 "India may have time only until the Pakistani economy revives and political stability of the military kind is re-established. File Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China")
Going by the way distant Turkey is taking greater strategic interests in Maldives, a question—or rather, two—has arisen: is relatively closer China beginning to ‘ignore’ the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), or at least the Western IOR abutting India, or is it ‘outsourcing’ the same to the likes of Pakistan and Turkey?
Turkey was the dominant theme in the annual Victory Day celebrations in the Maldives. Though the event recalled India’s 1988 “Operation Cactus”, a rapid military action that removed armed mercenaries of the Tamil Eelam group from the Maldives, linked to Sri Lanka.
Not only did this year’s Victory Day celebrations and parade, on November 3, display all the military hardware originating in Turkey, but President Mohammed Muizzu also commented on bilateral relations with the Nato member, which otherwise has a mind of its own. Incidentally, Muizzu became the first Maldivian president since ‘Operation Cactus’ not to acknowledge India’s role in neutralising the coup, which was funded and backed by Maldivian elements, including known businessmen.
This was so despite social media pictures showing the Indian envoy seated in the front row of the day’s morning events—with the Chinese ambassador, too, being provided a seat at the other end of the front row—as if to balance the two nations and their diplomatic representatives. The Turkish Ambassador was not conferred the honour, if it was particularly one, as the Muizzu Administration seemed to have concluded.
It did not stop there. The India-gifted and recently refitted Maldivian Coast Guard ship, Huravee, was conspicuous by its absence from the military display on the capital Male’s sea-front. Its place was taken by the Turkey-gifted missile-capable naval vessel, rechristened Dharumavantha, which a section of the Maldivian social media had described as an ‘unaffordable gas-guzzler’ with numerous technical faults.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsOn Victory Day, Muizzu also launched the Air Wing of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) to operate the two Turkey-donated drones and the three recently arrived pieces for which the government paid a hefty price in the midst of the continuing economic crisis and unaddressed price rise of common commodities. On a visit to the southern Gan post-Victory Day, the President also inaugurated the nation’s MNDF’s Air Station in the Second World War era of the British Royal Air Force (RAF), whose protectorate Maldives was until independence in 1965.
Through his speeches on Victory Day and at the Gan ceremony and other venues in between, Muizzu kept focusing on patriotism, and so did Defence Minister Ghassan Maumoon. Muizzu also said that for economic growth, the nation needed a secure nation. In practice, it is invariably the other way round. Thus, even Muizzu’s reported reference to rich but small Gulf countries placing a premium on their security is a mixed metaphor at best. Contemporary history shows that they became rich in the post-1973 Gulf oil crisis and made huge sums that went into socio-economic development and the consequent need for upping the security apparatuses.
Thing of the Past
If this is as far as the Maldives under Muizzu goes, the larger question is about the evolving Indian Ocean security architecture. India is the permanent player in the region, so Pakistan claims to be one. During the Cold War and afterwards, the US continued to maintain a military presence on Mauritius-owned Diego Garcia. Apart from the strategic importance and mobility of such a move, the US, technically at the very least, can call itself an ‘Indian Ocean power’.
In the immediate context, by virtue of the French Reunion Island’s location near the mouth of the Western IOR, France has greater legitimacy for calling itself an IOR power. Of course, France still has the highest number of colonies in the larger IOR, long after the world had proclaimed that colonisation was a thing of the past. That is beside the point.
Dual-Use Vessels
In comparison, China first and Turkey are late entrants into the IOR, starting with the Western IOR. By every sense of the term, both are also extra-regional powers. Despite expansionist strategic ambitions, China still wants to be seen only as a ‘development partner’ in this region as elsewhere.
The ‘String of Pearls’ theory placed China in the strategic neighbourhood around India. Yes, there has not been any strategic presence in the theoretical sense of the term. The Chinese investments in Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port and Colombo Port City international financial hub all fit into the conventional description of ‘development spending’. So does the BRI.
However, barring the host nations, no one is fooled. Even there, Pakistan knows and sort of acknowledges the ‘dual-use’ purpose of Chinese investments in Gwadar. In Sri Lanka, the domestic stakeholders still want to believe that the Chinese investments are innocent. Or, they want to believe that the Sri Lankan State could stop China from converting its developmental initiatives in the country into strategic interests.
Thus far, only in the last three to four years has China dispatched its ‘spy ships’ to this region. India’s concerns in the matters are not only genuine and serious. On all such occasions, Beijing had sought to explain away the spy-ship visits as those of research vessels involved in hydrographic and underwater mineral exploration studies in these parts. This time round, many in the host nations, be it Sri Lanka or Maldives, believed the Chinese story.
Before this one, China, in the past decade, had despatched two submarines in quick succession, supposedly to ‘neutralise’ Somali pirates. Both subs parked in Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port. India did not buy the weak arguments of Sri Lanka’s ruling Rajapaksas in the matter. To New Delhi, it was not Chinese muscle-flexing, yes, but it was a possible attempt to study the hydrography of the Indian Ocean waters, with a strategic future application in mind.
Risky Investment
In comparison, when Turkey began plunging into the IOR, or in the immediate Indian neighbourhood, it hit the strategic ball straight. Whether it was Pakistan, the Maldives or Bangladesh, Turkey’s preliminary interests have only been on gifting and selling military equipment, starting with drones, including missile-equipped drones.
It does not mean that Turkey is going to stop with defence sales to India’s neighbours – with or without a strategic presence in the IOR as its goal. Instead, Ankara has begun investing in ‘development projects’, for instance, in both Pakistan and the Maldives.
In the case of the Maldives, the president, during his post-Victory Day visit to the southern Addu, formally announced the decision to allot the Hankede Tourism Project to a Turkish investor. It is set to begin as a 1,000-bed facility and will be expanded to accommodate 3,000 beds.
