What happened was that the Soviet Union was concerned about what it perceived as an American build-up in the area, as seen in the total support given to the Shah of Iran from the early 1960s, and the formation of various military alliances, of which the most important for our area was CENTO. In August 1971 the Indian and Soviet governments signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which increased Soviet access in the region. The west was concerned not only about Soviet activities, but also about the fact that as domestic oil supplies declined in the United States the Indian Ocean, and especially the Straits of Hurmuz and Melaka, were the choke points through which travelled much of the vital oil. Japan, vital to American interests, received 85 per cent of all its oil from the Gulf via the Indian Ocean, and Europe about 50 per cent.
Yet neither side invested very substantially in a naval presence in the ocean. Both were held back by communications difficulties, as the ocean was far from their major bases, let alone their home states.
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It was only on exceptional occasions that either side displayed any great interest. In 1971 the United States was worried about India's role in 'liberating' Bangladesh from the control of Pakistan. Henry Kissinger sent a task force of the Seventh Fleet, led by the USS
Enterprise
, to the Bay of Bengal. However, it seems that this action, although seen as threatening by India, in fact was designed to warn China not to intervene. In 1979 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the Shah, an American client, lost Iran. Briefly the Indian Ocean area became again a central part of the Cold War. The unhappy result was that India was armed by the Soviets, Pakistan by the United States, and so their existing tense relations, and ability to attack each other, were exacerbated by the actions of the two major players in the Cold War.
It is true that this relatively benign view owes something to hindsight. At the time it was understandable that analysts and policy makers took things more seriously. In the 1980s there was a major build-up of strategic weapons in the ocean, with both sides deploying nuclear submarines. Perhaps even more worrying, by the mid 1980s India had a nuclear capacity, even if this was not publicly announced, while Pakistan also had one potentially, which however they chose not to finalise in deference to United States wishes.
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This period of opaque nuclear capability was ended by the overt nuclear tests of May 1998.
One consequence of the Cold War was that the United States built a major base on the island of Diego Garcia. This island was very well located, being more or less in the middle of the ocean, roughly latitude 7° S and longitude 72° E, 1,600 km south of India. It is an instructive story. It begins as early as 1961 with an agreement between Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy. As early as this the British wanted an increase in the American presence in the Indian Ocean, and the United States provided them with nuclear missiles as a quid pro quo. From the American angle, a well-located base in the ocean would help to secure the passage of vital oil tankers, and would bring most of the Soviet Union within range of Polaris missiles. It also meant American warships could operate more readily in the Indian Ocean, rather than have to come all the way from the existing major base, Subic Bay in the Philippines. The Seventh Fleet, for example, could reach Mumbai in three days steaming from Diego Garcia.
The detail is rather sordid. In 1965 Mauritius was promised independence, but Harold Wilson, at American insistence, said the condition was that they give up part of their territory, the Chagos Archipelago. The soon-to-be independent state was also given £3 million in 'development assistance'. The British turned Chagos into the British Indian Ocean Territories. A year later, in 1966, one of the islands, Diego Garcia, with an area of about 11 square miles, was leased to the United States. The United States wanted an area where there was no population, and the British obliged by removing the 1,000 inhabitants of the island to Mauritius, where they were left to rot. When these people, the Ilois, complained to the Americans about their treatment they were told it was a matter for the British government, not the United States.
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Diego Garcia has played a major role in United States actions in the Middle East, notably during the Gulf War of 1991, and the current (2001–02) 'war against terrorism'. They built a communications site on the island in 1971, and by the mid 1970s this was a major naval air base. The runway can handle any sort of plane, the port can accommodate an entire battle carrier group. In the late 1980s the island was populated by over 2,000 United States servicepeople, and 1,200 Filipinos to do food service and domestic work. At any one time about 800 personnel are ashore
from ships in the harbour.
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Yet in essence United States interest in the Indian Ocean is strictly limited. They have no such hegemonic designs as were enforced by the Royal Navy for over a century. Rather, they want to be able to respond to any threat which affects their perceived interests, but no more. Just as Lord Curzon said that Britain took no interest in what the Arabs did inland, so also the Americans care little for any possible hostilities between various states around the ocean, provided oil supplies are not threatened. The crisis following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 provides further support for this analysis, for they obviously constituted a threat to American interests and so elicited a massive response.
It should be remembered that the Indian Ocean differs in an important respect from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, for in these two several major powers have interests and borders: no major power is located on the Indian Ocean littoral. No local navy has come close to achieving a major role, let alone dominance, in the ocean. The end of the Cold War has removed any significant Russian presence. Southeast Asian states have minor naval capacity, designed to patrol to stop refugees and to curtail piracy. Australia's navy similarly has almost no blue water capacity, and as I write is merely patrolling to stop any influx of refugees, a demeaning role indeed. Today the only major blue water navy from a littoral country is India's.
When India and Pakistan became independent in 1947 British governments thought that India's role should be to provide, within a Commonwealth structure, assistance to the West to curtail China and the Soviet Union. India's navy was not really oriented towards Indian interests, but rather was to act as a minor ally in the effort to contain communism. It was not until 1958 that an Indian became Chief of Naval Staff, and some English officers continued to serve in the Indian navy until the early 1960s. The navy was neglected, the army was privileged. In 1962, on the eve of the war with China, the Indian Navy got 4.7 per cent of the defence budget, the army 77.5 per cent and the air force 17.8 per cent. After dependence on Britain ended, India simply moved to relying more or less totally on the Soviet Union: by the end of the 1980s seventy per cent of Indian military hardware came from the USSR.
