The Indian Ocean is back. Of course, the world's third largest body of water never really went anywhere. In the latest Foreign Affairs, however, The Atlantic Magazine's Robert Kaplan reports that the China-India rivalry coupled with those nations' quests for blue-water navies has revived the U.S. strategic focus in the area. Can 1970s and 1980s talk of the importance of the U.S. base on the British atoll Diego Garcia be far away?
Kaplan says the IO is much more than a "geographic feature;" it's an "idea." This is reminiscent of how the Atlantic Rim Network's Jim Barron describes the Atlantic Ocean as a "body of water surrounded by a state of mind." The Indian Ocean serves as an "arc of Islam" with dangerous strategic chokepoints such as the Bab El Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz in the west and the Strait of Malacca in the east. Kaplan actually suggests that Malacca is the strategic equivalent of the Cold War's Fulda Gap in Germany. The Indian Ocean also features two enormous bays with highly unstable nations at their apex, Pakistan on the Arabian Sea and Mynamar on the Bay of Bengal. It accounts for half the world's container traffic (see February 23 entry from Singapore, Shipping News And Other Fears) and 70 percent of oil shipping in an increasingly energy-starved world.
Of course, the IO is also backdrop to Beijing and New Delhi expansionism. China and India worry as much as anyone else about how Islamic extremists, pirates and natural disasters can blunt their commercial and military ambitions. As a result, for example, Kaplan tells us that India's growing alliance with Iran finds the two nations building a state-of-the-art port facility at Chah Bandar, Iran, in the Gulf of Oman. Similarly, China is helping Pakistan construct a massive port in Gwadar not far from the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. It is expected that both these ports will be connected to current and future oil and gas pipelines to oil- and gas-rich Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkeminsitan. This is enough to get the attention of any American or European analyst, and it is doing so.
Kaplan sounds downright Mahanian, for those of you who know the work of the 19th Century naval officer and scholar Alfred Mahan, in stressing the importance of American seapower in the region. He speaks to what are now the obvious limitations as well as political and financial costs of relying too much on occupation-minded land forces as a primary tool of foreign policy. He speaks to the benefits of more mobile, forward-deployed maritime power and, in doing so, argues that the U.S. should not (and one might add, cannot) focus on dominance in the region. Instead, he calls for a power-balancing role between China and India that finds the U.S. Navy making itself "continually useful." In a starkly different future role for the American fleet, Kaplan writes that "rather than going it alone, the U.S. Navy should be a coalition builder supreme, ready to work with any navy that agrees to cooperate with it."
p.s. The Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA is worth seeing, but only if you're in the neighborhood. Like many of us, I know best Lautrec's poster art depicting Jane Avril and other performers in 1890s Paris. I was hoping to see and learn more at the Clark, but the exhibition seemed rather thin to me.
Kaplan says the IO is much more than a "geographic feature;" it's an "idea." This is reminiscent of how the Atlantic Rim Network's Jim Barron describes the Atlantic Ocean as a "body of water surrounded by a state of mind." The Indian Ocean serves as an "arc of Islam" with dangerous strategic chokepoints such as the Bab El Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz in the west and the Strait of Malacca in the east. Kaplan actually suggests that Malacca is the strategic equivalent of the Cold War's Fulda Gap in Germany. The Indian Ocean also features two enormous bays with highly unstable nations at their apex, Pakistan on the Arabian Sea and Mynamar on the Bay of Bengal. It accounts for half the world's container traffic (see February 23 entry from Singapore, Shipping News And Other Fears) and 70 percent of oil shipping in an increasingly energy-starved world.
Of course, the IO is also backdrop to Beijing and New Delhi expansionism. China and India worry as much as anyone else about how Islamic extremists, pirates and natural disasters can blunt their commercial and military ambitions. As a result, for example, Kaplan tells us that India's growing alliance with Iran finds the two nations building a state-of-the-art port facility at Chah Bandar, Iran, in the Gulf of Oman. Similarly, China is helping Pakistan construct a massive port in Gwadar not far from the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. It is expected that both these ports will be connected to current and future oil and gas pipelines to oil- and gas-rich Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkeminsitan. This is enough to get the attention of any American or European analyst, and it is doing so.
Kaplan sounds downright Mahanian, for those of you who know the work of the 19th Century naval officer and scholar Alfred Mahan, in stressing the importance of American seapower in the region. He speaks to what are now the obvious limitations as well as political and financial costs of relying too much on occupation-minded land forces as a primary tool of foreign policy. He speaks to the benefits of more mobile, forward-deployed maritime power and, in doing so, argues that the U.S. should not (and one might add, cannot) focus on dominance in the region. Instead, he calls for a power-balancing role between China and India that finds the U.S. Navy making itself "continually useful." In a starkly different future role for the American fleet, Kaplan writes that "rather than going it alone, the U.S. Navy should be a coalition builder supreme, ready to work with any navy that agrees to cooperate with it."
p.s. The Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA is worth seeing, but only if you're in the neighborhood. Like many of us, I know best Lautrec's poster art depicting Jane Avril and other performers in 1890s Paris. I was hoping to see and learn more at the Clark, but the exhibition seemed rather thin to me.