In the ‘Indian Ocean Rim Association’ (IORA) which Sri Lanka begins its tenure of Chair this month, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean has a strange (if not sinister) bedfellow: Europe’s biggest military power, France. ‘Sinister’ just has to be interjected, if in parentheses, in the painful light of the ongoing string of West African revolts against France’s seemingly neo-colonial depredations in its former colonies on the poorest continent.
Anyone born after the era of national liberation from colonial dominance would certainly wonder at France, located thousands of kilometres away in another distant continent, as yet holding on to its colonial possessions over a half-century after that ‘decolonisation’ era and, thereby, enjoying full IORA membership. Even Washington only has non-voting ‘partner’ status, while Beijing still awaits a link-up.
France has two “overseas départments” of La Reunion and Mayotte, two tiny islands in the southern Indian Ocean, comprising about one million citizens. The French Antarctic territories further South must be added, usefully providing France with a vast maritime expanse that is hardly inhabited, but which is of “important economic, scientific and strategic significance”, to quote a 2015 study by the respected Singaporean think tank S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
This study adds:“These territories account for a vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of more than 2.6 million square kilometres and require the maintenance of two military bases, one in La Reunion and the other in Mayotte, with about 1,900 troops…” and other “Maritime Standing Forces” (an euphemism for permanently maintained French naval units).
At the same time, other extra-regional great powers have their presence in the IORA geo-political ‘theatre’, including declining superpower USA and newly emerged proto-superpower, China. Aspiring regional power India, which recently commissioned a second aircraft carrier, is yet to achieve a true Blue Water naval capacity anywhere near that of the other great powers, especially compared with the might of the Navy of the Chinese People Liberation Army (PLAN).
Possessing the world’s fourth largest land forces, a sizeable Air Force and a small nuclear weapons arsenal, India is yet to remotely approach the military hardware design and manufacturing capability of any of the great powers. At most, New Delhi offers a few value-for-cash products for Global South military customers, the most noteworthy being its low-cost multi-role fighter jet (Tejas), infantry weapons, and combat logistics vehicles from the likes of Tata and Ashok Leyland.
Delhi is weakest in its naval capability largely because Bharath’s pre-occupation has been its constant, real, territorial disputes, thanks to the inter-state border chaos so typically left behind by South Asia’s departing colonial power, UK. With just two aircraft carriers (INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant) – today’s must-have for any aspiring Blue Water power – and 16 diesel submarines, the Indian Navy is totally outmatched by the PLAN’s two latest-design carriers, 70 nuclear and diesel-powered missile submarines (including those having nuclear-tipped missiles) and vast manufacturing and design capacity. Delhi has only just commissioned its first nuclear-powered submarine with a nuclear-tipped missile arsenal.
Combined forces
China possesses the world’s largest naval personnel cohort and the biggest combined forces of heavy frigates, corvettes, amphibious assault ships and inshore gunboats. Not even the great US Navy can match that mid-range ocean combat as well as amphibious operational capacity.
However, China’s military capacity is quite lopsided in geopolitical terms in comparison with that of the older, Western great powers. Its now admired centralised economic management has indeed currently established various types of military manufacturing and design capacity in some aspects of warfare on par, if not greater than, even the US.
Washington has woken up to the reality that Beijing has more topline shipyards than anyone else and produces frigates – the multirole work horse of Navies today – simultaneously and faster than the US ever did except during World War II. And the PLAN’s Type-55 and Type-55A frigates have emerged as perhaps the best vessels of that category.
But in terms of manufacturing capacities of most other topline hardware and, especially technology, China trails the NATO powers. In airpower, Beijing has laid a high technology foundation, but has a long way to go in terms of actual military counter punch against the US. With just two aircraft carriers (similar to India), Beijing has yet to build up a Blue Water Navy to be able to assert itself as a serious, long range, strategic naval power.
Inevitably, Beijing is only able to geopolitically hold its own, due to its nuclear weapons arsenal and delivery capability. This is the classic ‘deterrent’ in the great power competition today. In terms of naval bases, New Delhi continues to have an edge over its rival with a powerful base in the Andamans archipelago right at the mouth of the Malacca Strait, through which much of China’s fuel imports as well as manufactured exports pass.
