Noose or necklace?

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in December 2010 provides an appropriate occasion to ruminate on issues that were not reflected in the official agenda. Amongst them is the resurgence of China’s maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean, popularly captioned as “string of pearls”, coined from a report prepared for the

Pentagon in 2003 by Booz Allen consultants. “String of pearls” is in some ways a contemporary re-enactment of the legend of Zheng He, a Chinese admiral who made seven voyages into the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1430, leading an armada of 50 warships at a time, up to the eastern shores of Africa, that have rarely, if ever, been matched elsewhere at any time.
“Pearls” refers to the chain of maritime facilities fronting the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal built with Chinese assistance by various host countries in the littoral regions proximate to India — at Gwadar on the Mekran Coast of Pakistan, Hambantota on the southern extremity of Sri Lanka, Chittagong in Bangladesh and Sittwe in Burma. Except Gwadar, which is also a naval base for the Pakistan Navy, the stated purpose of these complexes is purely commercial. They are used to provide way stations and transfer points connected overland with China by rail, road and pipeline to offload and transport Gulf oil cargo for China from tanker shipping, thus bypassing the critical chokepoint of the Malacca Straits seen to be dominated by India’s “metal chain” of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and thus reduce vulnerability to interdiction in the event of a conflict.
Commercial ports are intrinsically dual capable assets that can be morphed into naval bases without too much effort. The Booz Allen report talks of the potential bases under Chinese lien for a naval presence in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, though from an essentially American perspective. But given the perceived adversarial relations between India and China, the two principals in the region, the “string of pearls” is seen as tightening into “knots on a garrotte” to encircle and choke Indian maritime endeavour and confine it to a sub-region in northern Indian Ocean. India must, of course, take due note of this as also other strategic contingencies, but dispassionately and without hysteria or paranoia as "maritime encirclement" of a country of India's dimensions and capabilities is just not possible.
No single country or combination of countries with such a capability is as yet visible on the horizon. Also, such an eventuality may be considered implausible under the present circumstances.
India is on home ground in the Indian Ocean between the Malacca Straits and the East African littoral. Here the country is in a position of huge and unassailable maritime dominance. The large peninsular landmass of the "Horn of India" juts out deep into the northern Indian Ocean, creating an unsinkable aircraft carrier in relative proximity to the maritime Silk Route transporting hydrocarbon resources from West Asia and Africa to China.
The Indian Air Force has taken cognisance of this with the proposed stationing of fighter aircraft in peninsular India, initially with the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and big brother Su-30s to follow. It is an initial step in the right direction, and another indication of the three-front role of Indian aerospace power as also the requirement to build up for it.
Freedom of unchallenged and peaceful navigation in international waters, including of warships in passage, is an inalienable right of all nations. Attempts to act to the contrary, such as North Korea’s reaction to US-South Korea joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, or China’s belligerence at the US-Taiwan naval presence in the South China Sea region, are misplaced and in any case difficult to enforce. India must, of course, take due note of foreign naval presence in the Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal. However, excessive public umbrage would be hollow and even counterproductive if the capability to enforce them are lacking (as witnessed in the futile exercise of Operation Parakram, a hastily ordered kneejerk reaction after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001).
But that is not to say that the roots of future maritime rivalries do not exist in the “upper” Indian Ocean region. With potential for escalation to conflict levels, the most likely contingency would be the coming scramble for undersea resources, particularly hydrocarbons that are seen as more or less inevitable as deposits on land get increasingly depleted. Oil discovered in the Mahanadi basin off the Orissa coast and in the Andaman Sea tend to support this view.
India has long held friendly relations with all the countries where the “string of pearls” are located, except Pakistan. It must initiate a focused drive to utilise these port facilities in its "Look East" policy to enhance mutual trading and maritime activity. At the same time, India's perspective of its own national interests should also be conveyed to these countries as diplomatically as possible. Nevertheless, unambiguously the possibility of the “string of pearls” as bases in the vicinity for any potentially hostile Navy would be unacceptable.
The port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka is a typical example of Indian foreign policy at work, having initially been offered for construction to India. But official responses were so apathetic and lethargic that China was able to move in quickly and snap up the offer, driving India out of the race with its offer of $360 million for building a harbour, cargo terminals, and refuelling facilities by a consortium of China Harbour Engineering Company and Sino Hydro Corporation Limited. While Hambantota is not listed as a “Chinese pearl” by a foreign sources examining the energy situation in the region, others, including the Joint Operating Environment 2008 by US Joint Forces Command, have associated it with China’s wider naval ambitions.
India must retrospect on the conduct of its own foreign policy, particularly in its immediate neighbourhood. The “string of pearls” is as much the outcome of assertive diplomacy by China, as it is of corresponding functional lethargy and policy shortcomings by India.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament