After more than a half-century of neglect, during the past decade, the importance of the Indian Navy has been acknowledged in matters of policy. The immense coastline added to the Exclusive Economic Zone including those provided by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, not to forget Lakshadweep, make it a necessity to ensure that the Indian Navy and Coast Guard have the capability to ensure the safety of these sea spaces.
In particular, there is the threat posed across the world by PRC fishing fleets that are active in plundering the oceans, no matter that in numerous cases, such CCP-inspired fishing boats poach on exclusive zones belonging to other countries. The philosophy being followed is that “what’s yours is mine, and I have the muscle to enforce that”.
Fortunately, India has the capability to ensure that such piracy at sea does not operate in its own waters, and the time may have come for the Quad countries to come to a common strategy to protect international law in the Indo-Pacific. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is obsessed with Europe to the neglect of Asia, and such a tilt is obvious in the selection of such Europe-obsessed officials as Kurt Campbell to look after US policy in the Indo-Pacific.
In such a context, it is a welcome move that the US House of Representatives has underlined the importance of the Indo-Pacific and called on the State Department to regularly keep the House informed about how the waters of this most consequential of oceans are being protected from the predatory instincts of the CCP. Secretary of State Antony Blinken may find such a task difficult, given his obsession with Europe and in particular with Ukraine.
Such a fixation on the foe of Cold War 1.0 in an era where Cold War 2.0 has erupted, with the PRC as the challenger, is making not just Blinken but Biden less and less trusted and consequential in Asia, Africa and South America. Even longtime treaty allies of the US such as Saudi Arabia have quietly diversified their roster of strategic partners away from the US, believing that Washington is increasingly becoming less reliable in the eyes of the Rest as a consequence of its obsession with the specific interests of the West.
It is a sign of such a skewed understanding of current needs that the White House is prodding the US Congress to provide $60 billion to Ukraine in a war that was lost at the start, while seeking to make much less available to longtime partner Israel and even less to Taiwan, that fortification of democracy just a few miles away from the PRC at its nearest point, Kinmen. Biden has on countless occasions justified his Ukraine fixation by claiming that it would “deter China from attacking Taiwan”.
On the contrary, the quagmire that Ukraine has become for NATO has proved welcome to the CCP, in that the Ukraine-Russia conflict draws US resources and attention away from PRC takeover of much of the sea and air space of Taiwan, a process that has been met with comparative indifference by the White House. What is needed were the White House to act in a manner consistent with US interests would be to substitute much of the $60 billion funding for Ukraine with an additional $40 billion going to Taiwan and Israel, besides being utilised for securing the southern border of the US, which appears to be as easy to cross as the India-Nepal border has unfortunately long been.
Together with Australia, and Japan, India needs to energize the Quad in the manner conceived by Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi in 2017. Judging by its on-off approach to the Indo-Pacific, and placing in charge of strategy in such matters those who remain lost in the mists of Cold War 1.0, it is a welcome sign that India is becoming more active, and especially that the Indian Navy has been recognized as the spearpoint of the effort to ensure that the sea lanes of international commerce where not just India but countries friendly to India are concerned remain open to all.
Another welcome sign is the increased attention made to the domestic manufacture of not just warships but commercial ships as well, a field in which India has lagged behind for too long, but has begun catching up so as to emerge as a global hub of shipbuilding and in actualising the potential of the Blue Economy.