures; the Indian Navy did not acquire a single principal surface combat-
78
ant, either from abroad or from domestic shipyards. The environment had
changed again by the mid-1990s—as the international situation grew darker
and the Indian economy strengthened—and the prospect is now for a navy that,
if still modest in size, about forty principal combatants, will be significantly im-
proved in quality.
The surface navy currently consists primarily of a single vintage aircraft carrier,
three new and five older destroyers, four new and seven vintage frigates, three new
tank landing ships (LSTs), and assorted corvettes and patrol craft. Within five years,
this force likely will comprise instead two new (that is, to India) aircraft carriers, six
new and only a few vintage destroyers, twelve new and a few older frigates, corvettes
and patrol craft, five new LSTs, and a refurbished seventeen-thousand-ton ex-U.S.
landing platform dock. All of the new warships, including the projected two aircraft
carriers, will be much more formidable than their respective predecessors. For ex-
ample, the Type 15A frigates now under construction in Mumbai will be equipped
with sixteen vertical-launch Brahmos cruise missiles. In addition, some warships
79
are likely to be equipped eventually with U.S.-supplied Aegis radar systems.
The carriers are particularly suited and intended for force projection. More-
over, with their aircraft and other weapons, they will constitute a quantum

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advance over the present carrier, INS Viraat, which is scheduled for decommis-
sioning in 2010. One of the future carriers will be the 44,500-ton Soviet-built
Admiral Gorshkov, now INS Vikramaditya, to be delivered in 2008. The refitted
ship will carry at least sixteen MiG-29Ks and six to eight Ka-31 antisubmarine
and airborne-early-warning helicopters. India also has the option of acquiring,
at current prices for up to five years, another thirty MiG-29Ks—a substantial in-
crease in capability over the Harriers currently on the Viraat. Also,
Vikramaditya’s range of nearly fourteen thousand nautical miles—vice the five
thousand of Viraat—should represent a massive boost in reach.
The other new aircraft carrier will be indigenously constructed, India’s first; it
was laid down in April 2005. The forty-thousand-ton vessel, designated an Air
Defense Ship (ADS), is designed for a complement of fourteen to sixteen
MiG-29K aircraft and around twenty utility, antisubmarine, and antisurface heli-
copters. This will potentially equip the navy with two aircraft carriers by about
2010 (Vikramaditya and the ADS), thus allowing the service to maintain a
strong presence along both the eastern and western shores. Indian naval leaders,
however, envisage the navy as a three-carrier force—one on each coast and one
in reserve—by 2015–20.
India continues to upgrade its existing submarine fleet while also developing
or acquiring newer, more advanced boats. Many of these submarines are being
fitted with cruise missiles with land-attack capabilities, reflecting the service’s
emphasis on littoral warfare. Over time, these cruise missiles almost certainly
will be armed with nuclear warheads.
The Indian Navy’s principal subsurface combatants currently are four Ger-
man Type 1500 and ten Russian-produced Kilo submarines. The Kilos are un-
dergoing refits in Russia, including the addition of Klub cruise missiles, believed
to have both antiship and land-attack capabilities at ranges up to two hundred
kilometers. The five boats already refitted with these weapons constitute the first
Indian submerged missile launch capability. New Delhi is similarly upgrading
one of its Type 1500s. The Indian government also recently authorized the pur-
chase of six French-designed Scorpene submarines, with the option of acquiring
four more. The first three boats will be conventional diesel-electric submarines,
with subsequent ones incorporating air-independent propulsion. The design re-
portedly allows for the installation of a small nuclear reactor. The Scorpene con-
tract apparently also provides for Indian acquisition of critical underwater
80
missile-launch technology. Other expected Indian submarine acquisitions in-
clude four to six Amur 1650 hunter-killer boats (SSKs) and two each of the more
advanced versions of the Kilo and Shishumar submarines.
India also has lately accorded higher priority to the construction of an in-
digenous nuclear-powered missile submarine, the Advanced Technology Vessel.

