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From Foreign Policy, February 14:
The Indian Navy has suddenly become the go-to security provider in the Indian Ocean—with big implications for both the U.S. and China.
The unexpected and dramatic resurgence of piracy off the east coast of Africa has galvanized the Indian Navy into playing a dominant security role in one of the world’s critical waterways, with its biggest-ever naval deployment to the waters off Somalia in the last couple of months. India’s naval renaissance throws down a marker about its great-power ambitions—and sends a message to Beijing about how it will contest any challenge for dominance in the wider Indian Ocean region.
Pirates affiliated with the al-Shabab terror group in Somalia have suddenly taken again to the high seas after nearly a decade in which ship hijackings were in abeyance. Nearly 20 ships have been attacked, hijacked, boarded, or otherwise harassed in the waters of the Gulf of Aden since late November. Major shipping bodies had removed the area from the piracy high-risk designation just over a year ago.
“The piracy uptick is a puzzle, not just for India but for nations and navies around the world,” said Abhijit Singh, a former naval officer and the current head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi.
The problem is that Somali pirates aren’t the only security headache in those waters: Since about the same time, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been attacking commercial ships in the constricted waters of the Red Sea, nominally as part of a campaign against Israel, causing widespread disruptions and diversions. Shipping container costs have basically doubled since the start of the dual campaign.
Since U.S. and U.K. naval vessels in the region have been trying to tackle the Houthi threat in the Red Sea, both by shielding transiting commercial ships and striking at Houthi targets on land, a security vacuum emerged in the Gulf of Aden, which the pirates were only too happy to fill—or try to. In response, the Indian Navy massively ramped up its deployment of large surface ships and aircraft to clamp down on pirates and backstop the otherwise busy Americans and British. India has increased its surface deployments from two ships to 12, all focused on that vulnerable stretch of the eastern Indian Ocean.
“If you look at the operational focus of the Western powers, it is much more on the Red Sea. You need naval powers like India to come and do constabulary services, and the kind of effort that India has put in—this is in some sense the largest deployment of the Indian Navy,” said Yogesh Joshi, an Indo-Pacific specialist at the National University of Singapore....
....MUCH MORE
It was over thirteen years ago that we posted:
November 2010
India Orders Firms to "Scour the Earth" for Energy Supplies as President Obama Heads Over
The Chinese approach works best if you have a blue water navy.
The Indian's currently have one aircraft carrier, the Viraat. Back in 2001 the Chinese bought a Soviet carrier from Ukraine for $20 mil. and said they were going to turn it into a, aahhh, casino, yeah that's the ticket. They've since started work on two more.
I have a hunch that American schoolkids today will be hearing a lot about the Indian Ocean before they graduate and might even be able to find it on a map.*
*I mean come on, just look at the land masses that border it:
Related:
2021 - West of Diego Garcia, India is Building an Island Base of its Own
