India’s Strategic Imperatives in the Asian Commons

In May 2016, four Indian Navy warships sailed into the South China Sea on a two-and-a-half-month operational deployment to Southeast Asia and the northwest Pacific. The deployment was primarily to participate in Exercise Malabar 2016, an annual trilateral maritime interaction featuring the Indian, U.S., and Japanese navies, this year being held off Okinawa. But the deployment also included visits en route to the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea. What raised eyebrows—particularly in Beijing—was that the foray came close on the heels of the first India-U.S. Maritime Security Dialogue on May 16, in which the two sides discussed Asia-Pacific challenges, naval cooperation, and multilateral engagement in the Asian commons.¹

If China needed further confirmation of India’s growing security interests in the South China Sea, it was seemingly provided by reports in early June 2016 that New Delhi was set to sign an agreement to sell the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to Vietnam, giving effect to a controversial proposal made many years earlier.² Many saw this in conjunction with another media report released a few weeks earlier, which revealed that an Indian state-owned shipyard was being awarded a contract to build two warships for the Philippines.³ In addition, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June 2016, Manohar Parrikar, the Indian defense minister, highlighted India’s concerns about freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.⁴

This essay posits that India’s security role in the Asia Pacific is animated by its concerns over rising threats to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea—particularly the possibility that aggressive Chinese patrolling in the region may affect the flow of global trade. But India also believes that China’s maritime maneuvers in Southeast Asia are motivated by a desire to eventually challenge India in its strategic backyard—the Indian Ocean—prompting New Delhi to take urgent steps to shore up Indian naval presence in the Indian Ocean region (IOR).

India’s Expanding Naval Presence in the Indo-Pacific

For some analysts, India’s recent activities in the western Pacific are primarily motivated by growing economic interests in East Asia. Since 2010, they argue, trade and commerce have been the key drivers of New Delhi’s security policies in the Asia-Pacific. With more than 50% of Indian trade in the Asia-Pacific now flowing through the Malacca Strait, India has had little option but to raise its maritime profile in the region.⁵ Indian observers claim that India’s security operations in the South China Sea have only kept pace with the country’s expanding economic interests.

But the scope of Indian naval presence in the western Pacific cannot be explained merely in terms of commercial interests. With Indian naval deployments graduating from port calls, low-level exchanges, and benign flag showing to full-scale maritime operations with partner navies in the Pacific littoral, there appear to be other considerations underpinning Indian naval activism in the region.⁶ Specifically, two other factors are prompting the Indian Navy to increase its involvement in the Pacific. First, maritime disputes in the Southeast Asian littoral have given India an opportunity to demonstrate its support for international maritime law. With its steady rise in the hierarchy of powerful maritime nations, India now feels a greater obligation to take a stand on issues of maritime principle as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Second, India is increasingly concerned about China’s military rise and its adverse impact on the strategic balance in Asia. Uncertainty over China’s geopolitical intentions in the South China Sea exacerbates existing power asymmetries. By playing a greater security role in East Asia, India hopes to contribute to the restoration of strategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific.

By some accounts, it is China’s recent maritime activism in the South China Sea that has been the most immediate trigger for Indian naval operations in the western Pacific. Some Indian maritime experts discern a correlation between aggressive Chinese patrolling in the South...