By David Scott Despite not being geographically in the South China Sea, India is increasingly being recognised as an actor in t...
By David Scott
Despite not being geographically in the South China Sea, India is
increasingly being recognised as an actor in the balance of power in the South
China Sea (Muni 2011; Puri and Sahgal 2011; Sakhuja 2011; Kaushiva 2012; Salil
2013; Majumdar 2013; Chaturvedy 2014; Baruah 2014; Chaturvedy 2015). The
reasons for India’s involvement remain twofold – entwined geopolitical China
concerns and geoeconomic energy security concerns (Das 2013; Scott 2013).
India’s Strategic Interest
At the government level the South China Sea has been classified as
within India’s extended neighborhood for over a decade, for the first time in
February 2004 by Yashwant Sinha the then External Affairs Minister. When
formulated in the mid-1990s, India’s Look East Policy originally focused on
economic cooperation in Southeast Asia channeled through ASEAN. However, a
Look East-2 focus in the 2000s cast India’s horizons more widely across the
South China Sea into the Western Pacific/East Asia, with more overt security
consideration. Accordingly, the Indian Navy’s 2007 doctrine statement India’s
Maritime Military Strategy defined the South China Sea as an area of “strategic
interest” to India. This leaves India with interests to be gained, maintained
and if necessary defended – primarily through the Indian navy’s unilateral
presence and bilateral security arrangements. India’s Chief of Naval Staff
Admiral Joshi made that clear in December 2012 when he announced that the
Indian navy could and would be deployed to the South China Sea to defend Indian
energy security interests there. By 2013, the increasing adoption of the
Indo-Pacific as a strategic framework for India gave the South China Sea closer
geopolitical relevance for India. Narendra Modi’s arrival in power in May 2014
saw his Act East readiness to strengthen India’s military and economic position
in the South China Sea cutting across China’s own drive across the South China
Sea (Chang 2015).
India’s “Balancing”
In international relations (IR) terms, India is hedging towards China;
simultaneously pursuing economic engagement together with military balancing. A
further two-level analysis is in play whereby there is some global China-India
political cooperation with regard to restraining US unipolarity and replacing
it with a more multipolar system, and with regard to restructuring some
international economic institutions. However, at the regional level security
competition between India and China is far more apparent. The South China Sea
is an acute example of this regional level friction now being seen between
these two Asian giants (Baruah 2015). Indian unease with Chinese assertiveness
in the South China is why India has started to raise the South China issue at
various regional settings like the India-ASEAN Delhi Dialogue in 2014 and 2015,
the ASEAN Regional Forum in 2014, and the East Asia Summit in 2013 and 2014.
Chinese actions in the South China Sea continued to attract Indian criticism in
2015; especially China’s Great Wall of Sand atolls to islands
reclamation-militarisation project (Chaudhury 2015a), and China’s rejection of
the Philippines taking the South China Sea issue to the UNCLOS tribunal
(Valente 2015).
India’s balancing partly consists of internal balancing whereby India is
building up its own military strength. This has been most effective in the
maritime sphere with the creation of a blue water navy increasingly able to
operate at a distance, beyond the Indian Ocean into the South China Sea. India’s
projection of maritime power into the South China Sea is further underpinned by
its build up of the Andaman and Nicobar Command, which functions as a Far East
Naval Command (FENC) looking down the Strait of Malacca into the South China
Sea. The inauguration in July 2012 of the air marine station at INS Baaz, the
most southerly point of the Andaman islands, enables India to conduct
surveillance operations into the South China Sea.
Admittedly, India is not really able to block China from appearing in the
Indian Ocean, but it can respond by going into China’s backyard of the South
China Sea, as an example of lateral pressure theory (Weimar 2013). The Indian
navy has been deploying through the South China since 2000, generally twice a
year, which has involved its own unilateral practicing, as well as bilateral
port calls and exercises with local actors, particularly Vietnam. Such
deployments attract Chinese criticism, as with the so-called INS Shardul
incident of July 2011, where the Indian ship was supposedly radioed from nearby
Chinese vessels to vacate these “Chinese” waters. India though continues to
deploy into such disputed waters, and China continues to warn India about such
appearances (Patranobis 2015).
India’s balancing also consists of external balancing whereby India has
been strengthening security links with other countries who are similarly
concerned about China. Such balancing is already noticeable in the South China
Sea, primarily through strengthened military and maritime arrangements with
Vietnam, and secondarily through strengthened military and maritime links with
the Philippines. This China-centric balancing is also noticeable outside the
South China Sea where India has established security partnerships with the US,
Australia and Japan – with such wider partnerships starting to be applied to
the South China Sea.
This range of external balancing is not classic Cold War hard explicit
containment alliances, but rather represent new post-Cold War soft implicit
balancing partnerships. Nevertheless, India’s strategic-military arrangements
with Vietnam, the US, Japan and Australia are implicitly China-centric, with an
unstated but nevertheless apparent China-focus, and with increasing
significance for the balance of power in the South China Sea.
India’s Partners for the South China Sea
With Vietnam, India’s “diamond on the South China Sea” (Brewster 2009),
India’s Cooperation Framework agreement of 2003 and strategic partnership
proclaimed in 2007 has become strengthened in its military side, in the wake of
China’s growing strength in the South China Sea. This partnership has been
given teeth in recent years through military supplies, especially maritime,
from India to Vietnam, which has attracted Chinese criticism (Bagchi 2014).
