Role of Maritime domain in Geopolitics

Context:

• Recently, it was reported that India will appoint National Maritime Security Coordinator.

Relevance:
Mains:

• GS III- Security Challenges & their Management

• Maritime security is a fairly recent expression, which has become a buzzword in the past decade, especially within the maritime community.
• Maritime security can be understood as a concept referring to the security of the maritime domain or as a set of policies, regulations, measures and operations to secure the maritime domain. In academia, the term ‘maritime security’ was almost absent from the debates about the security of the maritime domain until the beginning of the 2000׳s. Since 2002, the number of references to maritime security in the academic literature has increased linearly.
• This increase in the academic literature on maritime security can be explained by the conjunction of the three following factors: 1) the impacts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (notably the launch of counter-terrorist operations at sea), 2) the occurrence of three high visibility terrorist acts against ships (USS Cole in 2001, French tanker Limburg in 2002 and Filipino passenger ship SuperFerry 14 in 2004), and 3) the rise of piratical attacks in the Strait of Malacca at the beginning of the century.
• Then the surge of piracy at the Horn of Africa between 2007 and 2012 largely contributed to generating academic debates beyond strategic and security studies, with scholars from various disciplines discussing the legal, criminal, cultural, economic, military, environmental and energy dimensions of piracy in particular and maritime security in general.

Significance

• Maritime security is of utmost significance to the world community as there are maritime concerns ranging from piracy at sea to illegal immigration and weapon smuggling. It also deals with threats of terrorist attacks and environmental catastrophes. The recent incident involving a suspected drone attack on an Israeli-controlled tanker in the North Arabian Sea off Oman, killing two crew members, is a case in point.
• For India, maritime security is an important aspect of national security as it has a coastline of over 7,000 km. With advancement in technology, physical threats in the maritime region have now been overshadowed by technological threats.
• India’s exports and imports have remained mostly across the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean. Therefore, securing Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) have been an important issue for India in the 21st century.

Geo-Politics

• The term ‘geopolitics’ has been employed indiscriminately by both practitioners and scholars in reference to states’ zones of interest or influence and how they clash with each other’s. This meaning is both vague and limited; it does not account for the full significance of the term, and even bears a negative connotation due to the emphasis on power politics.
• For e.g. Nazi Germany’s expansionist foreign policy goals were justified using ‘geopolitical’ arguments based on simplistic (and erroneous) geographical naturalisations.
• In the 21st century, geopolitics as an academic discipline has lost its prescriptive nature. It actually aims at explaining how geography somewhat constrains politics, how states try to bypass those constraints, and how they try to use geography to their advantage, including in discourses through series of geo-informed representations.
• In practice states and other international actors take into account the constraining impacts of geographical factors. They develop and tacitly or explicitly endorse ‘geopolitical visions’ or ‘geo-strategies’ that directly or indirectly guide their foreign and security policy goals and activities.
• In other words, both in practice and in the collective imaginaries, geography contributes to defining the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in international relations along with other material and ideational factors.

Maritime Security

• The expression ‘maritime security' is recent. Before the end of the Cold War it was rarely used and primarily in reference to sea control over maritime areas in the context of the superpower confrontation, that is to say in a naval context.
• It is thus not surprising that during the Cold War maritime security was more frequently employed in references to geopolitical considerations (such as sovereignty claims over maritime territories, the status of coastal waters, and the control over maritime zones) than in the 21st century.
• Since the end of the 1990׳s and the beginning of the 2000׳s, maritime security was increasingly used to describe preventive measures set up to respond to illegal activities at sea or from the sea (including the protection of shipping and ports). Terrorism (post 9/11) and piracy (especially after 2007 and the rise of attacks in the Horn of Africa) attracted most of the media’s attention.
• However, arms and drug trafficking, people smuggling, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUUF), and deliberate pollution still represent the bulk of illegal and disruptive activities at sea.
• Today, states and international actors such as the EU have adopted a more comprehensive and pro-active approach to maritime security, which centres around the exercise of the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence at sea to implement and maintain security, safety and good governance within the maritime domain, with both preventive measures (e.g. port security regulations) and reactive measures (e.g. counter-piracy operations).
• Maritime security is increasingly linked to economic and environmental considerations.
• Marine environment and fisheries protection as well as maritime surveillance initiatives have been instrumental in raising maritime security objectives to the top of the security agenda of various state and non-state actors.
• The geopolitical dimension of maritime security accounts for the way geography constraints and informs (directly or indirectly) maritime security policies, regulations, measures and operations, as well as how states take (tacitly or explicitly) geography into account when developing their maritime security strategies.