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Fabrication of the hull and integration (with Russia’s assistance) of the nuclear
reactor could already to be under way. In the long run, its main armament will be
nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Finally, New Delhi seems likely to lease from Rus-
sia two Akula II nuclear-powered attack submarines. Reportedly, Indian naval
officers will begin training for these submarines at a newly built center near St.
81
Petersburg in September 2005. These boats are normally configured with
intermediate-range cruise missiles capable of mounting two-hundred-kiloton
nuclear warheads, but India is expected instead to use the Brahmos cruise mis-
sile—eventually with a nuclear warhead—as their principal weapon.
Basing and Presence Ashore
A better network of forward military bases is in prospect. One of the most im-
portant of its elements is INS (Indian Naval Station) Kadamba, a naval and naval
air base—slated to be Asia’s largest—under construction at Karwar (near Goa)
on the Malabar Coast and recently inaugurated by Defense Minister Pranab
Mukherjee. More centrally located with respect to the Indian Ocean than
Mumbai, the site of India’s longtime Arabian Sea naval complex, this facility will
be India’s first exclusive naval base (others are colocated with commercial and
civilian ports). INS Kadamba will be able to receive India’s new aircraft carriers;
it is to become the home of several naval units beginning late in 2005 and, ulti-
mately, of the headquarters of India’s Western Naval Command. It will report-
edly serve as the principal base for the nuclear submarines that the Indian Navy
is to lease from Russia and some that it will build indigenously. The construction
of a naval air station will begin this year.
Farther south, India has been enhancing the infrastructure at Kochi (Cochin)
in Kerala, where India’s first full-fledged base for unmanned aerial vehicles re-
cently was established. The UAVs are providing the Navy a real-time view of the
busy sea-lanes from the northern Arabian Sea to the Malacca Strait. As Kochi
also is India’s key center for antisubmarine warfare, the UAVs almost certainly
also are employed for that purpose. One observer, commenting on the strategic
significance of this site, notes that “its situation, close to the southern tip of In-
dia’s west coast and the central Indian Ocean, makes Cochin more than any
other base a regional guard (see, for example, its proximity to the Maldives and
the rich fishing grounds off India’s west coast); a challenge to the United States
in Diego Garcia [sic]; and the terminus of the trans-oceanic link with
82
Antarctica.” In addition to Kochi, the Indian Navy is establishing UAV bases at
Port Blair, the site of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command, and in the
83
Lakshadweep Islands. The latter archipelago, off India’s west coast in the Ara-
bian Sea, is a key choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Malacca Strait
that has until now received little attention from military planners.

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New Delhi sees as even more strategically significant the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands. It was to strengthen India’s military presence in the Bay of Ben-
gal that the unified Andaman and Nicobar Command was established in 2001.
The islands had been recognized by the British as early as the 1780s as dominat-
84
ing one of the key gateways to the Indian Ocean. One analyst, writing from
Port Blair, has claimed that “India was double-minded about retaining the is-
lands until the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. Top officials say the original plan was
to abandon the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after exploiting its natural re-
85
sources.” India, for example, transferred the Coco Islands to Burma in 1954.
However, by 1962—in the aftermath of the war with China—New Delhi clearly
was becoming sensitive to the archipelago’s value, and in 1998 or before “the
86
Vajpayee government woke up to the islands’ huge strategic importance.”
Whether or not India ever doubted its worth, the archipelago likely will have
importance in the future—notwithstanding damage to infrastructure from the
recent tsunami. India’s navy chief has stated that “this theater will steadily gain
87
importance . . . in the coming years.” Another Indian has characterized the new
Andaman and Nicobar command as “India’s ticket to strategic relevance” and “In-
88
dia’s Diego Garcia.” In this connection, New Delhi almost certainly intends to
use the islands as forward bases for cruise-missile-launching submarines, eventu-
ally with nuclear weapons. The islands also will play a key role in Indian efforts to
89
parry Chinese inroads in Southeast Asia and to advance the “Look East” policy.
Indian assistance in upgrading and developing the Iranian port of Chah-
bahar, the headquarters of Iran’s third naval region, has been noted. A construc-
tion initiative of another kind is the Sethusamudram project, also mentioned
above, to cut through the Palk Strait and so permit Indian intercoastal shipping
to avoid the long trip around Sri Lanka. Aside from its potential economic im-
portance, such a route will enable warships from India’s eastern and western
fleets to quickly reinforce one another. In those terms the project is analogous to
90
the 1914 completion of the interoceanic Panama Canal by the United States.
“Military Diplomacy”
Supplementing the foregoing new weapons and military infrastructure ad-
vances, New Delhi also will use India’s navy and air force, through “military di-
plomacy,” to advance the Indian agenda in the Indian Ocean. India’s new
Maritime Doctrine declares, “Navies are characterized by the degree to which
they can exercise presence, and the efficacy of a navy is determined by the ability
of the political establishment of the state to harness this naval presence in the
pursuit of larger national objectives.” To this end, “the Indian maritime vision
for the first quarter of the 21st century must look at the arc from the Persian Gulf
91
to the Straits of Malacca as a legitimate area of interest.”

