The National Interest
An Indian Ocean Strategy Is Key to Prevailing Over China
A comprehensive Indian Ocean strategy will not only bolster U.S. national security but also act as a force multiplier for critical alliances and partnerships across the wider region.
The United States needs robust and complementary Pacific and Indian Ocean strategies to prevail over China in an attritional economic competition or military conflict. The Indian Ocean, as the bridge between the Pacific and the Mediterranean-Atlantic Oceans, boasts the largest (India) and fastest-growing (Africa) populations, as well as the energy-rich West Asian nations. India, the fastest-growing large economy, is reinvigorating the historically consequential Indo-Mediterranean trade and commerce.
Over 60 percent of the world’s maritime trade transits through the Indian Ocean, including one-third of the world’s container cargo and two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments. Every day, over 50 million barrels of oil pass through the Straits of Malacca, Hormuz, and Bab-el-Mandeb. The Indian Ocean conveys China’s trade to South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, including 80 percent of its oil imports, which accounts for more than half of its total domestic consumption.
A protracted contest between the United States and China exposes the latter’s vulnerabilities on supply lines across the Indian Ocean. It would be prudent for Washington to have a strategy to exercise its leverage on the exposed Chinese flanks if the need ever arose to press the point.
The United States’ natural proximate advantages in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are absent in the Indian Ocean. For most Americans, it is merely a distant body of water. Consequently, the United States needs to pursue a calibrated non-traditional strategy that accentuates American coalition building, burden-sharing, and amalgamating partner capabilities.
Our clear purpose in the Indian Ocean is to assert—in close consonance with allies—operational advantages in the theater while denying the same to the adversary. This calls for a two-pronged strategy to first position tactical and strategic forces across critical India Ocean geographies and second ramp up the capabilities of like-minded allies and partners.
To assert operational vigilance and advantage across the Indian Ocean, the United States needs to exercise presence across the Straits of Malacca, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Straits of Madagascar, Bab-el-Mandeb, and Hormuz. In addition to bases in Djibouti, Qatar, Bahrain, and Diego Garcia and maintenance and logistical support in Darwin, Singapore, Perth, and around Chennai, the United States may seek appropriate arrangements in India’s Andaman Islands, Australia’s Cocos Islands and other isles off the Mozambique and Madagascar coasts. France administers several strategic islands in the Mozambique Channel, around Madagascar, and in the southern Indian Ocean. The Pentagon should undertake a thorough review and scenario planning to determine the optimal arrangements and force presence across the Indian Ocean.
Understandably, the U.S. Navy will always prioritize the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans over the Indian Ocean. In the Indian Ocean, the United States needs to do more with less and rely more on partner capabilities. Consequently, it should engage in strategic partnerships with key nations with shared national interests in the region. The foundational pillar of such partnerships would be to build the naval and coast guard capabilities of close American partners while striving for practicable intelligence and operational interoperability with them.
India, given its geography, ambition, and projected military strength will play an oversized role in the U.S. Indian Ocean strategy. The United States may undertake a three-part effort to build Indian capabilities to be America’s strategic partner in the region. First, to facilitate, as appropriate, the Indian Navy’s ability to project force across the Indian Ocean and aid its defense production and acquisition of the requisite naval assets to be able to do so. Second, to aid the development of India’s joint force planning and operational capabilities across the Indian Ocean. Third, to encourage broad partnerships with Indo-Pacific and European partners to ramp up India’s shipbuilding infrastructure and boost its civilian and military production, with a particular emphasis on unmanned submersibles. The latter will increasingly play a vital role in protecting the critical infrastructure across the Indian Ocean. India, when it is willing, can undertake the requisite actions to become an AUKUS+1 partner in the region.
The U.S. transatlantic allies and founding members of NATO—the United Kingdom and France—administer several strategic islands in the central and southern Indian Ocean. The United States has a long-standing agreement with the UK for the use of Diego Garcia. Similar agreements may be constructed with both France and the UK for other islands as needed. The American-Australian alliance is also gaining greater momentum as the security cornerstone for both the South Pacific and South Indian Ocean.