Port facilities have also been extended by Vietnam to India at Cam Ranh Bay.
The pace of India-Vietnam relations have quickened under the Modi
administration (Thayer 2014), with a “pivot” (Karnad 2014) to Vietnam on the
part of India, leaving an “axis” (Patil 2014) that is now implicitly
China-centric. A significant development under the Modi administration is how
the South China Sea has featured in their Joint Statements drawn up in
President Mukherjee’s trip to Vietnam in September 2014 and the visit by
Vietnam’s Prime Minister to India in October 2014. These Joint Statements’
formulaic reiteration of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and
adherence to international law, are an implicit criticism of China. The October
2014 visit also saw a slew of increased military assistance programmes by India
to the Vietnamese navy.
Geopolitically, Vietnam serves as a barrier to Chinese domination of the
South China Sea, from where Beijing would be able to project power up through
the Strait of Malacca into the Indian Ocean. From India’s point of view,
Vietnam can put pressure on China’s southern flanks, and give China a two-front
challenge. India’s “Vietnam card” against China in the South China Sea serves
as some counterpart to China’s “Pakistan Card” against India in the Indian
Ocean.
Geoeconomically, India seeks access to oil fields in
Vietnamese-controlled waters. The problem has been that some of these
exploration plots have been in waters claimed by China. India says it is not
taking sides on sovereignty issues in the South China Sea, but yet its decision
to sign deals with Vietnam in disputed waters thereby implicitly support
Vietnam’s claimed position against China. This generated heated Chinese
comments during 2011, with further fields in these disputed waters allocated to
Indian exploration during the visit of the Vietnamese Prime Minister to India
in October 2014. India’s energy involvement, via Vietnam, in the South China
Sea continues to rankle China (Parashar 2015b).
In turn, India has moved into closer bilateral security links with the
US, Japan and Australia. Of particular significance is how the South China Sea
was a feature of India-US defence discussions in June 2015, when the Secretary
of Defense Ashton Carter visited India and further India-US defence agreements
were initialled (Chaudhury 2015). It is also significant that the US Pacific
Command (PACOM) is now openly egging on India to maintain its presence in the
South China Sea, “the South China seas are international waters and India
should be able to operate freely wherever India wants to operate. If that means
the South China Sea, then get in there and do that” (Harris cited in Som 2015).
India has also embraced closer security links with Japan, including bilateral
JIMEX Japan-India Maritime exercises in the Western Pacific (in 2012 and 2014)
and in the Bay of Bengal (in 2013 and 2015). Finally, India has embraced closer
security links with Australia, including naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal
in September 2015.
In turn, India has been moving into these Indo-Pacific trilaterals. The
India-Japan-US (IJUS) trilateral was formally set up in December 2011, and has
been “revitalised” (Kapila 2014) in the wake of Chinese assertiveness in the
South China Sea. That mechanism already involving India in trilateral exercises
with the US and Japanese navies in the Western Pacific (2007, 2009, 2013) and
Bay of Bengal (2007, 2015). As part of its wider activism, the Modi
administration also complemented its IJUS involvement with the
India-Japan-Australia (IJA) trilateral set up at Foreign Secretary level in
June 2015. This first IJA meeting was dominated by questions of maritime
security, the South China Sea and desirability of holding trilateral naval
exercises in the future. From an international relations point of view these
Indo-Pacific trilaterals are further examples of what can be styled
minilateralism, which is in-between bilateralism and multilateralism.
Conclusions
Certain developments would affect India’s role in the balance of power
in the South China Sea, and which China would not welcome. A small but
significant development would be if and when India starts carrying out such
bilateral and trilateral exercises in the South China Sea with the US, Japan
and Australia. Precedents for this are the exercise formats with them that
India is already involved with in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, and
which those other three states have already conducted between themselves in the
South China Sea in July 2011. Greater use of Cam Ranh deep water bay by the
Indian navy would also be significant. A further development would be if and
when India starts conducting fuller military exercises in the South China Sea
with Vietnam. Precedents for India-Vietnam naval exercises are India’s SIMBEX
military exercises with Singapore in the South China Sea that have been a
regular biannual feature since 2005 (Collin 2013), and Vietnam’s participation
in the 2010 MILAN exercises held by India in the Bay of Bengal. Finally, a further
China-centric trilateral permutation with immediate relevance for the South
China Sea would be the India-Japan-Vietnam format suggested by Panda (2014).
Admittedly, elements of engagement between India and China might develop
some further momentum under the naval dialogue mechanism that was haltingly
mooted in 2015. South China Sea matters would be an obvious agenda item for it,
but there are little signs of that dialogue mechanism developing much impetus.
Instead what is more likely is that India will increasingly impact on the South
China Sea balance of power through its own increased presence and range of
strategic security partnerships in the region. This is what IR realism would
predict; exemplified in John Mearsheimer’s speech in Sydney where he forecast
future balancing behaviour as being “certain” (Mearsheimer 2010: 390) between
India, Vietnam, the US, Japan and Australia in the face of China’s regional
rise. Five years on and this strategic geometry is coming to pass in the South
China Sea, and in which India is doing its bit.
About The Author:
About The Author:
David Scott, is
an ongoing consultant-analyst and prolific writer on India and China foreign
policy, and on the geopolitics and international relations of the Indo-Pacific
and Asia-Pacific, having retired from teaching at Brunel University in 2015.
This article was first published at E-International Relations Website on July 26, 2015 and it has been reproduced under Creative Commons License 3.0
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