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India’s navy and air force were indeed utilized in this manner in response to
the December 2004 tsunami, perhaps the world’s first global natural disaster. In-
dia was quick to extend help to Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Indonesia. Indian
relief operations were fully under way in Sri Lanka and the Maldives by day three
of the tsunami (28 December), and the Indian military reached Indonesia by day
four. The subsequent relief operation was the largest ever mounted by New
Delhi, involving approximately sixteen thousand troops, thirty-two naval ships,
92
forty-one aircraft, several medical teams, and a mobile hospital.
Other recent instances of Indian military diplomacy include a continuing
program of coordinated patrols with Indonesia in the Malacca Strait, naval sur-
veillance of the Mauritius exclusive economic zone since mid-2003, and patrols
off the African coast in connection with two international conferences in
Maputo, Mozambique—the African Union summit in 2003 and the World Eco-
nomic Forum conference the next year. An Indian Navy spokesman asserted that
in these patrols the “Indian warships [were] demonstrating the Navy’s emer-
gence as a competent, confident, and operationally viable and regionally visible
maritime power.”
The Indian military also has been very active in pursuing combined exercises
with a variety of IO partners. These maneuvers underscore the new flexibility
and reach of Indian military forces. A Chinese newspaper, for example, com-
mented that in one two-month period early in 2004 New Delhi conducted seven
consecutive and quite effective combined exercises: “The scale, scope, subjects
and goals of the exercises are unprecedented and have attracted extensive con-
cern from the international community.” That instance was not unique; the In-
dian Navy conducted simultaneous combined exercises with Singapore in the
South China Sea and with France in the Arabian Sea in late February and early
March 2005. All this was followed immediately by a multiservice, combined
planning exercise with the United Kingdom in Hyderabad; a naval exercise with
South Africa and a port call by warships in Vietnam in June; and the deployment
of a large flotilla to Southeast Asian waters in July. The agenda for late 2005 in-
cluded naval maneuvers with the United States in the Arabian Sea in September,
with Russia in the Bay of Bengal in October, and with France in the Gulf of Aden
in November. In addition, New Delhi partnered with Russia in a combined
air-land exercise near the Pakistan border in October, and with the United States
in November in a COPE INDIA air exercise (that latter in a location that clearly
suggests mutual strategic concern about China). New Delhi, moreover, is ex-
pecting the advent of combined exercises with Japan’s navy in the Sea of Japan
93
and the Bay of Bengal in the not-too-distant future.

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WHAT CAN WE EXPECT OF INDIA IN THE INDIAN OCEAN?

Over the past few years, India has placed itself on a path to achieve, potentially,
the regional influence in the Indian Ocean to which it has aspired. To this end,
New Delhi has raised its profile and strengthened its position in a variety of na-
tions on the littoral, especially Iran, Sri Lanka, Burma, Singapore, Thailand, and
most of the ocean’s small island nations. India also has become a more palpable
presence in key maritime zones, particularly the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman
Sea. Of equal or greater importance, India’s links with the most important exter-
nal actors in the Indian Ocean—the United States, Japan, Israel, and France—
also have been strengthened. These are significant achievements, and they derive
from India’s growing economic clout and from a surer hand visible today in In-
dian diplomacy.
Gaps inevitably remain in India’s strategic posture. New Delhi will need to
strengthen further its hand in coastal Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. More
work also will be required to upgrade still somewhat distant relationships with
94
Australia and Indonesia. At the same time, India will need to be more skillful
than it has been in cultivating—or “compelling”—better relations with, and an
environment more attuned to Indian interests in, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Fur-
ther, much will depend on the performance of the Indian economy and on In-
dia’s ability to avoid domestic communal discord. Another variable will be the
extent to which other states—particularly China and the United States but also
Pakistan and others in southern Asia—are willing or able to offer serious resis-
tance to India’s ambitions. The future of political Islam is another wild card.
However, barring a halt to globalization—one of the megatrends of the contem-
porary world—the rise of India in the IO is fairly certain.
That will have a transforming effect in the Indian Ocean basin and eventually
the world. In the region, the rise of India will play a key role in the gradual inte-
gration of the various lands and peoples of this basin. Whether in the Arabian
Sea or the Bay of Bengal, this trend—while still nascent—is already evident. The
long-term result will be a more prosperous and globally more influential region.
India’s rise in the Indian Ocean also will have important implications for the
West and China. Perhaps most significantly, New Delhi’s ascent suggests
strongly that the ongoing reordering of the asymmetric relationship between
the West and Asia will be centered as much in the Indian Ocean as in East Asia. It
was in the IO, moreover, that the effects of Western power first made themselves
manifest in the centuries after 1500. On one hand, it would therefore not be sur-
prising if it were here that the Western tide first receded. On the other, India’s
role will for a long time to come be no longer in opposition to the United States
but in cooperation with it.

