Indian Navy is sending an implied signal, if not a direct message to China and Beijing gets it: Abhijit Singh

Former naval officer Abhijit Singh hardly needs an introduction. With multiple crises at Red Sea and Gulf of Aden upending the regional maritime security architecture, the Indian Navy has found itself at the centre of global attention – busy with constabulary work while burnishing its credentials as the net security provider in Indian Ocean. I sat down with Singh, senior fellow and head of Maritime Policy Initiative at Observer Research Foundation, recently to unpack the various forces at play, and also to better understand the pulls and pressures on the Indian naval forces. The interview has been edited for brevity and grammar.

How has India handled the Red Sea crisis so far? Would you agree with the assessment that India has performed the role of a constable in the high seas?

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Since 2008, when piracy first erupted in the waters off Somalia, India’s security planners have prioritized constabulary concerns. The Indian Navy (IN) recognises that maritime security entails more than just defending India’s territorial waters and maritime zones; it is in equal measure about providing public goods at sea. Part of the IN’s mission is to ensure that it can tackle challenges such as piracy, terrorism, and other non-security threats like illegal fishing, trafficking, etc. The threats may not be directly related to national security but do have implications for human security. For the IN, as well as other navies in the region, the security and safety of crews on merchant ships, fishermen, and coastal communities constitute a vital component of maritime security. These challenges require effort, energy, time, and resources to effectively manage. However, they create competing demands on the navy, which must be judicious in deploying warships for maritime missions.

Most often, and particularly with pirate attacks in the neighborhood, the IN has responded promptly and efficaciously to individual incidents as they occur. The rise in pirate attacks since November last year was quite unexpected, not just for the Indian Navy but many other regional navies. With no successful pirate attacks in the Western Indian Ocean since 2013, an impression had prevailed that the piracy paradigm had been dismantled. That assumption has now proven false.

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Do you see this as opportunistic, or do you think there is a degree of coordination between the Houthi rebels and the pirates?

There are three theories to explain the rise of piracy in the Indian Ocean. One explanation is that the pirates are merely taking advantage of the crisis in the Red Sea. With the US and its European allies busy fighting Houthi militants, the pirates feel emboldened to resume attacks on commercial shipping. It cannot be denied, however, that many regional navies have in recent years treated anti-piracy duties as a bare-bones act needed only to reassure international shippers. Their assumptions have been proven wrong.

The second theory is that the pirates and the militants are acting in concert. There is something to suggest that the terrorist group Al Shabaab (Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin, or Al Shabaab, a Somali-based insurgent and terrorist group with links to Al Qaeda) which also controls many pirate groups in Somalia, has joined hands with the Houthis in the Red Sea. Both groups reportedly have sympathies with Hamas, with whom Israel is engaged in an existential conflict. The tactics of the pirates and the methods that have been employed by the Houthis, other than the drones and the missiles, seem eerily similar. Their shared drive, motivation, and boldness to disrupt trade in the waters of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea implies they could well be acting together.

A third possibility is that power rivalries in the Horn of Africa are driving the surge in pirate attacks. Some observers claim a link between rising pirate attacks and politics in the Horn of Africa, suggesting that Al Shabaab in Somalia might be driving the attacks as a way of opposing a recent pact between Somaliland (a breakaway province) and Ethiopia.

In India’s actions, is there a message to China being sent here?

There is an implied signal, if not a direct message to China. The IN is eager to bolster its credentials as the primary security provider, and it wants partners and potential adversaries to know it is willing to defend Indian interests. The Chinese get it. China, however, thinks that India is using the anti-piracy deployment in the Indian Ocean as a pretext to project influence in the region. That isn’t strictly true as the IN is widely recognized as a first responder and favoured security partner in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). What does seem odd from an Indian standpoint is that the PLA Navy (PLA-N) has been strangely muted in its own response to growing pirate and Houthi attacks in the Indian Ocean. Despite significant trade interests in the Indian region, the Chinese navy has been quite inert, perhaps because the Houthi challenge is a geopolitical issue that Beijing is wary of.

China’s approach in the far seas appears to differ from its maritime strategy in the near-littorals. China does not appear to be pursuing the same level of dominance in the Indian Ocean as it is in the South China Sea. Beijing perhaps realizes there are limits to how much naval presence it can sustain in the Indian Ocean. Instead, the PRC is establishing itself as a significant player in the Indian Ocean. Beijing wants regional states to understand that it is a viable security and development partner that can assist with development, infrastructure construction, and capability creation.

My next question is a little broad… What are the few things that ail the Indian Navy? What would you point to?

The Indian navy, like many other navies in the Indo-Pacific area, faces a capacity constraint. Today’s maritime environment is uncertain, and national security is only one of several challenges in the littorals. To effectively address the full range of risks in the commons, navies must be able to deliver both individually and collectively. Nonetheless, many maritime forces strive to deliver in difficult fiscal circumstances.

While the navy’s budget has increased in recent years, it remains insufficient to meet its growing role in the Indo-Pacific area. From an offensive capability and power projection standpoint, the IN requires more submarines and capital ships. However, the constabulary role has crucially been soaking up significant capability. Take the case of the Gulf of Aden, where 10 Indian warships are keeping vigil. Certainly, some of these ships were diverted away from other regions, where they would have been otherwise deployed. How much this has affected the Navy’s operational posture in other theatres is hard to say. Perhaps it still hasn’t yet. If the anti-piracy effort were to continue indefinitely, however, the IN would undoubtedly feel stretched.

