Conclusion: Strategic Policy in the Indian Ocean Region

As the United States and China compete for primacy in the Indo-Pacific, the Indian Ocean remains largely free of heavily militarized disputes comparable to those in the western Pacific Ocean that could flare into war. As a result, policymakers in Washington, Canberra, and other like-minded capitals have pursued approaches to an Indian Ocean defined by relatively low strategic risk. They expect that over the long term a steadily rising India, supported by an engaged United States and other partners, will be able to manage the challenge posed by China's growing influence. In other words, these states assume stable strategic preferences among the major powers and a largely favorable balance of power in the Indian Ocean. As this alternative futures project has illustrated, however, those assumptions are contestable, and plausible disruptive scenarios would carry enormous security implications for all concerned actors.

If existing assumptions are disputable, how can strategic policy hedge against them? The various contributions to this roundtable have revealed a wide range of policy concerns arising from the future scenarios—but several common themes have also emerged. For example, the prospect of a closer U.S.-India partnership in the Indian Ocean may be a key driver of a more assertive Chinese presence, but it may also be an important bulwark against Chinese influence. Either way, multiple contributors regarded such strategic partnerships as a particularly consequential variable in future policy settings.

This concluding essay outlines five key findings of this alternative futures project, synthesized from the scenarios and the roundtable discussion of policy implications. Together, they represent a checklist of sorts—considerations that policymakers in Washington, Canberra, and like-minded capitals should deliberately and explicitly weigh to maximize the effectiveness and resilience of strategic policy toward the Indian Ocean region.

Understand the Relative—and the Absolute—Importance of the Indian Ocean

For all the major security actors in the Indian Ocean region, the ocean has traditionally been of secondary importance, as they face greater or more urgent threats elsewhere. As the scenarios showed, this is certainly true of India, which has always devoted a far greater share of defense resources to managing continental threats from Pakistan and China. It is also true of Australia, which traditionally prioritizes the adjacent areas of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, although its 2020 Defence Strategic Update did reconceptualize the country's immediate region to include the "northeast Indian Ocean."¹ As Zack Cooper argues in this roundtable, this is also true of the United States, which—despite its newfound focus on the expanded contiguous region of the Indo-Pacific—recognizes that the first and second island chains in the western Pacific must dominate its military planning. And as Hu Bo argues in this roundtable, this is true of China, which similarly regards its adjacent waters as its area of primary strategic interest.

This recognition carries several policy implications. First, secondary importance is not the same as negligible importance. For all these states, the Indian Ocean is home to critical energy and trade routes. The security of sea lanes, if nothing else, demands a certain minimum level of strategic attention. Second, given those interests, regional states should creatively search for cost-effective policy instruments to build and maintain influence, rather than basing plans on unrealistic expectations of lavish future resource allocations. Third, the relative importance of the Indian Ocean may rise if there is a sudden shift in the balance of power—especially if the United States sharply reduces its presence or China accelerates its expansion. In that case, the Indian Ocean will assume added strategic salience. Regional states such as India, Australia, and their partners will accordingly face a sharper dilemma between competing strategic priorities. If history is any guide, they will only reluctantly and belatedly adjust their policies in the wake of reduced U.S. commitments.

Manage Ongoing Uncertainty about Chinese Plans

The rapid expansion of Chinese military interests and capabilities has brought with it uncertainty over China's future plans. In just a decade, China went from having a negligible expeditionary capability to maintaining a permanent naval task force and...