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 85

Moreover, its rise will be welcomed by the United States and other “Western
states” to the extent that it counteracts the challenge posed by China, the world’s
other salient rising power. Seen from Beijing, the rise of India in the Indian
Ocean will be an opportunity but, even more, a challenge. A strong and influen-
tial India will mean a more multipolar world, and this is consistent with Chinese
interests. Nonetheless, as China increasingly regards India—not Japan—as its
main Asian rival, India’s rise in the Indian Ocean also will be disturbing. As has
been the case with virtually all great powers, an India that has consolidated
power in its own region will be tempted to exercise power farther afield, includ-
ing East Asia.

NOTES

The views expressed in this article are those of possess the fourth most capable concentra-
the author and do not reflect the official policy tion of power by 2015 (after the United
or position of the Asia-Pacific Center, the De- States, the European Union, and China) and
partment of Defense, or the U.S. government. to be the most important “swing state” in the
1. On the “rise” of India, see Yasheng Huang international system. See Ashley J. Tellis, In-
and Tarun Khanna, “Can India Overtake dia as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda
China?” Foreign Policy (July–August 2003), for the United States (Washington, D.C.: Car-
pp. 74–80; “India and China: A Special Eco- negie Endowment for International Peace,
nomic Analysis,” Morgan Stanley Equity Re- 2005), p. 30.
search, 26 July 2004; Yevgeny Bendersky, 4. There are, of course, important exceptions.
“India as a Rising Power,” Asia Times, 20 Au- Two of these are C. Raja Mohan’s Crossing
gust 2004; Clyde Prestowitz et al., “The Great the Rubicon and Stephen P. Cohen’s India:
Reverse” (in three parts), Yale Global Online Emerging Power, both cited above.
(September 2004); Stephen P. Cohen, “Intro- 5. Mihir K. Roy [Vice Adm. (Ret.)], “Emerging
duction” and chapter 1, “Situating India,” in Maritime India,” paper presented at a confer-
India: Emerging Power (Washington, D.C.: ence on India and the Emerging Geopolitics
Brookings Institution Press, 2001); Baldev of the IO Region, Asia-Pacific Center for Se-
Raj Nayar and T. V. Paul, India in the World curity Studies, 19–21 August 2003. See also
Order: Searching for Major-Power Status Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, “Maritime and Naval
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press, Dimensions of India’s Security,” in India and
2003); C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon: the IO in the Twilight of the Millennium, ed. P.
The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy V. Rao (New Delhi: South Asian), pp. 36–49.
(New Delhi: Viking, 2003); and “India vs.
China: Long Term Prospects” in National In- 6. See Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of De-
telligence Council, Mapping the Global Future fence (Navy), Indian Maritime Doctrine
(Washington, D.C.: December 2004), p. 53. (INBR 8), 25 April 2004, p. 50.

2. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the 7. Ralph Peters, “Tsunami Ripples: A New Stra-
Global Future, pp. 3 and, especially, 6–7. tegic Map,” New York Post, 2 February 2005.

3. Analyses by the Central Intelligence Agency 8. Integrated Headquarters, Indian Maritime

indicate that when countries are ranked by Doctrine.
composite measures of national power—the 9. K. M. Pannikar, India and the IO (London:
weighted combinations of gross domestic Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 84.
product, defense spending, population, and
technology growth—India is projected to

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Berlin: India in the Indian Ocean

10. See Ministry of Defence, Annual Report 2004– Journal of Strategic Studies 25, no. 4 (Decem-
2005 (New Delhi: n.d.), available at mod.nic ber 2002), pp. 109–34. See also Francine R.
.in/reports/welcome.html. Frankel and Harry Harding, eds., The India-
11. On mainly conventional military power, see China Relationship: What the United States
the author’s “The ‘Great Base Race’ in the IO Needs to Know (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow
Littoral: Conflict Prevention or Stimulation?” Wilson Center Press, 2004), and John W.
Contemporary South Asia (September 2004) Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Ri-
and, on nuclear weapons, “The Indian Ocean valry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: Univ.
and the Second Nuclear Age,” Orbis 48, no. 1 of Washington Press, 2001).
(Winter 2004). 21. Quoted in Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Di-
12. Arun Prakash [Adm.], “Submarine Building plomacy, Democracy and the Bomb (Washing-
Capability Is a Void, Which We Hope to Ad- ton, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004),
dress,” 22 July 2005, as reported in Force: The p. 84.
Complete Newsmagazine of National Security, 22. Brahma Chellaney, “Should India Consider
8 August 2005. China a Friend or Rival?” Times of India, 21
13. See John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great August 2005.
Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 23. Mohan Malik, “China’s Foreign Policy Is Still
2001), p. 232. Dominated by the ‘Contain India’ Theory,”
14. Ibid., p. 236. Force: The Complete Newsmagazine of Na-
tional Security, 14 April 2005. On the April
15. India has a long-standing involvement in 2005 visit of Premier Wen Jiabao and Chinese
Antarctica. In December 2004, for example, purchases of oil and natural gas, see Pramit
New Delhi announced it was planning to set Mitra, “Iran and India Extend Their Friend-
up its third research station there. See “India ship,” South Asia Monitor, 1 January 2005,
to Set Up Third Station in Antarctica,” India available at www.csis.org. On China and Af-
News, 16 December 2004, available at rica see Paul Mooney, “China’s African Sa-
www.newkerala.com. fari,” Yale Global Online, 3 January 2005, and
16. Marjeet Singh Pardesi, Deducing India’s John Hill, “China Covets African Oil and
Grant Strategy of Regional Hegemony from Trade,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 1 Novem-
Historical and Conceptual Perspectives (Singa- ber 2004. The key work on Sino-Indian com-
pore: Institute of Defence and Strategic petition in the Indian Ocean is John W.
Studies, April 2005), p. 55. Garver, “The IO in Sino-Indian Relations,” in
Protracted Contest, pp. 275–312.
17. James Morris, Farewell the Trumpets: An Im-
perial Retreat (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt 24. “China Attack Forced India to Pile Up
Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 129–30. Arms,” Deccan Herald, 6 September 2005,
Foreign Broadcast Information Service [here-
18. Ashley Jackson, “The British Empire in the
after FBIS] [emphasis supplied].
Indian Ocean,” in Geopolitical Orientations,
Security and Regionalism in the Indian Ocean, 25. See Eric A. McVadon, “The Asian Sea in
ed. Dennis Rumley and Sanjay Chaturvedi Which Transformation Must Swim,” paper
(New Delhi: South Asian, 2004), p. 35. presented at the conference on U.S. Defense
Transformation: Implications for the Security
19. On New Delhi’s IO as reminiscent of Brit-
of the Asia-Pacific Region, Asia-Pacific Cen-
ain’s “ring fence” strategy, see Ashley J. Tellis,
ter for Security Studies, 1–3 December 2004.
“India’s Naval Expansion: Reflections on His-
See also James Brooke, “China’s Navy Fans
tory and Strategy,” Comparative Strategy 6,
Out in the Pacific,” New York Times, 30 De-
no 2 (1987), and “Indian Security Tradition,”
cember 2004, and Richard Halloran, “Chi-
in Assessing Strategy and Military Capabilities
nese Sub Highlights Undersea Rivalries,”
in the Year 2000 (Santa Monica, Calif.:
Japan Times, 30 November 2004, available at
RAND, 1996), p. 2.
www.japantimes.com. That the Chinese navy
20. India’s concerns about China are of long is currently operating, or planning to operate,
standing. See John W. Garver, “Asymmetrical submarines in or near the Bay of Bengal is
Indian and Chinese Threat Perceptions,” suggested by “Three Submarines Damaged by