It is worth reiterating that fighting nontraditional security challenges in the global commons requires capability that can be sustained over a prolonged period. Whether piracy, drug trafficking, or illegal fishing, one needs the staying power, because non-zero-sum challenges are not an adversary that can be beaten into submission.

The other challenge the Navy faces is indigenization, which is a laudable goal in and of itself, but an endeavour in need of patient and persistent effort. Indigenisation is a long game that can adversely impact short-term asset acquisition. The IN is going to have to wait till capacity materializes which means that existing assets and inventory are going to be under more strain than usual.

Can India gain an advantage over China at sea?

China recogniSes that India dominates the eastern Indian Ocean. Beijing understands that the PLA-N is unlikely to become the premier maritime force west of the Malacca Strait anytime soon. China, however, is prepared to protect its trade and investments in the Indian Ocean, for which it needs combat and surveillance assets positioned in the region. Beijing has been incrementally deploying military and nonmilitary ships, including research vessels and surveillance ships. That a Chinese satellite and missile tracking vessel, the Xiang Yang Hong 03, docked in Maldives recently, should not surprise Indian observers.

Maldives claims it only did a port call…

That claim was only to be expected. The reality is that there is no way of knowing the exact nature of the ship’s deployment. It is hard to believe that a big surveillance ship sailed from China to the Maldives for no particular reason than to dock in a Maldivian port. The IN was surely keeping a watch, because when the Chinese ship deployed, India had a submarine deployed in the waters off Sri Lanka.

Where do you stand on the Navy’s aircraft carrier dilemma?

The Navy’s predicament is that it is in a fiscal situation in which building a large aircraft carrier is no longer feasible. The Indian government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) policy leaves naval planners with little fiscal room for a big aircraft carrier, which undoubtedly requires a larger fiscal outlay and more foreign assistance. The problem with light (small) carriers, however, is that they are unsuitable for use in a dynamic and contested maritime environment. A small carrier is constrained in its operations, particularly when faced with the adversary’s anti-access, anti-denial systems. In the absence of a catapult system to enable the launch of heavy, long-range multi-function aircraft, the ship is forced to operate within the engagement envelope of the adversary’s shore-based missiles and air defence systems.

On the other hand, some power projection capability is preferable to none at all, even if it requires India’s light aircraft carriers to operate in close proximity to hostile waters. They might be hard to defend but a certain asset in peacetime. A third option might be to prioritize submarines, the ultimate sea-denial platforms. The Navy certainly faces a predicament in this regard.

Given the kind of time it takes to build a big aircraft carrier and resource crunch, what should India do? Wait for the big platform, or go in for small carriers? What is your suggestion?

The Navy’s decision to build a third small aircraft carrier, is at one level understandable. Naval planners believe that much of the technology and capabilities needed on a small aircraft carrier can be indigenously developed. They reckon it may free the navy of dependence on foreign suppliers, which is arguably the right inference to make in the present circumstances. However, it should be noted that a small aircraft carrier’s utility is going to be very limited. It may help with some benign power projection in the neighbourhood in peacetime, but it may not have the wartime utility of a big aircraft carrier that is certainly more versatile with its deployment.

My next question. How is India’s Indo-Pacific strategy coping with the rising traditional and non-traditional threats at sea?

Navies understand the importance of striking a balance between traditional and non-traditional challenges when allocating effort. Typically, this stems from regional relationships. China may be the most important concern for New Delhi, but human security challenges are a priority for India’s partners in South Asia. These countries have their own interpretation of cooperative security, based entirely on the appreciation of national interests. On occasion, the military interactions are robust – such as during constabulary and humanitarian missions – but for the most part, India’s partners avoid working together in formats that risk provoking powerful players and disturbing the strategic balance of power.

The preference for balanced interactions is particularly strong among Bay of Bengal states that regard non-traditional security as the holy grail of maritime operations. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka prioritise human security and livelihood issues over traditional security threats. Despite its record of aggression in the Indo-Pacific, China is widely regarded as an economic and security partner, and not as a threat to the rules-based order.

New Delhi, of course, is concerned about Chinese expansionism in the Indian Ocean. The IN’s efforts to counter the PLA-N continue to be based on increased Indian surveillance capabilities in the Eastern Indian Ocean. That’s where India’s Quad partnerships come in. The Quad Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPDMA) is, primarily, an effort to share satellite and sensor data concerning illegal activity, but it could also assist India in keeping track of Chinese military and nonmilitary activity in the Eastern Indian Ocean.

Final question. Would you agree, as some analysts have suggested, that there’s now greater political will at the top which is driving a forward-leaning posture?

All militaries take guidance from the political leadership, whose willingness to act decisively is often the key determinant of a forward-leaning military posture. Yet, it bears noting that the Indian Navy, and navies in general, are professional entities that do not require encouragement or nudging to carry out their assigned missions. Maritime forces by design and training understand what needs to be done and how it ought to be done. This is particularly true in peacetime contingency activities like piracy or disaster assistance. If there had been no pirate hijackings or Houthi strikes in the Western Indian Ocean, the Indian Navy might have remained focused on the Eastern Indian Ocean. The fact that it is engaged in fighting the pirate threat says something about its preparedness to respond to a challenge that impacts national interests. The IN’s dedication and commitment to its mission has always been unwavering, regardless of the political regime in power.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.