Security Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region - 1 | UPSC Mains: International Relations PDF Download

By Professor Shahab Enam Khan, Department of International Relations, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, and Research Director, Bangladesh Enterprise Institute.

 3 May 2021  

“Within a few generations, the world’s oceans will no longer be coloured blue. Instead, they will have been claimed by nation states and will be identified on maps according to the shades of the countries that own them”. – Alexis Dudden, Financial Times.

 Setting the Context: 

• The South Asian security discourse often overlooked the evolving role of the Indian Ocean in setting the future courses of international relations, trade, and security. This is a water mass bounded on the west by East Africa, on the north by the Indian subcontinent, on the east by Indochina and Australia, and on the south by the Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica. The Indian Ocean is the world’s third-largest ocean and constitutes about 20 per cent of the water on the Earth’s surface. The political and security dynamics in four regions – the Persian Gulf, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Africa – are linked with the politics of the Indian Ocean and craft interdependent economies and interactive strategic processes within regional systems. Hence, the ocean has intrinsic impacts on domestic politics, foreign policy behavior, and significant outside powers’ role in Asian countries.
• The South Asian countries, for their energy supply, depend heavily on the maritime supply routes in the Indian Ocean. This is a region where the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, along with the Maritime Silk Route, converge and diverge, paving ways for these two powers to exercise strategic leverage. The geopolitics of the energy supply route dominates the regional energy security complex. As Kaplan (2014) noted: “Geopolitics is the battle for space and power played out in a geographical setting. Just as there are military, diplomatic, and economic geopolitics, there is also energy geopolitics.” The control over energy supply routes and transit states lies at the core of both the IPS and BRI agendas. Bangladesh and India’s dependency on the U.S., Europe, China, Central Asia, and the Middle East for energy and trade will remain strong for the foreseeable future. Thus, a peaceful and stable Indian Ocean is of paramount importance for their economic futures.
• Although economic and political views toward the Indian Ocean vary, its critical strategic importance has grown at an astronomical pace. The transition from “sea amnesia” to “sea cognizance” among policymakers is now evident. While states increasingly recognize the strategic equations, the Indian Ocean has also become a theatre for nontraditional security challenges such as piracy, environmental degradation, and illegal fishing. No single country can act as a net security provider for the IORA region, as non-state actors and climate-related threats pose significant risks to trade flows that constitute over half of the world’s container movement and one-third of global maritime traffic.
• To understand the scale of importance, one can look into China’s “Malacca Dilemma,” which exposes Beijing’s vulnerability in accessing the broader Indo-Pacific. Chinese access is primarily limited to one key maritime passage through the South China Sea, an area plagued by overlapping territorial claims. In August 2023, China released a new “standard map” with a ten-dash line, asserting claims over almost the entire South China Sea and waters east of Taiwan — triggering diplomatic protests from ASEAN states and India.
• Interestingly, the Indian Ocean is governed through numerous maritime agreements. Regional organizations such as BIMSTEC and ASEAN are giving increasing attention to maritime security, and ad hoc cooperation frameworks have emerged, such as the Trilateral Cooperative Agreement (TCA) between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines to counter maritime threats in the Sulu–Celebes seas. In South Asia, Bangladesh resolved its maritime boundary disputes with India and Myanmar through ITLOS and UNCLOS. However, maritime territorial disputes remain a major concern in Southeast Asia, particularly in the South China Sea, where competing claims threaten to undermine regional cooperation.
• The IORA countries, including Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, have joined the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which entered into force in 2022 and remains the largest trade bloc in 2025, covering about 30% of global GDP and population. RCEP denotes greater economic collaboration among ASEAN and its five major trading partners, including China. In contrast, intra-regional trade in South Asia still accounts for only about 5% of total trade — far below ASEAN’s 25% — highlighting persistent political barriers and poor connectivity among natural trading partners.
• Henceforth, the purpose of this article is to review the geopolitical and geoeconomic interfaces of the Indian Ocean through the prisms of traditional and nontraditional threats. This article argues that over-securitization of the Indian Ocean can stifle cooperation and that the management of the ocean should be viewed through “sea welfare” rather than “sea control.” Challenges in this region evolve with human development, market dynamics, and climate change, making the ocean both a source of volatility and interdependence.

 The Complex Interplay between Geostrategy and Geoeconomics: 

• The Indian Ocean combines overlapping geostrategic interests and geoeconomic realities. Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, developed under the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), remains symbolically important for China’s access to the Arabian Sea but faces security and operational challenges. Meanwhile, India’s collaboration with Iran on the Chabahar Port continues as a parallel connectivity project that links India to Afghanistan and Central Asia, serving as a counterweight to China’s expanding “string of pearls.”
• Along with port politics, market stability across IORA nations depends heavily on maritime trade. Most oil and LNG flows rely on the Indian Ocean’s routes, making regional energy security vulnerable to chokepoint disruptions. According to OPEC (2019), nearly two-thirds of global oil trade moves by sea, and over 64% of OPEC reserves are concentrated in the Middle East.
• Roughly 20–21 million barrels per day — about one-fifth of total global oil supply — pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile-wide passage between Oman and Iran connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. It remains the world’s most critical oil chokepoint, with exports from Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia flowing primarily to Asian markets. Ongoing Iran–Gulf tensions continue to prompt naval deployments by the U.S. and China in this corridor.
• The Strait of Malacca, between Indonesia and Malaysia, remains the second most crucial oil transit chokepoint, handling nearly one-third of global seaborne crude trade (~15 million barrels per day). The strait is vital for China’s energy security, as around 90% of its imported crude transits this route. Alongside Malacca, the Suez Canal forms another indispensable corridor connecting the Indian and Atlantic Oceans via the Mediterranean.
• The Suez Canal, together with the SUMED Pipeline, gained renewed importance after 2022 as Europe substituted Russian oil with Middle Eastern supplies, boosting northbound flows. However, since late 2023, Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea have disrupted traffic through Bab el-Mandeb and Suez, forcing tankers to reroute around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope — significantly increasing freight time and cost. The corridor previously handled about 9% of global maritime energy trade but saw steep declines through 2024–25 due to these security threats.
• The Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, between Djibouti and Yemen, has turned from a theoretical chokepoint into an active conflict zone. China’s first overseas PLA base in Djibouti underscores its growing blue-water ambitions. Since late 2023, Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have targeted commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea, slashing traffic by more than half. By mid-2024, crude and product flows had fallen to around 4 million bpd — down from roughly 8–9 million bpd in 2023 — as vessels diverted around Africa. The U.S. and allied navies have intensified patrols to safeguard this vital trade artery.