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Earthquake” (30 December 2004) and “2 38. Manoj Joshi, “Wide Angle—Pak Gets Nanny:
Chinese Spy Ships Seized off Andamans” (30 Virtually Becomes U.S. Protectorate,”
November 2004), both NEWSInsight, Hindustan Times, 12 December 2004. For the
newsinsight.net. “prehistory” (in the British connection) of
26. See the author’s discussion of China in “The present-day Indians’ concerns about U.S. em-
Indian Ocean and the Second Nuclear Age” ployment of Pakistan to contain India, see
and “The ‘Great Base Race’ in the IO Litto- Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan
ral.” On the “string of pearls,” see Bill Gertz, (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
“China Builds Up Strategic Sea Lanes,” 2004), p. 34.
Washington Times, 18 January 2005. See also 39. See “Excerpts from Pentagon’s Plan: ‘Prevent
“China Expands Its Southern Sphere of Influ- the Emergence of a New Rival,’” New York
ence,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (23 May Times, 8 March 1992, available at www
2005). .princeton.edu, and a discussion of this docu-
27. Ziad Haider, “Baluchis, Beijing, and Paki- ment in Nayar and Paul, India in the World
stan’s Gwadar Port,” Georgetown Journal of Order, p. 224.
International Affairs 6, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 40. On Prime Minister Singh’s congratulatory let-
2005), pp. 95–103. ter to President Bush on the latter’s reelection,
28. Ministry of Defence, Annual Report 2004–05, see John Cherian, “U.S. Elections: An Embar-
p. 46, available at mod.nic.in/. rassing Missive,” Frontline, 20 November–
3 December 2004, available at www.flonnet
29. “Japan, India to Develop Natural Gas Re- .com.
sources,” Reuters, 26 March 2005, available at
www.inlnews.yahoo.com. 41. A classic on this topic is R. J. Barendse, The
Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the
30. Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon, p. xxii. Chapter Seventeenth Century (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E.
2 of this work is entitled “Beyond Non- Sharpe, 2002).
alignment.”
42. C. Raja Mohan, “Sale to Pak, Bigger Chance
31. Prakash, “Submarine Building Capacity Is a for India,” Indian Express, 28 March 2005,
Void.” FBIS.
32. The Manmohan Singh government recently 43. Atul Aneja, “India and Iran: A Time for Re-
established a Ministry of Overseas Indian Af- flection,” Hindu, 25 August 2005, FBIS.
fairs and promulgated purportedly new, sim-
plified procedures to allow overseas Indians 44. Khalid Mustafa, “Iran-Pakistan-India Gas
to acquire Indian citizenship alongside that of Pipeline: Pakistan to Get about $80 Million in
the nations in which they currently reside. Transit Fee,” Daily Times (Pakistan), 17 No-
vember 2004, available at www.dailytimes
33. “Indian Foreign Secretary Says Delhi Wants .com. Other pipeline projects in which India
‘Greater Strategic Autonomy,’” Zee News Tele- has shown interest include the Turkmenistan-
vision (in Hindi), 17 March 2005, trans. FBIS. Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline and the Gulf–
34. Anand Giridharadas, “Newly Assertive India South Asia (GUSA) pipeline (with a possible
Seeks a Bigger Place in Asia,” International extension to India) from Qatar.
Herald Tribune, 12 May 2005. 45. The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act was signed
35. Farham Bokhari and Ray Marcelo, “Wash- into law on 5 August 1996 and was renewed
ington Upgrades Ties with New Delhi,” Fi- in July 2001. The law imposes sanctions on
nancial Times, 29 March 2005. foreign companies that invest $40 million or
more in these two countries’ energy sectors.
36. See the press release signed by the U.S. defense
secretary and the Indian defense minister in 46. See the essays by C. Christine Fair, Jalil
Arlington, Virginia, on 28 June 2005, “New Roshandel, Sunil Dasgupta, and P. R.
Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Rela- Kumaraswamy in The Strategic Partnership
tionship,” available at www.indianembassy.org. between India and Iran (Washington, D.C.:
Woodrow Wilson International Center, April
37. See, for example, Manoj Joshi, “For a Flying
2004). See also Donald L. Berlin, “India-Iran
Start,” Hindustan Times, 1 April 2005, FBIS.
Relations: A Deepening Entente,” in Asia’s

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Berlin: India in the Indian Ocean