Interestingly, the previous government of President Ibu Solih had allotted the project to a Chinese firm, which lost interest even before undertaking any substantive civil/physical work. The Muizzu dispensation straightaway allotted the project to a Turkish firm under a bilateral economic cooperation agreement, signed during the president’s maiden overseas visit to Ankara in December 2023, only weeks after his inauguration.
In Pakistan, Turkey is said to be keen on developing a 1000-acre Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Islamabad, in turn, seems to want Turkey to take up the project in rebel-held Balochistan. If Turkey accepts the offer, in economic terms, it could be dubbed a ‘risky investment’. But there is a political and strategic angle, where Turkey’s contributions and performance will be keenly watched.
As irony would have it, or so it seems, the US under President Trump has taken a keen interest in Pakistan’s rare-mineral wealth in Balochistan. The two sides struck a $ 600 million deal in the days following India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’. Trump, in turn or even before the formal announcement about the rare-minerals deal, has been wantonly irritating India on the Sindoor front. He has not stopped it since.
Two Nato Powers
In strategic terms, two Nato nations, including Big Boss America, would be in Pakistan’s troubled area, both with their eyes open. This does not mean that the US would work with Turkey directly in a seeming effort to protect Pakistan’s ownership and possession of a restless Balochistan.
In theoretical terms, such a course was bound to occur even so many years after Partition and Independence in 1947. When the rest of Pakistan, including the Kashmir front, following India’s ‘Surgical Strike’, became relatively quiet, if not outright peaceful, other long, unresolved issues had to burst out in the open.
That’s what seems to be happening in Pakistan, too. How two foreign powers, strategically commissioned, handled a domestic situation without addressing them (only) politically remains a million-dollar question. If rare minerals in Pakistan’s possession are now acknowledged as a precious ‘strategic asset’ of the future, the US involvement can be visualised better.
Easier to Imagine
It is in this overall background that one has to view the emerging IOR scenario. India has since signed or extended an existing defence deal with the US, including in it new elements. In strategic terms, the US is now on both of the proverbial red lines after Trump, over Sindoor, had re-hyphenated America’s India/Pakistan relations after around three decades.
When the coin is tossed, if at all, as ahead of the Bangladesh War in 1971, on which side will the US pitch in? It cannot be allowed to hunt with the hound and run with the hare. Nor can India allow ‘external intervention’ in resolving bilateral issues, be it with Pakistan or China or any other. Sad but true, in comparison, Chinese behaviour in similar circumstances is predictable for India to plan for it. The same is true of Turkey.
Yet, the question remains if China will remain a ‘strategic observer’ in the IOR, comprising India’s immediate neighbourhood and land-based neighbours. Or is China outsourcing its strategic concerns in these parts, first to Pakistan and then to Turkey?
Incidentally, the role of Pakistan in bringing together China and Turkey, if any, needs to be closely studied. It is especially so in India’s neighbourhood nations, where all three are involved one way or the other. After all, Pakistan has the historic record of facilitating US-China diplomatic ties in the seventies—but with the limited intention of shoring up its political and military defences against India. The Soviet Union’s misadventure in Afghanistan reset the agenda.
In comparison, the US’ strategic interests in the IOR are executed both directly and through allies. The US-imagined Quad was expected to do in these parts what Nato had been doing all along, through the Cold War. ‘Outsourcing’ America’s geostrategic interests, in the name of offering ‘protection’, was/is the name of the game. Despite the continuing Ukraine War, Washington seems to have concluded that Russia is not the erstwhile Soviet Union in geostrategic and geopolitical terms.
Hence, the US is focused even more on the IOR and also China, independent of each other and otherwise, too. With India denouncing that the Quad in its perception was not a military alliance, there are grey areas that the four partners, including Australia and Japan, have to clear and clarify.
Economic Problems
In the immediate context, all of it gives Pakistan an edge, an edge it can only pledge into the future, given especially its unending economic problems. The current efforts seem to be for Islamabad to convince itself and its people that they can overcome most, if not all, economic woes through the current initiatives. Strategic initiatives will have to wait, yes, and that is what strategic initiatives are all about, even otherwise.
In particular, it needs to be watched how Islamabad carries not just two but three allies—China, Turkey and the US—and plays one against the other two for its own benefit. In more ways than one, Pakistan had mastered the art of benefiting from both the US and China during the Cold War years, especially after facilitating their diplomatic ties.
There was a gap in the early years of the post-Cold War scenario, when the US deliberately de-hyphenated India/Pakistan equations. This also meant that China could arm-twist Pakistan on BRI funding and the like. The re-entry of the US could mean that China might have to reinvent its old-school strategic ties with Pakistan, whatever the American role.
Today, you also have Turkey on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other, despite their silent mutual antagonism against each other on the non-existent leadership of the Islamic ummah. India should know the reach of the Pakistan-Saudi defence pact, which supposedly promises the intervention of one when the other is under attack.
Going Back to Blackboard
Where does it leave India? Maybe, the nation’s foreign policy mandarins should go back to the blackboard to see and study the possibilities if Pakistan especially develops a strategic tooth in an evolving regional/global order.
It is here nations like Bangladesh and Maldives would matter to India’s security concerns, especially when seen from the perspective of the anticipated roles that extra-regional powers like China and Turkey can play, going beyond the obvious.
India may have time only until the Pakistani economy revives and political stability of the military kind is re-established. Self-styled Field Marshal Asim Munir is the man to watch, yes, but his mission may be more than avenging humiliating defeat from India in Operation Sindoor. It would look as if it is his ‘eat-the-grass moment’, as it was for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto when it came to Pakistan building an atomic bomb.
(N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)