Additionally, Kenya, Mozambique, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia present intriguing possibilities for enhanced collaboration under an integrated U.S. Indian Ocean strategy. Kenya, a recent “Major Non-NATO Ally” and long-standing partner in combating ISIS and al-Shabaab, harbors the largest mid-Africa port—Mombasa. A stronger security partnership with Kenya makes it an important actor in any Indian Ocean Strategy. Mozambique boasts the longest African coastline on the Indian Ocean, with deep natural harbors and critical coastal islands. The nation is keen to develop its naval and coast guard capabilities to exercise its maritime sovereignty. Progress on defense and security partnership with Tanzania, buttressed between Kenya and Mozambique, will further consolidate American interests along the length of the African coast of the Indian Ocean.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have high ambitions to become major maritime players across the western Indian Ocean. Both enjoy deep diplomatic and defense partnerships with the United States and want to become the economic thoroughfares powering the resurgent India-Middle East-Europe economic convergence. They are investing heavily in their ports, shipyards, and naval capabilities with the ambition to become regional shipyards for the littoral states of the Indian Ocean. The UAE has already sold naval vessels to Angola, Bahrain, and Indonesia. The Saudi shipbuilding and maintenance, repair, and operations market is projected to grow over 20 percent this decade. Saudi Arabia is increasingly playing a lead role in international coalitions for maritime security in the Gulf region, including the Red Sea. Riyadh has also partnered with Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri to build surface combatant ships. Particular attention is also warranted in forging close working relations with strategically positioned Somaliland at the mouth of the Red Sea and its strategic port, Berbera.
Indonesian archipelagic polity boasting the world’s third-largest coastline is an inescapable component of a comprehensive U.S. Indian Ocean strategy. Maritime cooperation has long been a pillar of the U.S.-Indonesia relationship. The renewed focus on upgrading Indonesia’s defense capabilities by the present government invites a stronger bilateral partnership.
Both the Navy and the Coast Guard have consequential roles in executing such a U.S. Indian Ocean strategy. Several of the Indian Ocean littoral states lack any meaningful Coast Guard capabilities. The U.S. Coast Guard is well-positioned to offer institutional, operational, and technical assistance to several willing nations to address contraband trade, illegal fishing (otherwise known as Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing or IUUF), piracy, protecting critical infrastructure and shipping lanes, etc. The U.S. Coast Guard may forge strategic partnerships with the coastal African nations from Djibouti to Mozambique and with Indian Ocean islands nations, including Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, and Madagascar, to advance shared interests. Contraband and IUUF by distant water fleets, mainly related to the PRC, are rampant across the Indian Ocean.
China, through its Belt and Road Initiative, has pursued an infrastructure-led strategy across the Indian Ocean, propping up ports to meet its military specifications along the way. In response, the United States should lead the Indo-Pacific QUAD (including India, Australia, and Japan), the I2U2 group (including India, Israel, and the UAE), and India-Middle East-Europe (IMEC) signatories to become a force for development, infrastructure and prosperity across the Indian Ocean region.
A U.S. Indian Ocean strategy is insufficient without also addressing the institutional arrangements for its execution to ensure the historic neglect of the distant Indian Ocean is discontinued. It requires substantial inter-command coordination and initiative. Indian Ocean presently includes parts of INDOPACOM, CENTCOM, and AFRICOM. Similarly, the diplomacy efforts across the Indian Ocean are distributed across three regional bureaus at the State Department. It stands to reason that INDOPACOM and the U.S. Defense Attaché in India would play leading roles in the coordination and execution of the U.S. Indian Ocean Strategy. The National Security Council should also consider an appropriate cross-bureau lead for the U.S. Indian Ocean Strategy.
American preparations to prevail against the PRC are incomplete without an Indian Ocean strategy. A comprehensive and modulated Indian Ocean strategy will not only bolster U.S. national security but also act as a force multiplier in strengthening critical alliances and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific region. Given the growing importance and urgency of American interests in the Indian Ocean, Congress should direct the executive branch to author an Indian Ocean strategy as speedily as possible.
Kaush Arha is President of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.
James Himberger is the Managing Editor at The National Interest. Follow him on X @Beaconsfieldist.
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