India looks outward: Balaji Chandramohan discusses India's maritime strategy in the 21st century.

• Author: Chandramohan, Balaji
• Position: Essay

As the geo-political shift increases the importance of Asia, countries such as India and China that have traditionally followed a continental oriented strategic approach can be expected to develop an active maritime strategy as a means of enhancing their military status.

For India, a continental regional power, this approach has been evident since 1991. Its 'Look East' policy is a reflection of great power ambitions that have grown since the end of the Cold War. 'Look East' is primarily designed to curtail India's greatest security threat--China in South-east Asia. So far there has been consensus among India's ruling elite about the policy, and other countries in the South-east Asian region, such as Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, have accepted it.

Great powers by definition have tended to have both core and peripheral security dilemmas and to be competitive in both, especially when faced with a challenge or threat. India's core security threat from nation states has been continental. It has fought four limited continental wars with Pakistan and one continental war with China. It is understood that India's efforts to nullify the existing security dilemmas at the core could be enhanced by adopting an effective policy of naval expansion on its periphery. That periphery, it could be argued, stretches from the Gulf of Aden in the west to the Strait of Malacca in the east. This, of course, coincides with the strategic priorities of other great powers in the Asia Pacific region, such as the United States and China.

The region between the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden is hailed as the 'centre stage of the 21st century', as suggested by Robert Kaplan in his book Monsoon. If India is to graduate from being a regional power in South Asia to a great power in the Asia-Pacific region, it needs to control these vital links in the Indian Ocean by both hard power and soft power. Since ancient times, navies have been instrumental in projecting a country's soft power. India understands well that armies, by comparison, produce suspicion in host countries.

As a part of its overall strategic priorities, India has begun to be influenced in its naval thinking by Alfred Thayer Mahan's famous maxim that whoever controls the world's oceans controls the world. Even so, India has not so far emulated great powers of the 19th and 20th century in fully understanding the strategic dimensions of its 13,000-kilometre coastline. Naval powers like Great Britain, the United States and Japan and continental powers such as the Soviet Union, Germany and France maximised their geographic position to secure advantage in strategic manoeuvring.

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In reality India shows both continental and maritime country characteristics, with the former more important because New Delhi has to concentrate its diplomatic effort on dealings with Pakistan. But with India's economy growing, it can re-link its historical maritime and cultural contacts politically through naval diplomacy. For example, India's Look East policy has boosted its trade relations with South-east Asia. Naval diplomacy has played its part in this, with Indian naval officers making regular visits to South-east Asian countries. However, there is a need to extend India's Look East policy to encompass the South Pacific. Historically India is inter-linked with countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. V.R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, in his book Origin and Spread of Tamils, records that Tamilian Chola kings had cultural and trade relations with the Polynesians in the South Pacific.

Important counter-weight

India has up to now failed to tap its long lost relationship with the South Pacific. However, it is now timely to revisit these cultural ties with the atolls and island nations from the western...