India is also building a military facility in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, almost right next to the main African Continent. Beijing is making its Indian Ocean presence felt, however with naval bases in Djibouti at the opening of the Red Sea and Gwadar, Pakistan, close to the entry to the Persian Gulf. China also operates a commercial port in Hambantota, Sri Lanka.
China, however, leads the way, ahead of other, already established great powers, in its breathtakingly creative multi-dimensional geopolitical strategy. This is Beijing’s combination of long-range military capability on the one hand and, on the other, its now-famous ‘Belt & Road Initiative’, (BRI) a grand economic enterprise that already encompasses the vast Asian continent and reaches into both Europe and Africa. It was recently renamed the Global Development Initiative (GDI), perhaps to reflect China’s global ambitions but also to efface the stigma attached to the BRI in certain circles.
Thus, in the next few years, China’s imports and exports will no longer rely solely on the Indian Ocean maritime routes. Rather, the BRI will enable fuel imports to come overland via Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian states. Meanwhile, China, “the world’s factory”, has already begun freighting its exports overland through Asia and into Europe by train and road transport.
The BRI or GDI completes its first decade this year with roads, railways, sea ports and pipelines thrusting right across the Eurasian mega continent towards Europe, and, also, overland through South East and South Asia. Overland access to Europe’s Mediterranean ports gives Beijing easy access to Africa, largely circumventing the Indian Ocean.
Infrastructure development
It is possible to argue that China has more strategic infrastructure development in States around the Indian Ocean than any other great power. All of this plurality of great power activity in and around the Indian Ocean, provides the dramatic backdrop to the re-definition of global geopolitics and a re-shaping of the world’s hierarchy of power.
By the early 2000s, Washington and Brussels were already alert to Beijing’s economic and financial market assertiveness. The Shanghai Security Organisation (CSO) groups States in precisely that Eurasian heartland led by China and Russia. China’s diplomacy and economic counterpunch was critical in establishing BRICS as a potential future rival of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) and International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Today, the policy debate in Washington is no longer about the sustaining of the US’ global pre-eminence. The post-Cold War ‘sole superpower’ is today contending with new configurations of global power that combine new international trade pathways on the one hand and new military powers on the other.
This is one reason why Donald Trump could, in his ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) political messaging, tap the nostalgia for that old ‘America No.1’ status which is now slipping away – perhaps forever. The other reason, of course, is America’s diminished White ethnic societal dominance.
Today, Washington think tanks struggle with that challenge of a respectable re-formulation of the US superpower posture. As the outgoing sole hegemon, it is difficult for Uncle Sam to resign itself to the collapse of its omnipotence. Recognising other players on par with it has been as difficult for Cold War victor USA as much as it has been difficult for old colonial powers France and UK to acknowledge the decline of their own old civilisational supremacy.
“Leader of the Free World” rhetoric now gives way to a more realistic posture of ‘strategic competition’, a kind of half-hearted acknowledgement that the Old West must face up to the ‘East Wind’ now blowing across the Earth as the former colonised and marginalised peoples awaken to their new potentials.
Thus, IORA chair Colombo must navigate, literally and metaphorically, a deep and stormy ocean of geopolitical dynamics and Climate Change, as the world moves from old, more simple, inter-State relations, to more complex ones in this new era of globalisation and ecological crises.
The IORA, of which Sri Lanka is a Founding Member, brings together 23 countries in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). It was founded in 1997 to promote peace, stability, and sustainable development in the region as envisioned by its originator, the late South African President Nelson Mandela.
Sri Lanka’s chairmanship kicks off with the hosting of the 23rd Council of Ministers’ Meeting of IORA in Colombo this month. The meeting is expected to discuss a range of issues, including economic cooperation, trade and investment, maritime security, and Climate Change.
Commercial vessels
With over 80 percent of the world’s seaborne trade in oil, and around 100,000 commercial vessels traversing the IOR each year, this vast maritime concourse is possibly the most strategic in the world. No less important are the huge fisheries resources and the mineral resources on the ocean floor and underground. There already are plans to mind the seabed using robotic equipment.
Sri Lanka will have a tough time managing some membership disputes. India is yet to accede to Pakistan’s membership and some IORA members are yet to fully endorse China’s inclusion as a ‘partner’ country alongside such extra-regional IORA partners as the USA, and the UK.
