No single power holds sway in the Indian Ocean, and probably never will. Yet China is making inroads into its waters, and the American navy is now upping its presence
to promise $75bn of investment across the Indo-Pacific. Also in India there is wild speculation about a Chinese radar installation in nearby Sri Lanka and a Chinese listening post on Myanmar’s Cocos Islands. Fear of China is pushing India into a closer relationship with America.
Notwithstanding its relatively lavish security, the Malacca Strait has the highest incidence of piracy in the world. In the event of a regional conflict, control of the strait would assume huge importance. With four-fifths of its oil passing through it, China has for years obsessed over how easily a hostile power such as America could close the strait and so cripple the Chinese economy.
Having neglected the waters of the Indian Ocean for years, the American navy is now upping its presence. It has increased “freedom of navigation exercises” in the region. It conducts additional exercises there with, among others, Australia, India and Japan, fellow members of the “Quad” security grouping intendedin the Indo-Pacific. America’s navy intends to resurrect its First Fleet, which was disbanded half a century ago, and base it in the Indian Ocean.
China is the new kid on the Indian Ocean block, with Djibouti its first ever overseas military base. China’s naval capabilities have grown fast. Gordon Flake of the Perth USAsia Centre, a think-tank, says it came as a shock to Australia when in 2014 a self-sustaining Chinese naval force appeared in the southern Indian Ocean to help search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370. China’s navy has since become the largest in the world by vessel numbers.
But, as Darshana Baruah of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank in Washington, points out, small states fear being suborned by big ones for use in projecting power—as happened during the cold war. Strategic rivalry between an American-led camp and China, if it does not take into account the interests of small countries, would be disastrous, says Abdulla Shahid, foreign minister of the Maldives. “That would seriously undermine our security and our prospects.
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