Maritime Security Risks, Vulnerabilities and Cooperation

Uncertainty in the Indian Ocean

Lee Cordner

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319627540
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319627557
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book uniquely employs risk and vulnerability approaches to advocate international policy options for enhancing maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean region. Understanding shared risks and common vulnerabilities that impact the achievement of mutual objectives in the oceanic domain present practical bases for progressing collective action. The Indian Ocean sea lanes are the world's most important thoroughfares for energy resources (oil, gas and coal) and other cargoes. Secure maritime trade routes are vital to global, regional and national economies. Further, security challenges resulting from marine environmental degradation impacted by climate change are rising. Regional and extra-regional actors need to work more closely together to impose law and order at sea, control regional conflicts, respond to humanitarian crises and natural disasters, and conserve the marine environment. This book provides an invaluable resource for political leaders, policy advisers, academic researchers, military professionals, and students of international security and strategic studies.

© The Author(s) 2018

Lee CordnerMaritime Security Risks, Vulnerabilities and CooperationNew Security Challengeshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62755-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Security of the Indian Ocean Maritime System

Lee Cordner¹

(1)

University of Adelaide, Kiama, New South Wales, Australia

End Abstract

The Indian Ocean region (IOR) has emerged as an important geopolitical arena in the Asian Century. The primary coalescing factor in the IOR is the systemic nature of the maritime context where global, regional and national strategic objectives come together. The strategic interests of multiple actors involved in the IOR overlap and converge at sea. Freedom of navigation has to be protected because it is essential to world trade and critical to global energy security . The Indian Ocean marine environment impacted by climate change , pollution and resource exploitation needs to be husbanded; it is vital to global environmental security and regional food security . Maritime territorial sovereignty is crucial to regional stability and nation-state integrity. Law and order at sea must be effectively applied across the entire maritime expanse. Multifaceted and interactive security in the Indian Ocean maritime domain presents a rising concern for multiple actors. There is a strong case for enhanced IOR regionalism, with a focus upon collective and cooperative security across the maritime domain presenting a paramount requirement for the future.

Maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean is clearly necessary. No single nation-state or other entity has the mandate or capability to provide security for the entire regional maritime domain. Further, many IOR states lack the capacity to effectively police their individually claimed oceanic areas. Regional and extra-regional nation-states and other actors who have interests in the IOR and the capacity to assist need to be involved.

The IOR geopolitical environment is complex, diverse, dynamic and fragmented. Currently, there are no region-wide, national-level arrangements or architectures in place specifically designed to facilitate security dialogue and address security issues. This presents perplexing challenges: how to develop realistic and workable collective and cooperative security strategies? There are no easy answers, no ‘silver bullets’.

A promising methodology entails assisting key actors to understand the common risks and shared vulnerabilities that impact achieving mutual strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean maritime domain. Credible strategic risk assessments offer prospects for persuading key decision-makers of the need to work together towards mutually beneficial outcomes. Such an approach is presented and advocated here as a worthwhile way of progressing collective and cooperative regional maritime security in the IOR. Risk-based approaches can be useful in highlighting opportunities towards progressing compelling cases for action. Authoritative risk and vulnerability analyses require sound knowledge, multifaceted skills and deep experience.

The Changing Indian Ocean Geostrategic Context

The importance of the Indian Ocean as a geopolitical focal area is increasingly being recognized. However, the IOR is difficult to deal with as an integrated entity. Geography, combined with historical, cultural, racial, ethnic, economic, political and ideological factors, makes conceptualizing the IOR as a unified entity highly problematic. In modern times and until recently, the Indian Ocean has been viewed by external powers as primarily a maritime trade route, an extensive waterway that connects west with east. In geopolitical terms, the IOR is perceived to be a largely disaggregated oceanic and littoral region, more a collection of subregions than a single region (Bouchard and Crumplin 2010, 41–44). However, there is a developing consensus that the Indian Ocean, as a vital component of the Indo-Pacific confluence, will play a much more important role in shaping the contemporary and future international context than it has done for centuries (Bratton and Till 2012, 243).

The notion of a merged and continuous ‘Indo-Pacific’ has gained currency, particularly in western policy pronouncements. The term is not precisely defined; however, it is taken to refer to a wider Indo-Pacific maritime strategic system. This system encompasses the trade routes and sea lanes that cross the Indian Ocean and extend past the Straits of Malacca and the Sunda and Lombok Straits into the South China Sea, the western Pacific Ocean to North Asia, and across the Pacific to North America. This oceanic geography embraces the most important trade routes in the world today. The Indo-Pacific idea can be played out at a high political level. It includes several of the most economically and militarily powerful nations in the world, the United States, China and India, and many important middle and smaller nations (Rumley 2013, 11). The US government (2010, 60–61), for example, declared: “The Indian Ocean region as a whole … will play an ever more important role in the global economy … (it) provides vital sea lines of communication that are essential to global commerce, international energy security, and regional stability.” The IOR is now perceived as representing the “geographic nexus of vital economic and security issues that have global consequences” (Garofano and Dew 2013, ix).

