By : Rahul Roy-Chaudhury:
 India’s revised and updated official maritime security strategy ‘Ensuring Secure Seas’ (10 October 2015, 185 pages), currently under restricted distribution, provides a welcome proactive and expanded outlook towards the navy’s roles and responsibilities in the Indian Ocean over the next ten years. This is in contrast to the 2007 ‘Freedom to Use the Seas: India’s Maritime Military Strategy’ it replaces, which was relatively conservative in its approach. This shift is reflected in the new title, from ‘using’ to ‘securing’ the seas, and from a ‘military’ to a broader ‘security’ perspective.
The reason for this change is two-fold. First, the seaborne nature of the Mumbai terror attacks of 26-28 November 2008. In its aftermath in February 2009, the government formally gave the navy an expanded responsibility for overall maritime security, including coastal and offshore security. Second, the navy played an active role in counter-piracy operations in the Arabian Sea from 2011 when pirates reached waters near India’s Lakshadweep chain of islands. This was in addition to its much-publicised anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali basin.
This revised strategy has been published at a time when there is greater civil-military consensus on the growing importance of the sea for India’s prosperity and security. This was marked by the release of the strategy by the defence minister at the Naval Commanders Conference in New Delhi on 26 October – the first time he had formally released such an official navy document. At the same time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set the Indian Ocean as a foreign-policy priority, with maritime dominance apparently the goal as India seeks to counter China’s expansionist policies.
In March 2015, Modi had unveiled a four-part framework for the Indian Ocean, focusing on: defending India’s interests and maritime territory (in particular countering terrorism); deepening economic and security cooperation with maritime neighbours and island states; promoting collective action for peace and security; and seeking a more integrated and cooperative future for sustainable development. Although the revised strategy is not the result of this initiative, it serves to complement it.
The revised strategy is significant in five ways.
First, it expands India’s areas of ‘maritime interest’ in meaningful ways. These include ‘areas of national interest based on considerations of Indian diaspora, overseas investments and political reasons’. Since the Indian Maritime Doctrine of 2004, revised in 2009, India’s areas of maritime interest have been defined as both ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’. While the ‘primary’ area has broadly encompassed the northern Indian Ocean region, the 2015 strategy expands this both southwards and westwards to include the south-west Indian Ocean and the Red Sea (formerly a ‘secondary’ area of interest). The ‘secondary’ area of interest is also expanded to include the western coast of Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. The South and East China Seas, Western Pacific Ocean and their littoral regions continue to remain of ‘secondary’ importance. Notably, two additional choke-points are now included – the Mozambique Channel and the Lombok Strait in the south-western and south-eastern Indian Ocean.
Second, it pointedly advances the former Manmohan Singh government’s policy of becoming a ‘net security provider’ to island states in the Indian Ocean. The strategy seeks to ‘shape a favourable and positive maritime environment’ for enhancing net security in India’s areas of maritime interest. It essentially aims to ‘prevent insecurity’ by exercising naval presence and capacity-building, and to ‘counter insecurity’ through ‘stabilising the maritime environment’ as well as the ‘conduct of maritime security operations, both independently and in coordination with other maritime forces in the region’. Since July 2013, for example, India has had a trilateral maritime security agreement with Sri Lanka and the Maldives, focusing on counter-terrorism, hydrography, search and seizure operations at sea, and the sharing of intelligence on illegal maritime activities.
Third, for the first time, the official document formally states that the future fleet will be based on the development of three carrier battle groups, each centred on an aircraft carrier, as well as the development of an operational capability of two carrier task forces, each comprising one or more carrier battle groups. It also reiterates the navy’s focus on surface action groups, anti-submarine warfare, naval air power, sea lift and amphibious capability, and long-range and precision strike weapons against targets at sea and on land. This is required for the navy to continue as a ‘balanced, multi-dimensional and multi-spectrum’ force, amidst indigenous warship production for self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
Fourth, as the sea trials of India’s first Arihant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine take place, the new strategy emphasises the assurance of punitive retaliation in accordance with India’s ‘no first use’ and ‘non-use against non-nuclear weapon states’ policy. Importantly, it notes that ‘SSBN deployments also counter an adversary’s strategy of seeking advantage from nuclear posturing or escalation’.
Fifth, the strategy emphasises the importance of maintaining freedom of navigation and strengthening the international legal regime at sea, particularly UNCLOS.
Meanwhile, the Indian navy’s operational footprint in the Indian Ocean has increased in the last eight years. This has included Non-combatant Evacuation operations in Libya (2011), Kuwait (2014) and Yemen (2015), as well as Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations such as cyclone relief (in 2007, 2008, 2013 and 2014). Navy-to-Navy staff talks now take place with over 20 countries and institutional bilateral/trilateral exercises with 11 countries. In August 2013, a dedicated communications satellite for the navy, GSAT-7, was launched for surveillance purposes. The navy also ambitiously seeks the development of a regional coastal surveillance radar system, including eight systems in the Seychelles, eight in Mauritius, six in Sri Lanka and ten in the Maldives – all to be linked to 51 sites on the Indian coast and island territories.
Those expecting the latest official maritime security strategy to name China or Pakistan as the Indian navy’s two main adversaries, or to establish a ‘balance’ between its counter-terrorism and ‘blue water’ tasks, will be disappointed. So will those seeking the navy’s perspective on the resumption of ‘quadrilateral’ naval exercises (held once in 2007 with the US, Australia and Japan (and also Singapore) but then abruptly ended following a demarche from China), the deployment of a larger ‘permanent’ naval force in the Andaman & Nicobar islands, or the possible supply of the BrahMos anti-ship cruise missiles to Vietnam. However, this is not the purpose of the revised maritime strategy.
The growing Indian convergence with the US and Japan on maritime security is also deliberately underplayed. But, what is noteworthy are official bilateral statements referring to the South China Sea in terms of ‘safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight’ (with the US on 25 January 2015) or ‘calling upon all states to avoid unilateral actions that could lead to tensions in the region’ (with Japan on 12 December 2015).
With the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ being mentioned only once, it is clear the core focus for the navy – its ‘primary’ area of interest – wisely remains the Indian Ocean. A minor quibble, the map at the start of the book should have shown concentric circles of 500 nautical mile ranges emanating from the navy’s two operational fleets in Mumbai in the west and Visakhapatnam in the east, not from Delhi in northern India. Also, the proximity of India’s island chains to both the northernmost Maldivian island in the Arabian Sea and the northernmost Indonesian island in the Bay of Bengal should have been highlighted, as also their proximity to the chokepoints of both the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca-Singapore. This would have, for instance, made clear the importance of improving India’s diplomatic relations with the Maldives, currently under considerable strain due to political differences. Meanwhile, the Indian navy still remains some way from possessing the capabilities that would be required for the degree of maritime dominance in the Indian Ocean to which India is now aspiring.