Bilateral Relations (Honolulu, Hawaii: Asia- 62. A senior Tamil insurgent leader commented
Pacific Center for Security Studies, June in November 2004: “The Palaly airport is in
2004), available at www.apcss.org. the Tamil Homeland. India’s plan to help up-
47. M. K. Bhadrakumar, “South Asia in a Spot grade it will upset the current peace process
over Iran,” Asia Times, 15 November 2004, in Sri Lanka. The Palaly airport was built by
available at www.atimes.com. taking over the Tamil people’s lands.” “LTTE
Asks India to Consult It on Strategic Proj-
48. See Frederick Stakelbeck, Jr., “The Growing ects,” Hindustan Times, 15 November 2004.
Tehran-Beijing Axis,” In the National Interest
(January 2005), www.inthenationalinterest 63. “Constructive Engagement with India; Hope-
.com. fully, the First Steps Have Been Taken,” Daily
Star, 10 August 2005.
49. Harinder Mishra, “India and Israel: Money
Matters,” Asia Times, 30 November 2004, 64. David Fullbrook, “So Long US, Hello China,
available at www.atimes.com. India,” Asia Times Online, 9 November 2004,
www.atims.com. See especially Mohan Malik,
50. Siddharth Srivastava, “Gunning for Peace in “New Campaign for Myanmar,” Force: The
South Asia,” Asia Times Online, 13 August Complete Newsmagazine of National Security
2005. (January 2005)
51. “India-Israel Alliance Firming Up,” Jane’s In- 65. Khelen Thokchom, “Train to Mandalay Gets
telligence Digest, 2 March 2005. Nod,” Telegraph (Calcutta), 25 November
52. See Donald L. Berlin, “The Indian Ocean and 2004.
the Second Nuclear Age,” pp. 64–67. 66. Gautam Datt, “Singapore F-16s Arrive for
53. G. Parthasarathy, “India’s Stakes in the Per- War Games,” Asian Age, 10 October 2004,
sian Gulf,” Tribune, 8 September 2005. FBIS.
54. “India for Trade Pact with Gulf Council in 67. Anthony Davis, “Thailand Strengthens Secu-
Six Months,” Hindustan Times, 16 August rity Ties with Israel,” Jane’s Intelligence Re-
2005, FBIS. view, 16 December 2004, available at jir.janes
.com. Malaysia apparently has complained
55. “Indian Air Force to Participate in Multina-
loudly to India about the fast-developing
tional Exercise in South Africa,” Press Trust
Indo-Thai relationship; see “Malaysia Warns
of India [hereafter PTI], 13 September 2004,
India against Thailand,” NEWSInsight, 3 Jan-
FBIS.
uary 2005, available at www.indiareacts.com.
56. “India to Train Tanzanian forces,” Indo-
68. Dr. Sawai Bunma, “Samkok vs. Ramayana,”
Asian News Service, 12 September 2004, avail-
Krungthep Thurakit, 17 June 2005, trans. FBIS.
able at www.hidustantimes.com.
69. See Richard F. Grimmett, Conventional Arms
57. “Indian PM Hopes to Strengthen Ties during
Transfers to Developing Nations, 1997–2004
Mauritius Visit,” PTI, 30 March 2005, FBIS.
(Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research
58. “Navy to Aid IO Island-Nations’ Security,” Service, 29 August 2005).
New Kerala News Online, 1 September 2005,
70. The Indian army probably has lagged a bit in
www.newkerala.com.
this regard; see Bharat Karnad, “Shaping In-
59. The terms “East Indies” and “Further India,” dian Special Forces into a Strategic Asset,”
of course, are historical designations for the Defense and Technology, 1 December 2004, p.
region now (mainly since World War II) gen- 48, FBIS.
erally characterized as “Southeast Asia.”
71. Integrated Headquarters, Indian Maritime
60. Marwaan Macan-Markar, “India Shifts Re- Doctrine; “Second Strike N-Capability Should
gional Geopolitical Cards,” Asia Times Online, Be Devastating: Prakash,” PTI, 1 September
27 January 2005, available at www.atimes 2005.
.com/atimes/South_Asia/GA27Df04.html.
72. “Russia to Upgrade Tu-142 Warplanes,”
61. Ajit Dubey, “Smooth Sailing,” Force: The Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostei, 21 October
Complete Newsmagazine of National Security, 2002; Bulbul Singh, “India, U.S. Near to
1 January 2005.

