India steps up maritime presence in Asia-Pacific – just as US and China conduct separate exercises
- The Indian Navy is deploying four warships to the South China Sea and the western Pacific as Beijing and Washington conduct separate naval drills there
- Analysts say New Delhi wants to draw closer to Southeast Asia, with its ongoing border conflict with China pushing it to join US efforts to counter Beijing
The deployment includes INS Ranvijay, a guided missile destroyer; the guided missile frigate INS Shivalik; anti-submarine corvette INS Kadmatt; and INS Kora, a guided missile corvette. Three of the warships were designed and manufactured by India, the exception being Ranvijay.
In an official statement, the Indian Navy said the move served to strengthen international cooperation and solidarity with “friendly countries towards ensuring good order in the maritime domain”.
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Rajiv Bhatia, a former Indian ambassador to Myanmar and an expert on Southeast Asia, said the upcoming naval exercises were “evidence of increasing coordination” in the region among the Quad countries.
“These exercises and India’s deployment of its warships to the region are key pillars of the Quad strategy,” said Bhatia, who is currently a distinguished fellow at the Mumbai-based Gateway House think tank. “The diplomatic aspect of maritime security is discussed by the Quad foreign ministers, but the strategy is being operationalised through such naval channels.”
New Delhi is increasingly using its maritime presence to send strategic signals. Last year, immediately after the Galwan clash, the Indian government quietly deployed a frontline warship to the South China Sea, leading Beijing to raise objections to its presence.
India is also conducting sea trials on its first indigenous aircraft carrier, the INS Vikrant, which began trials off the southern state of Kerala on Wednesday and will be India’s second aircraft carrier in operation.
The Indian Navy said the country can now “join a select group of nations with the capability to indigenously design and build an aircraft carrier, which will be a real testimony to the ‘Make in India’ thrust of the Indian government”.
India, mindful of the Chinese base in Djibouti, is also building a naval base on the Mauritanian island of Agalega, according to reports by broadcaster Al Jazeera.
Mauritius on Wednesday said that although work was under way on an airstrip and a jetty on the island of Agalega, they would not be used for military purposes. The Indian foreign ministry declined to comment.
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A changed approach
Experts believe the task force’s deployment is in keeping with New Delhi’s view on how central the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is to its policy in the Asia-Pacific.
On Wednesday, Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar said the bloc was “the widely perceived foundation of the evolving strategic and economic architecture in the region”.
“Much of India’s interests and relationships now lie to its East, a testimony of its ties with Asean,” he tweeted after a meeting with the association’s foreign ministers.
The outreach also comes at a crucial time – Asean, one of the largest trading blocs in the world, is finalising a code of conduct for the South China Sea, which will lay down rules and guidelines for resolving maritime disputes in the waterway – most of which involve China.
Amid this, New Delhi has been slowly increasing its scrutiny on Chinese activities in the region. While addressing the East Asia summit in November last year, Jaishankar said Chinese actions and incidents in the South China Sea had eroded trust in negotiations on the code of conduct.
On Wednesday, addressing the Asean foreign ministers, Jaishankar highlighted the “growing convergence” of how the bloc’s members approached the Asia-Pacific, while also signalling its concerns on China’s role in negotiations on the code of conduct – which the Indian foreign minister said should be fully consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
All this reflects a changed approach in New Delhi towards the South China Sea dispute. Premesha Saha, an associate fellow with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, said India had gone from neutrality in the past – to avoid provoking Beijing – to calling out China for its actions in the region.
One factor that had led to this change, she said, was the continuing border stand-off between Indian and Chinese forces along the Line of Actual Control, which saw at least 20 Indian soldiers and five Chinese troops killed in a deadly clash in June last year.
“The other reason for India’s change in approach is that China’s presence in the Indian Ocean has been intensifying. This has pushed India to do the same in China’s backyard,” she said.
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Retired rear admiral K. Mohanan said while task forces such as the one the Indian Navy had deployed to the South China Sea were common, generally “only one or two” ships had been sent on such missions.
“The message in sending four ships is to show the countries in the region that India is engaged there and that the South China Sea belongs to everyone,” added Mohanan, who served as the last active captain of a former Indian aircraft carrier that was also named INS Vikrant.
The view from Asean
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a research fellow at the Manila-based Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, said Asean would welcome such attention from New Delhi.
“Security cooperation has long remained an underdeveloped dimension of Delhi’s Act East policy,” he said. “Hence, increased attention on this area may open a new facet for India’s strategic overtures to Southeast Asia.”
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The Indian and Indonesian navies last week conducted a coordinated patrol “to keep the Indian Ocean safe and secure for commercial fishing [and] international trade”, according to a statement from the Indian Navy.
But Pitlo said many Asean nations would be worried about getting embroiled in India-China tensions. “Such security engagement may be downplayed, if not put off, when Sino-Indian tensions are high,” he said.
India’s efforts to step up its presence in Southeast Asia come at a time when there is a flurry of diplomatic and military activity in the region, including high-level visits by US officials.
On the military front, the Australia-led Talisman Sabre exercise that also involved the navies of the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Britain concluded last weekend. London has sent a warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to sail through the region, while Germany is slated to do the same.
The four Quad countries are also set to conduct their annual Malabar exercise, which this year will take place off the coast of Guam in the western Pacific, while US Vice-President Kamala Harris is expected to visit Singapore and Vietnam later in the month.
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On the other hand, China and Russia are set to conduct joint military exercises between August 9 and 13 in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Experts such Bhatia from Gateway House believe this activity is part of a “deliberate refocus” by the Biden administration towards Southeast Asia, as a bid to counter China in its own backyard.
The outreach by the US and countries such as India is also likely to soothe ruffled feathers about the worries around the centrality of the Asean grouping, Pitlo said.
“The concern that Quad or other extra-regional minilaterals, especially those dominated by major and middle powers, may undermine Asean centrality persists [among members of the bloc],” he said.
Meanwhile, maritime strategy experts such as Saha from the Observer Research Foundation also warn that the rivalries of the western Pacific could possibly spill over into the Indian Ocean.
“If [Chinese] maritime activities happen in the Indian Ocean, India might get the Quad to step up its presence there,” she said. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
