China keeps cautious eye on neighbours’ naval exercise

The trilateral naval exercises in the northern Pacific Ocean from July 24 to 30 involving the militaries of India, Japan and the United States are significant strategic developments with repercussions for Asian security. Codenamed Malabar, these war games are viewed with deep suspicion in China as moves aimed at countering the People’s Liberation Army Navy. But from the lenses of New Delhi, Tokyo and Washington, they are necessary manoeuvres to maintain a regional balance of power and to fine-tune maritime cooperation among like-minded nations.

Launched in 1992, Malabar used to be a purely bilateral arrangement between India and the US and did not particularly rile Beijing. But in 2007, as the host convener, India expanded the list of invitees to Australia, Japan and Singapore in keeping with New Delhi’s ambitions to expand its naval capacity and power projection.

The prospect of 25 warships and submarines of a number of nations converging in the Bay of Bengal to hone skills of all participants in simulated combat and rescue missions rattled China. Exhortations by the then Australian Foreign Minister for the need to build a “Quadrilateral Alliance” of India, Japan, the US and his country made Malabar look like a reification of the dream of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to construct a ‘Broader Asia’ alliance of democracies to match China’s rising heft in world politics.

Beijing issued a diplomatic demarche demanding an explanation of the purpose of Malabar 2007 and has ever since watched warily as the co-organisers, India and the US, occasionally invited other regional actors to their joint drills.

Due to the sharply antagonistic relationship between China and Japan, the active presence of Japan’s naval vessels in Malabar 2009 and now again in Malabar 2014 have raised hackles among strategists in Beijing. Whenever Japan is involved in Malabar, the exercises are held near its coastal territory of Okinawa, drawing the combined maritime strength of nations resenting an excessively powerful China ominously close to its shores.

Beijing fears that Malabar-like initiatives are unabashed components of America’s containment policy meant to encircle and roll back Chinese power through a show of military might. Even though China has cultivated strong economic relationships with India, Japan and Australia, the sight of navies of these countries joining hands with the US Navy and engaging in complex gunnery, air operations and communications exchanges unnerves Beijing.

The PLA Navy’s ambitions of carving out a “Chinese Monroe Doctrine” (a phrase coined by South Korean naval analyst Sukjoon Yoon), which enforces maritime supremacy over the whole East Asian sphere, are in jeopardy when exercises like Malabar are held in China’s backyard as if cocking a snook at Beijing’s grand strategy.

Since multilateral naval exercises generate anxieties due to their scale and exchange of military knowhow, Malabar’s protagonists often proclaim that these games are not aimed at China. This year, Japan’s Defence Minister issued a predictable politically correct statement that Malabar is not targeting a specific country but is just an undertaking among three friendly countries to participate for security of sea lanes.

However, in actual impact if not intent, Malabar is circumscribing the unfettered waterways that the PLA Navy expects as it stakes claim to disputed islands and aggressively polices international waters well beyond its nautical limits.

Naval exercises need not always be a zero-sum game where the advances of one side shrink the space for the other, but they definitely disrupt and constrain each player’s ability to be agile at sea and assert control in a deeply divided and hostile environment such as the one prevailing in contemporary East Asia.

India’s behaviour as the host of the Malabar exercises is a study in strategic evolution and holds the clue to the future of what New Delhi likes to term as the “Indo-Pacific” region (a concept that treats the expanse ranging from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean as an inseparable continuum).

When the Chinese objected to Japan’s inclusion in 2007, India’s civilian leadership developed cold feet and reverted to the purely bilateral mode with the US in 2008. But internally, the Indian government faced flak for succumbing to Chinese pressure. The former Indian Navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, warned last year against “strategic submission” to China in deciding Malabar’s guest list and simultaneously averred that New Delhi was clearly “not going to align with anybody” (i.e. the US).

India’s policymakers dismiss Chinese perceptions of New Delhi serving an American agenda via Malabar. Rather, owing to technical and geopolitical benefits accruing to India, they wish to encourage more such multilateral naval exercises with a self-confidence that refuses to be complaisant to China. The mutual admiration club comprising Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a catalyst for broadening the naval dimension of bilateral relations. An India-Japan military duet will inevitably triangulate Washington, which is integral to Tokyo’s defence sector ramp-up.

Although India, Japan and the US do form a strategic triad, Chinese warships recently joined the US-led RIMPAC naval exercises around Hawaii. China and India are also holding their own bilateral military games on counter-terrorism. Sino-American and Sino-Indian military exchanges currently lack substantive depth and are largely symbolic in nature.

But Malabar is growing in sophistication in terms of the quantity of naval vessels and the variety of mock operations (the Indian Navy labels the ongoing exercise as “complex and high-end”). Beijing, therefore, has no option but to invest more in military cooperation with the US and India as a way to offset the security setbacks stemming from its isolation in the high seas.

The ironic outcome of the China-challenging Malabar could be a stable maritime regime in the Indo-Pacific theatre, wherein if China enters into meaningful military exercises with India and the US, transparency would ensue with less being hidden about the naval capabilities of all players.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sreeram Chaulia is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonipat, India