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 There
seems to be a disconnect as the Indian Navy held IONS a new
all inclusive Indian Ocean grouping while the MEA still spends
money and works on Indian Ocean Rim for Regional Cooperation
IOR-ARC in which Pakistan and Iran and some other middle east
Navies are not included. This is strange and Uday Bhaskar's
article is appended. The IONS saw 26 Chiefs and 30 nations
of the Indian Ocean take part in end Jan and agreed to meet
every two years and in the net work retreat in Goa agreed
to a Secretariat in New Delhi subject to Government approval.
This was the good news as the Government had sanctioned Rs
5 crores for the extravaganza and CNS Admiral Sureesh Mehta
needs to be congratulated. Former Indian Chiefs of Naval Staff
including Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat who has been resurrected
as he was dismissed on 30th December, 1998 were special invitees.
The principal objectives envisaged for the IONS have been
defined as follows:-
(a)
To promote a shared understanding of the maritime issues
facing the littoral states of the Indian Ocean and the formulation
of a common set of strategies designed to enhance regional
maritime security.
(b)
To strengthen the capability of all littoral nation-states
of the Indian Ocean to address present and anticipated challenges
to maritime security and stability.
(c)
To establish and promote a variety of trans-national, maritime,
cooperative-mechanisms designed to mitigate maritime security-concerns
amongst nation-states of the Indian Ocean.
(d)
To develop interoperability in terms of doctrines, procedures,
organisational and logistic systems and operational processes,
so as to promote the provision of speedy, responsive, and
effective Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster-Relief (HADR)
throughout the region.
(e)
To identify any other areas of cooperation as may be mutually
agreed.
The
bottom line for MEA is the IOR-ARC made by India and South
Africa which never took off needs a burial. Hope MEA is reading
or will some one convey this as Navy should have or must have
done it, though MEA reps were not seen at IONS. So Uday Bhaskar
is right it is a lonely mission till then. Pakistan and Iran
will probably attend when IOR-ARC is disbanded.
Lonely
mission
By
- C Uday Bhaskar
The
new initiatives of Indian Navy are being undermined by government
indifference.
 The
recently concluded Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) held
in New Delhi attracted as many as 31 of the 33 littorals -
Iran and Pakistan apart. This is a commendable initiative
by the Indian Navy (IN) to chart a new course for the tricolor
in the 21st century. It is rare that as many as 26 naval chiefs
come together for a conclave and this is indeed a mini diplomatic
coup. The IN remains the most credible navy within the Indian
Ocean region (IOR) and this despite the reality that it is
the Cinderella service as compared to its peers - the Army
and the Air Force.
But from all accounts, not everybody in Delhi was on board
- and a familiar Indian malaise apropos the harmonization
of the political, diplomatic and military strands of national
security issues was evident. Drift and institutional dissonance
detracted from the rich professional content of the symposium.
At the outset, many of the participants were perplexed as
to why the Ministry of External Affairs was not adequately
represented at this first-ever major naval initiative.
The External Affairs Minister was listed as a speaker in the
inaugural session but was unable to attend. The only cabinet
representation was by the Ministry of Defence. Navies are
essentially instruments of state policy and the IN is seeking
to create a synergistic cooperative security framework for
the IOR in keeping with Indian politico-strategic orientation
that eschews military alliances. In this regard the IN has
elicited generous international praise for its consistent
professionalism.
But
the moot question is does India have a macro national politico-strategic
grand policy? IONS 2008 tried to provide some intellectual
ballast towards this end - but the results were alas muddied.
While Manmohan Singh provided an unexceptionable overview
and urged the conclave of naval chiefs to "develop a
comprehensive cooperative framework of maritime security"
and the Indian naval chief made a very persuasive case for
'inclusiveness' as the leit motif of the 21st century in the
IOR, the dissonance was soon evident.
In
his remarks Defence Minister AK Anthony was steering a different
course. His central exhortation reflected a throwback to the
insular Indian response of the mid 1970's when he noted: "I
would like to exhort all present and future members of the
'IONS Initiative' to resist the temptation of trying either
to provide a prescriptive set of answers to a prescribed set
of problems or challenges. I would caution them against seeking
to import extra-regional template. I would, instead, ask them
to tap the huge intellectual and innovative resources available
within the IOR littoral."
This
divergence of views was the major issue of discussion between
sessions among the participants. Is India seeking to keep
all extra-regional powers out of the new maritime initiative
it is trying to embark upon? And here the unstated reference
was to the two major powers of this century - the USA and
China which have their own grand national security strategies
in which the maritime dimension with specific reference to
the IOR is an integral component.
It
is a tenet of maritime history of the last 500 years that
all great or major powers have sought to maintain credible
naval 'presence' or dominate two of the three navigable oceans
of the world. In the colonial era of history the IOR had a
certain salience and subsequently in the Cold War period,
the global maritime focus shifted to the Atlantic-Pacific
combine. In the post Cold war and more recently in the post
9-11 years, this focus has transmuted to the Pacific-IOR combine
and this is an inviolable strategic-maritime reality. Hence
India has to evolve appropriate national policies that are
cognizant of these realities and harmonize its security and
diplomatic initiatives.
Regrettably India is blind to its abiding maritime interests
and the Navy often ploughs a lonely furrow in the national
grid. Paradoxically it is only in the naval domain that China
concedes the advantage that India has over it - but this opportunity
has not been maximized in any consistent manner by Delhi.
The
IN is a modest but credible capability in the national quiver
and it has an inherent trans border quality that can nurture
or further many aspects of the abiding national interest.
Specific to the IOR these areas of maritime empathy relate
to India's ' Look East policy' and the nascent 'Look West
(Asia) policy'. But these will remain unrealised if there
is lack of apex clarity about where the IN is headed in a
politico-diplomatic sense - and IONS tried to provide these
answers but was blunted by Delhi's characteristic dissonance.
The author is a defence analyst.
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