• Security Imperative:
  • Apart from China’s aggressive posture around land borders, its military presence is growing in the Indian Ocean too. This can be depicted by the strategy of String of pearls.
  • Further, China is modernising its military base at Djibouti, an artificial island in the Maldives and there are similar reports regarding Gwadar port in Pakistan.
• Geo-Economics of Indian Oceans:
  • Geopolitics is entwined with geoeconomics and its focus on matters of control and access to economic resources.
  • India’s exports and imports remained mostly across the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean. Consequently, secure Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) have been a key security issue for India in the twenty-first century.
  • In addition, the Central Indian Ocean Basin became the scene for deep-sea exploration and licences for scarce mineral resources.
• India’s Geo-strategic Location:
  • India is centrally located between the eastern and western stretches of the Indian Ocean, thereby able to deploy naval forces in both directions more easily than other littoral states in the Indian Ocean.
  • This maritime can be reflected by Milan naval exercises.
  • Milan essentially became a political statement and networking exercise, showing India’s ability to take an active and leading role towards other Indo-Pacific states, unaffected by the presence of larger outside powers like the United States or China.
  • India’s vital geo-strategic location in the Indian Ocean has helped for its growth as an emerging economy.  Her prominent peninsular orientation and flanking island chains overlook strategic sea lanes in the Indian Ocean, linking her security and prosperity inextricably to the seas.
  • But due to its strategic position, it is facing many threats.

The India ocean region:

• It is rich in energy resources and minerals such as gold, tin, uranium, cobalt, nickel, aluminium and cadmium, and also contains abundant fishing resources.
• Roughly 55% of known oil reserves and 40% of gas reserves are in the Indian Ocean region. The Gulf and Arab states produce around 21% of the world’s oil, with daily crude exports of up to 17,262 million barrels representing about 43% of international exports.
• Indian Ocean ports handle about 30% of global trade and half of the world’s container traffic traverses the ocean.
• However, the Indian Ocean has some of the world’s most important chokepoints, notably the Straits of Hormuz, Malacca, and the Bab-el Mandeb.
• As these chokepoints are strategically important for global trade and energy flow, their security of becoming strategically important.
• The Indian Ocean has always been vulnerable to criminals and anti-national activities. The Indian Ocean is an area of conflict. Some conflicts are internal and remain localised, but others are of global significance and are prone to foreign, political and military interference.
• According to a recent analysis of global conflicts by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, altogether 42% of world conflicts can be associated with Indian Ocean countries. Numerous cases of the smuggling of goods, gold, narcotics, explosives, arms and ammunition as well as the infiltration of terrorists into the country through these coasts have been reported over the years.
• During the Cold War, the newly independent Indian Ocean states of  Asia and Africa became subject to competition between the superpowers. The resultant security balance in the region dissipated when the Cold War came to an end. The post-Cold War era saw the region becoming less stable, with much rivalry, competition, suspicion and turmoil.
• Moreover, the maritime security environment in the Indian Ocean also underwent a transformation. Because of weak government structures and a limited capacity to control maritime domains, all types of illicit activities began to flourish in many parts of the Indian Ocean.
• As a result, the region’s maritime security challenges are now considerable and are affected by key variables such as militarisation within the region, the involvement of major and extra-regional powers, and non-traditional security threats.
• India faces a number of threats and challenges that originate from the sea and which are mainly sub-conventional in nature. These threats and challenges can be categorised under the following broad categories:
  • maritime terrorism; piracy and armed robbery;
  • smuggling and trafficking;
  • infiltration, illegal migration and refugee influx;
  • and the straying of fishermen beyond the maritime boundary. Of these, maritime terrorism has been featured as the most potent threat.

• Maritime Terrorism:
  • Cross border terrorism has taken an entirely new dimension. The Indian security establishment is on high alert to tackle the newest frontier of terror – Maritime Terrorism. The Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) Working Group has defined maritime terrorism as: “the undertaking of terrorist acts and activities within the maritime environment, using or against vessels or fixed platforms at sea or in port, or against any one of their passengers or personnel, against coastal.
• Mumbai Attack:
  • The smuggling of explosives through the Raigad coast in Maharashtra and their use in the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, and the infiltration of the 10 Pakistani terrorists through the sea route who carried out the multiple coordinated attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, are the most glaring examples of how vulnerable the country's coasts are.
  • Lashkar-e-Toiba, (LeT) is planning to use the sea route to infiltrate and attack India's oil assets in Bombay High, sabotage ports and target high-value assets such as the atomic power plants located on the coast or attack INS Vikrant.
  • The terrorist organisations could misuse hundreds of Indian fishing boats seized over the years by the Pakistani Navy and Coast Guard for allegedly straying into Pakistani territorial waters. In fact, the thinking within the national security establishment was that these fishing boats could be used by Pakistan based terrorists to infiltrate into Indian waters through the Indian Ocean.
• Piracy and Armed Robbery:
  • Piracy is part of a maritime insecurity environment in which different threats and forms of transnational organized crime, in particular fishery crimes, are linked. The rampant piracy off the coast of  Somalia has forcefully reminded security and strategic experts that terror operations could well be outsourced to sea pirates as well.
  • A hijacked merchant vessel carrying several thousand tonnes of the inflammable fertilizer ingredient ammonium nitrate could easily be turned into a mega bomb after entering an Indian harbour.
  • The movement by sea of a large volume of commercial freight and its mandatory movement through maritime chokepoints, such as the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Strait of  Hormuz, Strait of  Bab-el-Mandab, the Malacca Strait and the Bosporus Strait invite piracy.
• Somalia and the Gulf of Aden: 
  • Piracy has been predominant in the seas of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden between 2005 and 2012. There has also been an increasing number of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea. The Djibouti Code of Conduct was adopted in 2009 for the Repression of Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of  Aden. Due to such efforts, Somalia-based piracy has shown a significant decline after its peak in 2011.
  • Malacca Strait: Malacca Strait is located between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. It is one of the world's most important international shipping routes, with 65,000 vessels passing through annually, carrying about one-third of the world trade and half of the global energy supplies. It also connects the Indian Ocean with the Pacific. This region has a reputation for piracy with most cases reported are 'hit-and-run' robberies of fishing boats and commercial vessels.
  • While attacks on fishermen by pirates are reported from all over the Sunderbans, Kendudweep and the mouths of the Rivers Matla, Bidya and Thakuran are particularly vulnerable.
• Could piracy on high Seas morph into this new face of terrorism?
  • With well-armed Somali pirates wreaking havoc on shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of  Aden between Somalia and Yemen, Al Qaeda and its associate terror groups could easily outsource maritime terrorism to mercenary pirate groups.
  • From seizing cargo ships to supertankers ferrying millions of dollars of crude oil, the Somali pirates attacked and hijacked 90 vessels in 2008 for ransom and looting cargo from wheat to chemicals.
  • Security experts suggest that terror groups could easily rope in pirates who have good knowledge of shipping routes, have access to satellite phones and communication links with ports in the region which enable them to access accurate satellite communication about cargo shipping lines.
• Smuggling and human trafficking:
  • Organised crime, trafficking and smuggling are increasingly linked to global patterns of violence. Drugs and arms smuggling is rife in much of the Indian Ocean. The sea provides an easy way for international crime syndicates, unscrupulous traders and non-state actors to distribute their wares, or to provide belligerents with highly sophisticated weapons.
  • Because of the prevalence of conflicts and insurgencies, arms smugglers find a ready market in areas such as the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
  • While the entire coast of India is vulnerable to clandestine landings of contraband, the Gujarat-Maharashtra coastline, the Tamil Nadu coast, the Sunderbans in West Bengal, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been particularly prone to such activities.

Strategy for Deterrence:

• The strategy for deterrence is the foundational strategy for India’s defence. India has ensured its national deterrence at nuclear and conventional levels, by strengthening the credibility of its military capability, readiness posture and communication of intent. The strategy for deterrence is supported and strengthened by the other strategies and will.

Strategy for Conflict:

• This strategy describes the broad manner of employment of India’s maritime forces during the conflict. The strategy is based on the principles of war, with the application of force and focuses on strategic effect as additional operational principles. 
• The strategy is centred on various operational actions, which include maritime manoeuvre, maritime strike, sea control, sea denial, SLOC interdiction, SLOC protection, coastal and offshore defence, information warfare, and escalation management. These will be undertaken as per the operational plan and situation, in coordination with the armed forces and national agencies.

Strategy for Shaping a Favourable and Positive Maritime Environment:

• This strategy describes the ways in which the Indian Navy will contribute to shaping a favourable and positive maritime environment, to enhance net security therein. The strategy covers the wide range of activities undertaken by the Navy in peacetime, across all doctrinal roles.
• These aim to promote security and stability at sea and enhance cooperation, mutual understanding and interoperability with maritime forces of friendly nations.
• These include naval deployments for exercising presence in our areas of interest, engagement with maritime forces of friendly nations in a number of ways and at multiple levels, maritime capacity building and capability enhancement through cooperation in training, technical areas and hydrography, cooperative efforts for the development of regional MDA, and conduct of maritime security operations, both independently and in coordination with other maritime forces in the region.

Strategy for Coastal and Offshore Security:

• This strategy describes the ways by which the cooperative framework and coordinative mechanisms for coastal and offshore security will be strengthened and developed, against the threat of sub-conventional armed attack and infiltration from the sea.
• It articulates the coastal and offshore security framework, measures coordinating interagency presence, patrol and operational response, cooperative capability development, and focus areas for supporting maritime governance.

