Center for a New American Security

Source: Inside the Navy
Journalist: Zachary M. Peterson
Original Post: Kaplan: Indian Ocean 'Center Stage' For Future Navy, Marine Missions
Type: News Article

March 8, 2009 — March 9, 2009 - The cartography of the Indian Ocean illustrates the large area in which the Navy and Marine Corps should play an integral role in 21st century security, patrolling the high seas and acting as a “street-fighting” force to quell disruptions in the southeast Asian archipelago and assist in large-scale humanitarian relief missions, according to a respected journalist and fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“A map of the Indian Ocean exposes the contours of power politics in the twenty-first century,” Robert Kaplan writes in an article published in the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs. The world’s third largest body of water is more than a geographic feature, Kaplan argues, it’s also an idea.

“It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered, multipolar world,” he writes. “The dramatic economic growth of India and China has been duly noted, but the equally dramatic military ramifications of this development have not.”

Growing security concerns in the Indian Ocean present both challenges and opportunities for the U.S. Navy, Kaplan notes.
“The goal of the United States must be to forge a global maritime system that can minimize the risks of interstate conflict while lessening the burden of policing for the U.S. Navy,” he writes.
In a telephone interview with Inside the Navy last week, Kaplan said the U.S. Navy needs to have “three navies.”

The first two, a blue-water fleet and a power projection capability to attack land targets with precision-guided munitions are already in existence, while a third, littoral force is in the nascent stages of construction.
“It’s the third navy that needs building up, more of a brown water, green water littoral force,” Kaplan said. “Now I know [the Navy] is trying to fix that with the Littoral Combat Ship, but it needs to be more of a street- fighting navy
to deal with disruptions in the Southeast Asian archipelago, to deal with mega-humanitarian crises off the coast ofBangladesh, for instance.”

“It’s mainly developing this third aspect of naval warfare that we have to concentrate on,” he said. “If you look at amap of the Indian Ocean what you see is a very unconventional environment -- a lot of very fragile, jerry-built states with weak infrastructures and zero sea levels prone to environmental catastrophe.”

The Marine Corps could also play a crucial role in expeditionary-type missions around the region, gelling with Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway’s calls for the service to move away from its current land-based engagements back to its historical roots as a “from the sea,” amphibious force.

“I think that the Indian Ocean cartography bears out the commandant’s position,” Kaplan said. “The map reveals there’s going to be a real future in expeditionary deployments.”
“You look at the coast of Somalia, the coast of Bangladesh, the coast of Indonesia [and] what you see is more amphibious landing kind of scenarios,” he noted.

“The Marines have got away from their mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, they’ve basically become another land force, another army for all intents and purposes, but I don’t see that as the future,” Kaplan added.

Historically, the Marine Corps has deployed small groups of personnel throughout the globe conducting training and assisting in small operations with indigenous forces, something the service may return to on a larger scale.

“The Marine Corps has a real tradition in this,” Kaplan said. “In the small wars they fought in Central and South America, with the so-called ‘China Marines,’ and with the Marines standing up units in [U.S. Special Operations Command], which is mainly going to be train and equip missions where you’re going to need language expertise -- alot of that is going to take place in the Indian Ocean.”

A shift in regional focus already occurring
In the tri-service maritime strategy released in October 2007, the Coast Guard, Marines and Navy outline a shift in focus away from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
“Credible combat power will be continuously postured in the Western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean to protect our vital interests, assure our friends and allies of our continuing commitment to regional security, and deter and dissuade potential adversaries and peer competitors,” a “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower” states.

Yet the Indian Ocean itself is too vast for American forces to patrol alone.
A series of coalitions between various navies in separate areas of the Indian Ocean, similar to the task force model already in place in and around the Persian Gulf, could be a successful model to cooperative policing of the Indian Ocean, Kaplan argues in the Foreign Affairs piece.
“Ships travel too slow and the ocean is too vast for any one power to be everywhere when it’s needed,” Kaplan said in the interview with ITN. “I think what we’re going to see is, rather than the NATO model, a lot of small little, NATO models spread throughout the ocean.”

 

As a result of the maritime strategy, the Naval War College in Newport, RI, recently stood up an Indian Ocean regional studies group.

“The Indian Ocean Regional Studies Group will concentrate, among other topics, on trade and energy flows, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in the Indian Ocean region, the rise of transnational terrorism and piracy,” according to a statement released by the college.

Timothy Hoyt, the co-director of the new group, told ITN March 5 that “nobody studies the Indian Ocean as a totality.”

“As near as I can tell, it’s not done in the U.S. government,” Hoyt said. “Before this the regional studies groups at the Naval War College focused primarily on the combatant commands and we decided that if the Navy is going to make this commitment to the Indian Ocean, at least here as a trial run, we should start to think about the Indian Ocean as a totality.
“The idea is to start thinking about the Indian Ocean as a crucial area for the United States in security terms,” he added.

The question of India and China
Among the leading points of contention in the Indian Ocean region is the rise of both India and China as economic and military powers. Scholars disagree about China’s intentions as it builds a blue-water navy, though many note that the Chinese naval build-up makes sense to protect the large nation’s economic interests.

“There is nothing illegitimate about the rise of China’s navy,” Kaplan writes. “As the country’s economic interests expand dramatically, so must China expand its military, and particularly its navy, to guard these interests.”
Hoyt said China’s rise as a military could require both containment and engagement, depending on the circumstances.

The growing competition between India and China could cause future conflict as the two highly populated nations compete for resources, but as Hoyt notes, trade between the two nations is growing rapidly.

“There’s a lot of attention paid to Indian-Chinese hostilities, but it’s also worth noting that soon China will be

India’s biggest trading partner, so there are lots of areas for engagement in that relationship,” he said.

The U.S. Navy could see itself as the buffer between these two rising powers, which Kaplan argues is more effective in the maritime domain that it would be ashore.

“The more the United States becomes a maritime hegemon, as opposed to a land-based one, the less threatening itwill seem to others,” he writes.

“There will surely be tensions between the three navies, especially as the gaps in their relative strength begin to close,” Kaplan adds. “But even if the comparative size of the U.S. Navy decreases in the decades ahead, the United States will remain the one great power from outside the Indian Ocean region with a major presence there -- a unique position that will give it the leverage to act as a broker between India and China in their own backyard.”
The way ahead U.S. Navy capacity building and cooperation in the Indian Ocean region will prove crucial to American efforts,
Hoyt said.

“Thinking about the capacity of regional navies to be involved around Somalia is very useful because many of the navies in the region are more like coast guards,” Hoyt said. “Trying to figure out what the capacity of those navies is and how we can work with them to improve their capacity to carry out missions within the limits of their political guidance, these are things that are cheap, that create goodwill.”

In the future, the Navy must build these partnerships and serve as a “stabilizing power,” Kaplan writes. “Rather than ensure its dominance, the U.S. Navy simply needs to make itself continually useful.”
“Indispensability, rather than dominance, must be its goal,” he adds.

Related:
Topic(s): Regional Security Challenges, U.S. National Security and Defense Policy
Project(s): Asia-Pacific Security , U.S. Military Forces and Operations
People: Robert Kaplan