China’s greatest vulnerability in its strategy to dominate the Indian Ocean—and thereby India—is the Malacca Strait, a narrow sea lane separating Singapore and Sumatra, through which so much marine traffic must pass that it’s both a lifeline for China’s seaborne trade and the main path for its navy toward South Asia, and points further west.
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The Andaman Sea is flanked by the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands in the West, Myanmar to the north, the Thai-Malay peninsula to the east, and the Sumatra island to the south. It funnels into the Straits of Malacca that connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The large amount of shipping that enters the Andaman Sea from the east heads to Singapore, from where it turns the Pacific Ocean. Long seen as a political backwater, the Andaman Sea is rapidly regaining its strategic salience.
Recent developments in the South China Sea have lumbered U.S. strategic planners with a number of pressing quandaries. Should the United States send warships through sea lanes claimed by China as territorial waters? How can Washington signal resolve and reassurance to its allies in the region without unduly antagonizing China’s political and military leaders? What is the right mix of diplomacy, military, and political engagement?
The balance of power is one of those concepts that gets the most attention when it’s shifting. Or wobbling. When people are talking about it, it’s time to be worried. And everybody is worried. As Grandma observed, family arguments are getting too loud when the whole village is gossiping about whether the marriage will survive.
If I were to write about a new power rising in the East, one whose population of 633 million is the third largest in the world after China and India, and 100 million more than either the European Union or the whole of North America, you might expect to have heard quite a lot about it, writes Sholto Byrnes
India’s predicament highlights a fundamental axiom: on the chess-board of international geopolitics, the context of a strategic proposition is as important as its content. India might be opposed to idea of being surrounded by Chinese maritime infrastructure and PLAN logistical outposts in the Indian Ocean, but the context of China’s rise in the region, and India’s own institutional weaknesses prevent it from forestalling such a possibility.
A new carrier like India’s does more than just denote blue-water capability.
The Indian Navy has had a big week. The reactor in its first indigenous nuclear submarine, the Arihant, went critical on Saturday, and its first indigenous aircraft carrier, theVikrant, was formally unveiled today. It’s long been assumed that one of the primary tasks of the rapidly-modernizing service and its expanding fleet is to apply pressure to China’s Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) in the event of conflict.