There are past notions of the Indian Ocean as a peaceful, largely unclaimed maritime thoroughfare. The water body has been described as presenting a “well-integrated interregional arena of economic and cultural interaction and exchange” (Bose 2006, 15) where Arab and Asian traders plied their wares. Along with subsequent depictions of the Indian Ocean as a pre–Second World War “British Lake” (Panikkar 1944, 1, 1945; Alpers 2014, 97–99), these perceptions have mostly faded into history. And they may not have been entirely accurate.

There are other historical views of an earlier region or collection of subregions woven together by economic and cultural networks and interdependencies. For centuries, the waters of the Indian Ocean have carried religions, languages, traditions and people across thousands of nautical miles and bound them together in a ‘cultural brotherhood’. It has been asserted that it was the failure of the inhabitants to record the maritime history of the region that has impacted perceptions of earlier cohesive regional entities (Cordner 2011, 70). In reality, the constant Indian Ocean ‘churn’ was accompanied by significant conflicts and, at times, massive and brutal bloodletting as various groups in parts of the IOR sought to gain the ascendancy (Sanyal 2016). Bose (2006, 6–7, 31, and 282) somewhat optimistically characterized the past Indian Ocean as a quiescent and peaceful “interregional arena”. He argued that the peoples living along the vast Indian Ocean rim shared an “extraterritorial identity and universalist aspiration … bound in a strong symbiotic embrace” where the sea provided the common medium. This historical identity, according to Bose, offers hope for “a new cosmopolitanism in a postcolonial setting”. Developing a common sense of identity and purpose in the contemporary IOR, drawing upon ancient connections despite often divisive historical baggage, presents daunting challenges.

The extensive and uneven impact of colonization , combined with ancient cultures and traditions, has resulted in Indian Ocean states demonstrating a disparate mix of pre-modern and postmodern influences exacerbated by globalization . In considering prospects for future strategic cooperation building upon the pre-colonial past, key questions arise: is the nature of the IOR continuing to change? In terms of regional engagement, is the Indian Ocean a virtual ‘blank canvas’ open to new regional cooperative initiatives, relatively unencumbered by past associations? One factor is clear: external and internal geopolitical perceptions of the strategic importance of the IOR are rapidly changing (Bouchard and Crumplin 2010). As Kaplan (2009) put it: “More than just a geographic feature, the Indian Ocean is also an idea. It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered, multipolar world.”

Geopolitical Parameters

The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean in the world (after the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans), with an oceanic area of approximately 73,556,000 km², including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The combined land/sea area is approximately 102 million km², which amounts to 20.7 per cent of the earth’s surface (Bouchard and Crumplin 2010, 26–32). The western extremity of the Indian Ocean is the 20° East meridian of longitude that passes through Cape Agulhas, South Africa; the eastern boundary is defined as 146°55′ East at South East Cape, the southern point of Tasmania, Australia (IHO 1953). The northern boundaries are defined by the African and Asian landmasses, and the southern boundary lies nominally where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean at latitude 60° South, which coincides with the Antarctic Treaty (1959) limits, although this boundary remains contested and is not agreed internationally¹ (Kaye and Rothwell 2002). The Indian Ocean is approximately 10,000 km wide between the southern tips of Africa and Australia.

Physical geographical dimensions tell only part of the emerging Indian Ocean story. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 irrevocably altered the way the international community deals with the oceans, and the Indian Ocean is no exception. The vast majority of IOR littoral states have claimed 200 nautical mile long exclusive economic zones. Some states interpret the Law of the Sea other than intended by the drafters and seek to impose restrictions on activities in areas of national jurisdiction that go beyond those provided under international regimes (Kraska 2012; US DoD 2014). In the Indian Ocean, there are also vast areas of high seas that need to be husbanded and the full range of jurisdictional issues exist, including archipelagic waters and international straits. In addition, numerous littoral states have lodged applications with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (United Nations 1983, Article 76) seeking to have a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Security of the Indian Ocean Maritime System
• 2. Creating an Analytical Framework: Maritime Security, Risk and Vulnerability
• 3. The Indian Ocean Region Maritime Security Risk Context
• 4. Indian Ocean Maritime Security Strategic Risk Assessment
• 5. Strategic Risk Assessment: Offshore Oil and Gas Safety and Security in the Indo-Pacific
• 6. Indian Ocean Maritime Security Cooperative Arrangements
• 7. Maritime Security Risk Treatment: India; Indian Ocean Region Middle, Small and Developing States; Major External Powers
• 8. Prospects for Collective and Cooperative Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean Region
• Backmatter