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 2, Art. 6 BERLIN 89

Completing P-3 Orion Sale,” Aerospace Daily, 86. A. B. Mahapatra, “Andaman Faces Kargil-
28 August 2002. Type Invasion,” NEWSInsight, 23 October
73. Pulkit Singh, “India Bolstering Jaguar Fleet, 2002, www.newsinsight.net. See also K. M.
Phasing Out Some Older MiGs,” Journal of Panikkar, India and the Indian Ocean: An Es-
Electronic Defense (October 2002). say on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian
History (Bombay: George Allen and Unwin,
74. Rodney W. Jones, “Conventional Force Im- 1961).
balance and Strategic Stability in South Asia,”
unpublished paper, 2004, p. 27. 87. “Indian Naval Chief Satisfied with Perfor-
mance of Unified Command at Andamans,”
75. Rahul Bedi, “Indian Conventional Defence Hindu, 6 July 2002, p. 8, trans. FBIS.
Purchases Soar,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 14
September 2005. 88. Vishal Thapar, “India Adopts Big Power Pos-
ture on High Seas,” Hindustan Times, 27 Au-
76. Huma Siddiqui, “Military Satellite to Give In- gust 2002.
dia ‘Eyes in Space,’” Financial Express, 5 Sep-
tember 2005. 89. See Berlin, “The ‘Great Base Race’ in the IO
Littoral.”
77. Indira Gandhi, address to the Common-
wealth Heads of Government, Asia-Pacific 90. The project will also enhance Indian mari-
Region, New Delhi, 4 September 1980, as time security in the Palk Straits, which some
quoted by Ashley Tellis, “The Naval Balance observers regard as under the de facto control
in the Indian Subcontinent: Demanding Mis- of the LTTE. See P. Venkateshwar Rao, “The
sions for the Indian Navy,” Asian Survey (De- Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project,” paper
cember 1985), p. 1192. presented at the third annual Indian Ocean
Research Group (IORG) International Con-
78. See Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, India’s Maritime ference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 11–13 July
Security (New Delhi: Knowledge World/IDSA, 2005.
2000), pp. 125–59, and James Goldrick, No
Easy Answers: The Development of the Navies 91. Integrated Headquarters, Indian Maritime
of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka 1945–1996 Doctrine, p. 56.
(New Delhi: Lancer, 1997), pp. 104–38. 92. Kalsoom Lakhani and Pramit Mitra, “Tsu-
79. “India-US Ties in Focus,” Jane’s Intelligence nami Disaster’s Diplomatic Implications,”
Digest, 29 July 2005. South Asia Monitor (Washington, D.C.: Cen-
ter for Strategic and International Studies, 1
80. Bharat Karnad, “Putting Bang in the Bomb,” February 2005).
Indian Express, 13 November 2002.
93. Prasun K. Sengupta, “Looking East,” Force, 1
81. Huma Siddiqui, “India to Get Subs on Lease November 2005.
from Russia,” Financial Express, 31 August
2005. 94. Notably, it has been nineteen years since an
Indian prime minister visited Australia. See
82. Frank Broeze, “Geostrategy and Navyports in the “Outcomes Statement” of the Australia-
the IO since c. 1970,” Marine Policy 21, no. 4 India Security Roundtable in Canberra, 11–
(1997), p. 358. 12 April 2005, published by the Australian
83. Josey Joseph, “Navy to Use UAVs to Spy on Strategic Policy Institute, and Jenette Bonner
Sea-Lanes,” Rediff: India Abroad, www.rediff and Varun Sahni, Australia-India Reengage-
.com/news/2003/jan/31uav.htm. See also ment: Common Security Concerns, Converging
Gautan Datt, “Navy to Set Up Base for UAVs Strategic Horizons, Complementary Force
in Andaman,” Asian Age, 10 November 2003, Structures (Canberra: Australian Strategic
FBIS. Policy Institute, October 2004). See also D.
Gopal and Dennis Rumley, eds., India and
84. Broeze, “Geostrategy and Navyports in the IO
Australia: Issues and Opportunities (New
since c. 1970,” p. 358.
Delhi: Authorspress, 2004). With respect to
85. Prakash Nanda and Zhao Nanqi, “Unified Indonesia, an important step was the Novem-
Command: Strategic Significance of the ber 2005 state visit to India by Indonesian
Andamans,” Statesman (New Delhi), 18 Oc- president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
tober 2002.

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