Strategy for Maritime Force and Capability Development:

• This strategy describes the ways to develop and maintain a combat-ready, technology-driven, network-enabled navy, capable of meeting India’s maritime security needs into the future. The capability development covers conceptual, human resource and force level aspects. The major thrust areas for force development have been defined, with a focus on indigenisation, MDA, Network Centric Operations (NCO), force projection and protection, maintenance and logistics, and new technologies. 

Underwater Domain Awareness:

• Chief of the Naval Staff has highlighted that for India, with regard to naval operations, underwater domain awareness (UDA) was one of the most critical areas. UDA is the aspect of maritime domain awareness.
• It focuses on the underwater sector, including, from a security perspective, sea lines of communication (SLOC), coastal waters and varied maritime assets with reference to hostile intent and the proliferation of submarine and mine capabilities intended to limit access to the seas and littoral waters.
• It is a concept that addresses the aspect of a nation’s ability to monitor all the developments in the underwater region and possibly prevent events.
• The discovery of ‘Chinese-origin’ autonomous underwater gliders in the Indonesian waters indicate the extent to which underwater technologies are being harnessed for military advantage by China. There are swarms of underwater autonomous vehicles designed to attack even submarines developed by U.S. and China.
• The security apparatus responsible for providing a secure atmosphere that can minimise subversive activities both by external and internal elements can be enhanced with UDA.
• To exploit the potential of unmanned technologies and platforms, the Navy has approved an unmanned road map.

QUAD and Maritime Security:

• By emphasizing the “Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific,” India has indicated that the Quad would be an extension of that policy. But it is yet to be seen how India defines and pursues its maritime relations in the east.
• India revamped its maritime doctrine in 2015, with the “Ensuring Securing Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy” wherein it took stock of its commitment to an actionable policy. And keeping in line with this approach it has upped its maritime naval drills, made port calls in Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, and undertaken maritime capacity-building efforts (beyond training) in Vietnam and Myanmar.
• However, India’s maritime developments are at odds with the rest of the Quad members. In addition to operating Russian-descent ships and warplanes, India is also reluctant to establish a satellite link that would allow the navies to share information. Given the nascent nature of the grouping, India’s concerns are not unfounded as agreeing to the CISMOA (encrypted communications system) would open up the nature and extent of its military communications.
• However, the Quad could also expand the scope to explore maritime technologies and reduce India’s defence import dependency on Russia. Even with external naval modernization and the success of the Vikrant-class aircraft carrier and Arihant-class of nuclear submarines, India’s indigenous defence production has faced serious operational glitches, leading to delays such as the failed MiG-29K.
• India has had annual naval drills with over 15 countries. Of these, the Malabar exercises with the United States and later Japan (both Quad members) have triggered the most attention in the past. Malabar cooperation has included drills in surface and anti-submarine warfare, coordinated gunnery exercises, air defence and visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) drills.

Neighbourhood Synergies

• Friendly Navies maritime domain awareness is also generating cooperative synergies in the neighbourhood.
• Liaison Officers:
  • There are reports that seven Indian Ocean countries- Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles- will soon post Liaison Officers at the Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region in Gurugram.
• Information Hub:
  • France already has an officer at the IFC, and four other Indo-Pacific navies- Australia, Japan, the U.K and the U.S.- have also agreed to position officers at the centre.
• Liaison Officer in New Delhi:
  • New Delhi is also upping its engagement in the Western Indian Ocean by positioning a Liaison Officer at the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre (RMIFC) in Madagascar.

• Be it understood as a concept or a set of practices, maritime security has a geopolitical dimension. The maritime domain is a space within which human actors operate, either to perform illegal, disruptive and damaging activities or to police and secure the sea in order to fight criminal actors.
• Maritime security refers to a geographical space, that is to say, the sea, which has different characteristics compared to the land. The location of threats impacts on the way states and non-state actors’ security is affected. States’ maritime security interests result in a practice consisting of projecting security beyond their external boundary into the global maritime domain.
• Thus, zones of interest are defined, which extend beyond one’s legal zone of competencies. In security narratives, those maritime zones are represented as vital for one’s security, which justifies power projection activities.
• Beyond technical, operational, legal/judicial, economic, military and cultural elements, there is a geopolitical dimension of maritime security.
• When states and regional organisations stress their need, will or duty to ‘secure the freedom of the seas’, to ‘police the global commons, to ‘promote good governance at sea’, or to ‘assure the stewardship of the ocean’, there are geopolitical forces and factors at play and not only ‘benign’ intentions.