Security Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region - 3 | UPSC Mains: International Relations PDF Download

Conclusion:

• The complex interplay among the politics of sea, geopolitics, and geoeconomics, and the emerging challenges, in a nutshell, shows the rise of a new great game in the Indian Ocean. Given the Bay of Bengal as the geostrategic pivot in the Indian Ocean region, the new game begins with Bangladesh as the centerpiece. The US Deputy Secretary of State Mr. Stephen Biegun, during his visit to Dhaka in October 2020, mentioned that “Bangladesh will be a centerpiece of our work in the region” (US Embassy in Dhaka, 2020). Bangladesh is the second-largest recipient of Chinese assistance in the region with a focus on the infrastructure sector. Bangladesh is a signatory to BRI, and China sees new port and rail links from China to Bangladesh can serve as a pressure valve for the Malacca Strait. The Beijing-backed deep-sea port at Sonadia was shelved when India, Japan, and the United States voiced concerns (Mullen & Poplin, 2015). Bangladesh is India’s largest trade partner in South Asia. The country has channelized US$800 million to Bangladesh as a part of its Act East policy. Both Indian and China have invested heavily in Bangladesh’s next-door neighbor Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Almost a million Rohingya refugees from the Rakhine state puts Bangladesh at odds with all these three countries despite outstanding trade and people-to-people contacts. Hence, Bangladesh’s geostrategic and geopolitical approach to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as a whole need to be seen through a defensive yet collaborative spectrum.
• The peaceful resolution of maritime boundaries among Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar shows that greater cooperation leading to new governance regimes is possible. The Bangladesh Coast Guard and the Indian Coast Gueard regularly meet through regional and zonal commander-level meetings. The 4th regional and zonal commander-level meeting between the Bangladesh Coast Guard and Indian Coast Guard was held on October 20, 2020 (New Age, 2020). Regional cooperation, mutual relations, training exchange, and other issues were discussed during the meeting in light of the “MoU on Establishment of Collaborative Relationship to Combat Transnational Activities at Sea and Develop Regional Cooperation between the Indian Coast Guard and Bangladesh Coast Guard” signed between the two neighboring Coast Guards (Ministry of External Affairs, India, 2015).
• Currently, India, China, and Japan are providing Bangladesh with financial and technical resources, and private and public sector investments, and defense equipment and resources in the Bay area of Bangladesh, viz in Bangladesh’s part of Bengal, to harness the benefits from the large untapped reserves of oil, gas, minerals, fisheries, coastal shipping, deep seaports, and other maritime infrastructures. Hence, to accelerate industrial agglomeration along the Dhaka-Chittagong-Cox’s Bazaar belt area and beyond, encompassing developing economic infrastructure, improving the investment environment, and fostering connectivity, the BoB has increasingly become a strategic pivot for Bangladesh and the investor states (Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2014). Moreover, the Bay of Bengal is also linked with the land-locked Northeast Indian states, which enjoys transit through Bangladesh territory to link themselves with international trade and market. Bangladesh, being the lower riparian country, is now looking forward to technological solutions to manage its internal water systems to reduce its reliance over other countries for water. This would require technical and financial supports to ensure sustainable water management and governance.
• Moreover, the geostrategic competition over the Sri Lankan and the Maldivian waters brought high-level visits to Colombo in 2020. Quite remarkably, three high ranking officials from Moscow, Beijing, and Washington (Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi and Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov the US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells) visited Colombo on January 13, 2020 – to establish initial outreach to the new Rajapaksa dispensation in Sri Lanka (Khan, 2021). The timing and sequence broadly underscored each of their growing focus on Colombo. In particular, Washington DC, which faces a standoff with Colombo on the issues concluding the US$ 480 million grant from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), making it by far the single largest non-IFI grant in Sri Lankan history (Khan, 2021).
• In addition, China, within its overarching BRI  has built Hambantota Port in southern Sri Lanka, which will be South Asia’s largest port when the third phase of construction is completed this year. China also started building a $1.4 billion port project near Colombo. The agreement will last for 99 years and gives Beijing jurisdiction over 50 acres of land. Indeed, the Colombo Port City Project, as its name suggests, will be a city under Chinese lease, replete with apartment buildings, shopping malls, and golf courses. In times of conflict, China would likely be able to make military use of the facilities (Mullen & Poplin, 2015). Along with BRI, the US-led IPS has emerged as a strategic choice when the narrative of “strategic autonomy” is gaining political ground among the IORA countries.
• While the great game will continue to unfold, in the region’s interest the South Asian or perhaps the IORA states would require thinking beyond national or political strategic prisms. IORA-level cooperation in disaster relief, information sharing on environment and ecosystems and pollutions, maritime terrorism and crimes, maritime induced migration, and IUU fishing are required. Regional norms and standards-settings for the governance of the Indian Ocean has become another critical point to reap the positive benefits from the Indian Ocean. Along with the capacity building of the navies and maritime law enforcement agencies to patrol their waters, identify threats, and respond to incidents, the countries should come together to build a cooperative maritime security framework. Such a framework should be designed to be inclusive; hence, bypassing China or the US would certainly be a non-starter – be it through Strings of Pearl or Indo-Pacific strategy (Mahbubani, 1997).
• As the region navigates its way through the twenty-first century, policymakers must recognize the realities and constraints in the Asia-Pacific – the expanding trade, investment, artificial intelligence, unmanned technologies, and movement of goods and natural persons. Interdependence will continue to increase steadily. Therefore, the Indian Ocean should be seen, governed, and managed through a cooperative approach. IORA and BIMSTEC and inter-regional cooperation through SAARC-ASEAN and BIMSTEC-ASEAN would be needed to effectively address the gaps and create a framework for collective maritime security through increased maritime domain awareness, coordinated patrols, and burden-sharing. Summit level talks should be held by the IOR countries on a regular basis, open and candid science-based discussions among the engineers and maritime experts should be facilitated by the governments, scientific communities, and civil society, progress and innovations in the maritime sector should be shared among the countries since all the countries are not at par in terms of technological advancement and quality, and common governance norms and standards in the areas of fishing, pollution, and illegal movements should receive the highest priority for the apex leaders.
• Therefore, new challenges require new solutions, new institutions, and indeed new norms with genuine commitment. Overemphasizing the geopolitical indicators will only drive the littoral nations away from resolving the decisive threat of all times to the planet and to the existence of humankind – evolving paradigm shifts in climate change and its implications to IOR. The countries should focus on setting up quality maritime infrastructure, with or without support of extra-regional actors, without further delay. The choice of investment should be provided by the multilateral institutions – be it the Bretton Woods institution, or BRI institutions, or perhaps any future arrangement under IPS, and it should be done bypassing militarization or political objectives. The geopolitical pressure can well be reduced by respecting sovereign jurisdictions and strategic autonomies that the states aspire to protect. This also would require trust among the states to cooperate and share interoperable information required for greater cooperation. Of course, the countries will need to move from pre-Covidian attitude toward security in which national interest played the key role to post-Covidian norms in which collective security will dictate the terms of geopolitics and geostrategy. Therefore, the countries should develop a shared charter, led by the island and littoral states, for a free and open Indian Ocean to ensure sustainable oceanic ecosystems that would benefit the generations to come.