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This did however enable a larger blue water role for the Indian Navy. The Indian press over the last few years has reported on quite major and far-reaching naval exercises. The aim is for the navy to 'wield appreciable influence on the waters extending from the periphery of the Persian Gulf in the west to the Strait of Malacca to the east.' The larger plan is for the Indian Navy 'to acquire a limited blue water capability as well as a restricted capacity to launch a seaward attack on land.'
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Indian Navy ships have even undertaken exercises past the Straits of Melaka in the South China Sea, in conjunction with the Vietnamese navy. India today has the seventh largest navy in the world. In early 2002 they were negotiating to buy a second aircraft carrier from Russia, and to lease two nuclear-powered submarines.
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India was assuming what it considered to be its natural role in the ocean, that is as the dominant local power. It was claimed that this had to do with India's size, and its location across major sea routes. Nehru claimed just before independence that 'Geography is a compelling factor, and geographically she [India] is so situated as
to be the meeting point of Western and Northern and Eastern and South-East Asia.'
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On several visits to India I have had social dealings with young Indian Navy officers, a very suave and elite group of men with impeccable manners. When they found out I was from Australia they expressed polite interest, and talked about cricket. But I had a strong sense that they were thinking to themselves, 'We could take out you Australians without too much trouble,' as indeed they could. India's self-perception as the main player in the Indian Ocean even extended as far south as Antarctica, where India has assumed a vigorous role as various treaties allocate areas of interest.
For a time this expanded role was looked on benevolently by the Americans, and cooperation between the two navies increased. India's ties with Russia were much less of a problem once the Cold War was over, and the country was seen by the Americans as being a democracy, and essentially status quo. Thus it could to an extent take over some of America's role in the Indian Ocean. Once India freed up its economy, in the early 1990s, it became something of a favourite with American investors. Similarly, there are strong ties, and much exchange of personnel, between computer specialists in California's Silicon Valley and the Indian equivalent in Bangalore. India was favoured over Pakistan in the 1990s.
It is unclear to neighbouring states, and especially Pakistan, whether India wants its navy to play a defensive, or an offensive, role. Certainly India, especially under a more nationalistic and even chauvinistic BJP government, has made it clear that they expect as of right to be seen as the dominant local power in the Indian Ocean, but this does not necessarily mean any aggressive role. Indeed, despite the exercises and projection of Indian power all around the ocean, there are also major problems. The collapse of the Soviet Union and liberalisation of the economy had a directly restricting result for the Indian Navy. One influential commentator complained that the navy is still the poor relation. Ships are usually at sea only seven days in every month, and the number of frigates and destroyers has gone down between 1976 and 1996 from thirty-one to twenty-four.
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The focus of the Indian defence establishment has always been on Pakistan, with the conflict in Kashmir central, and this is a matter where navies have little role to play. Two recent events may have altered significantly the whole strategic situation. In May 1998 both India and Pakistan became overt nuclear states. The 'war against terror' after September 2001 has produced a whole new scenario, where at least for a time America is much more supportive of Pakistan. The re-entry of America in force into the region is obviously a significant event whose consequences are yet to be fully worked out.
Beneath these high policy matters, there are other roles for the region's navies to play. Coastguard duty, to stop smuggling, continues to be a major preoccupation. The other important task, especially in southeast Asia, is the need to combat piracy, which in the last few decades has had something of a revival. In the past, in the Sulu Sea, pirates ventured out in proas with matting sails and slave rowers. Today they have diesel-powered fast craft, armed with bazookas, machine guns and Molotov cocktails. Off Somalia they even have mortars and rocket propelled grenades. They use satellite navigation systems, and often have pre-arranged buyers for both the
cargo and the ships they capture. In the first half of 1998 there were eighty-six recorded acts of piracy world wide. Of these, thirty-eight were in southeast Asian waters, and fourteen in the area around South Asia.
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Combating piracy has to be a multilateral task, and indeed it may be that if cooperation between the states rimmed around the ocean is achieved there will be less need for navies. So far the results have been disappointing. The lead was taken by Jawaharlal Nehru shortly before Indian independence. At an Asian Relations Conference in March 1947 he put forward the idea of some sort of unity around the Indian Ocean. Nothing happened until the 1970 Non-Aligned Meeting in Lusaka, when the notion of a Zone of Peace, including all the Indian Ocean, was adopted. The next year Mrs Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, brought the concept to the United Nations General Assembly, where it was adopted in December 1971. Despite support from all the littoral states, neither the Soviet Union nor the United States were interested. India, perhaps hoping to become the dominant regional power, got the initial proposal watered down so that it referred only to limiting the activities of powers from outside the region. An Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean was set up to study the implications, but nothing came of this.
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Some years later, in 1984, an Indian Ocean Commission was set up. The founding members were Mauritius, Madagascar and the Seychelles. Later France, on behalf of Reunion, and the Comoros, joined.
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In the last five years of the twentieth century a flurry of activity produced IOR-ARC: the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation. Founded in Mauritius in March 1997, by the end of 1999 it had nineteen members and two levels of activity. One level is inter-governmental relations, and the other involves academics and business people. The aim was to promote economic cooperation between the member states, which included Australia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Yemen, and Bangladesh, Iran, Seychelles, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. Pakistan was required to change some discriminatory trade policies before it could join. Dialogue partners included Egypt, the United Kingdom, Japan and China.
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