Keeping China Out, the United States In, and Pakistan Down: India's Strategy for the Indian Ocean Region

India is a rising power with significant gaps in the translation of its economic potential into military power—gaps that may considerably widen due to the severe damage being wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic on India's economy and society. At a time when military spending relative to GDP has been declining for over a decade and personnel costs have until recently been rising at the expense of capital expenditures, the three scenarios in this exercise starkly demonstrate some of the external challenges that Indian policymakers might face in coming years. These challenges are all the more dangerous in a period when India, weakened by the pandemic, may be seen as an easier target and may itself respond aggressively to provocations for reasons of domestic or international reputation. Given these parameters, the scenarios highlight three important dimensions in which Indian thinking about the future of the Indian Ocean region will need to be flexible and sometimes run counter to dominant assumptions in New Delhi: capabilities, resolve, and partnerships.

If India faced a benign security environment, its domestic weaknesses would be less pernicious and the state would have a longer runway to build itself into a major world power. In fact, the opposite is true. The scenarios highlight two major external trends that must factor into India's strategic calculus: the relative decline in U.S. capabilities and interests in the Indian Ocean, and the relative increase in Chinese capabilities and interests in this region. Both of these factors eliminate the luxury of time and increase the pressure on India to make resource allocations and political choices suited to a range of near-term potential crises and geopolitical ruptures. On the one hand, India will need to enlarge its naval footprint in the Indian Ocean region to make up for a longer-term decline in U.S. presence. On the other hand, India will need to prepare for the full spectrum of challenges from China's expansion into this region, including adventurism along the Sino-Indian border, an increased People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy presence in the Indian Ocean, deepening relationships between China and Indian Ocean states, and even cyber intrusions and attacks on Indian infrastructure.

India's Capabilities

First, India's own capabilities will make a crucial difference to regional outcomes. This is not simply a matter of expenditure, which of course will matter, but also one of allocation. It is in China's interest to keep India tied down on its land frontiers and obsessed with the possibility of a two-front war. The working assumption of most Indian policy and defense planners is that India's major military engagements in the coming decades will be along the contested borders with Pakistan and China, respectively—an assumption further validated by the ongoing Sino-Indian standoff in Ladakh. The scenarios suggest, however, that ignoring sea power would be a grave mistake. In the extreme case of India continuing with its current naval strength without augmentation, the best the Indian Navy can do is provide coastal defense. Its existing resources are radically inadequate for sea denial—which the Indian Navy views as "an offensive measure, to reduce the adversary's freedom of action and to degrade his operations"—let alone sea control.¹

India has hitherto benefited from the U.S. Navy's command of the seas in the Indian Ocean region. The U.S. Navy's ability to ensure freedom of navigation, protect maritime chokepoints, and slow the pace of China's maritime expansion into the region has allowed India to gradually develop its own naval capabilities and doctrine while devoting sufficient resources to countering land-based threats. A future scenario in which the United States withdraws from Diego Garcia or China takes hostile action against regional countries such as Indonesia would place considerable demands on the Indian Navy to assume a substantial share of the tasks fulfilled by the U.S. Navy today. To plan for such a role, Indian decision-makers will need to rethink the dominance of the army among the...