Amid the Chinese calculus of geo-strategic manoeuvres, the most vulnerable ‘choke point’ lurks near Indian waters — the ultra narrow and practically unavoidable Malacca Straits
The US-China vitriol has shifted back from the trade tables to its more familiar turf of the South China Sea, where China has provocatively tested anti-ship missiles from the man-made structures around the intensely contested Spratly Islands. This area has been hotly counter-claimed in parts by Vietnam, Philippines and Taiwan; whereas the Chinese have brazenly appropriated sovereignty over the entire 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea.
The restive waters of the region have seen shadow-boxing of global powers with the US attempting a “balance” with platforms like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad — potentially pooling strategic concerns and resources of major regional powers (US, Japan, India and Australia) that cannot be coerced like some others, who are directly affected by the Chinese belligerence and assertions. This latest escalation has all the hallmarks of a typical Chinese incitement with Beijing reneging on its earlier pledge made by President Xi Jinping in 2015 that it would not militarise these outposts.
To rub its symbolism, the Chinese publicly announced the military exercises and missile-testing as an intrinsic part of the agenda, knowing fully well the reaction that it would elicit in the wary neighbourhood.
The primary stake for the Chinese in the ongoing war of attrition is to fructify its hegemonic ambitions, which, therefore, manifest in its trade wars with the US; unleashing of the gargantuan infrastructural inter-linkages via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); carrot and stick policy of dominating its neighbours and indeed, keeping the kettle boiling for India with “Doklam” or its more ambitious “String of Pearls” approach. It either bullies or buys subservience with impunity. For example, the Philippines succumbed to its willful subservience despite having won the case of maritime claims against the Chinese in the International Court of Justice, Hague. In the melee, the chessboard of international diplomacy is rife with moves and counter-moves to checkmate each other, with the brutal play of realpolitik overruling any sense of statesmanship or morality. To cite an example, the deliberate veto-roadblocks that Beijing created in favour of Pakistan while delaying the designation of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as an “international terrorist” in the United Nations.
At the heart of this patented Chinese defiance is its famed economic juggernaut that is fuelling its ambitions, power and stratagem to continuously push ahead. The Chinese “economic miracle” is predicated on the free flow of materials to-and-fro from the mainland, including the survival-linked energy resources that sustain its hyper factories. This explains the Chinese restlessness and military build-up to keep their seaways free from any potential blockade. Beyond flexing its military muscle, China has also invested in a mammoth base of approximately 500 million barrels of Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) as an emergency contingency, should the seaways ever get disrupted, deliberately or otherwise. While the Chinese Navy does not possess a “Blue Water Navy” as yet, it has worked on the idea of “Pearl Ports” in places beyond its arc-of-dominance in the South China Seas like Sri Lanka, the Maldives to even Bangladesh and Myanmar. The doomsday scenario of a seaway “blockade” (even temporary) can be fatal for the regime and it has led the Chinese to punt another $60 billion in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a possible alternative.
However, amid this calculus of geo-strategic manoeuvres lies the most vulnerable “choke point” from a Chinese perspective, ie, the ultra-narrow and practically-unavoidable Malacca Straits that opens at the lower tip of the Indian sovereign waters, afforded by the outpost of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 1,200 km away from the Indian mainland. Just 1.5 km wide at its narrowest point, this strait is among the busiest sea traffic in the world with over 1,00,000 vessels transiting a year, positioning an invaluable jugular grip for India. Unlike the tensions of disputes and the domineering reach of the Chinese military in South China Seas — the waters around Malacca Straits are undisputed and beyond the dominance zone of the Chinese. The Chinese are extremely vulnerable and they have tried “investing” in Malaysia, taken unwarranted interest in Coco Islands on the northern tip of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and even “leased” a port in Sri Lanka for 99 years. Yet, no major breakthrough has been achieved by the Chinese and the jugular of Malacca Straits exists.
This jugular, among the other scale strengths of India, underlies the strategic logic of the US “pivot” against the Chinese. In a symbolic ode to the Indian dimension and inevitability, the US renamed its unified command for the region to “United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM)” to recognise the specificity of the Indian theatre. It is this command which is at the forefront of countering the Chinese machinations and shadowboxing with its own counter moves.
So far the military moves of the South China Sea have not been extended to areas proximate to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, though India, too, holds a defensive Tri-Services command of its own here. The Government is looking into adding “firepower” by way of infrastructure and wherewithal, given the strategic stakes and potential levers in its vicinity. So while the US-Chinese tensions may not be resonating in our backyard just as yet, the stakeholders, military commands and concerns of the South China Sea tensions have their conceptual epicentre and jugular in an area that is looming in the shadows of Indian territorial waters.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)
