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13. Maritime Security Triangulation of ASEAN-Australia-India: An Indian Perspective
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Chapter
- Additional Information
13 MaritiMe Security triangulation of aSeanauStralia -india an indian Perspective W. Lawrence S. Prabhakar The twenty-first century had commenced with a paradoxical dichotomy of a promise and a peril. The promise has been the optimal vision of economic interdependence through the vistas of globalization and the peril has been the perennial scourge of asymmetric conflicts that has gravely weakened state security and human security in all its essence. Maritime security has emerged as the single most important issue of security due to the paradoxical dichotomy of globalization and asymmetric conflicts. Globalization and economic growth have been largely predicated on the maritime-based trade and supply chains that have knit the globe effectively with maritime transportation. However, this maritime-based global network has been rendered vulnerable, both on land and at sea, due to the threats and challenges of asymmetric violent groups that have emerged as a single perilous threat. Maritime security has the potential for a new synergy in networking economies and markets, and for building new capacities for cooperative and convergent security among states. Having to contend with the peril of asymmetric threats and the challenge of transnational threats, states have been induced to converge to build new capacities and capabilities to address the challenge. 219 220 W. Lawrence S. Prabhakar The Asia-Pacific is a wide theatre of the Asian littoral that abounds with enormous promise of economic growth. It is hedged by the Indian and Pacific Oceans that have emerged in geo-economic and geostrategic significance given the high density of shipping and trade routes. Southeast Asia, Australia, and India are littorals that occupy a diagonal axis across the Indo-Pacific Oceans with immense economic and strategic implications. The three littorals represent a very significant share of the geo-economic growth and development second only to the Chinese-Japanese-Korean littorals in East and Northeast Asia. A perspective of the Regional Security Complex theory could help in the understanding of how security architectures of the triangulation of the three littorals could be defined. The imperatives of maritime security are shaped by respective geostrategic perspectives: inherent security predicaments, emergent geo-economic challenges, and the task of contending asymmetric and transnational challenges. This chapter seeks to analyse the issue of the security dimensions and dynamics of the triangulation of ASEAN, Australia, and India from an Indian perspective that would account for the maritime geostrategic and geoeconomic prism; the doctrinal, operational, and transformational issues of the Indian Navy and the maritime enterprise; the new quest of the Indian Navy’s interoperable roles and missions with great power navies and other regional navies; India’s maritime engagement with Southeast Asia in perspective, and an assessment of the triangulation dynamics of the maritime interactions among ASEAN, Australia, and India the MaritiMe geoStrategic and geo-econoMic PriSM of india The maritime geostrategic and geo-economic prism of India is a late discovery by India. Through the initial and immediate years of the post-colonial period, India’s priorities and security predicaments were centred along its western and eastern borders, contending the territorial boundary issues of dispute with Pakistan and China. Its economic growth was pitched at a low 3.5 per cent of GNP and an autarkic economic model that did not envision the prospects of high economic growth, given its inevitable economic and security preoccupation. Maritime trade was minimal, and in the overall trade slice of the country’s external trade, it was miniscule. In terms of the security and strategic assessment, the scope of maritime-based threats to India was not fully envisioned owing to the preponderance of the land-based threats from [3.226.254.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:16 GMT) Triangulation of ASEAN-Australia-India 221 the two frontiers. In terms of resource allocation, the Indian Navy did not receive even its due share of the country’s resources, with the predominant allocation going to the Army, and the Air Force, receiving a distant, second most share. The continental mindset continued since 1962 with the IndiaChina War and then meandered along. The maritime-naval vision was underdeveloped despite the fact that India had a 7516 km coastline and with the endowments of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) it had a 200 km of expanded maritime domain of the EEZ since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) III (1982). The Cold War years were the strategic milieu that provided the stimuli for adversarial postures and actions. The 1965 India-Pakistan War...