Don’t be cowed by Beijing
After Malabar, the focus must be on better integration of navies
Anaval exercise is nowadays geopolitics in miniature. This week, the annual Malabar exercise will play out in the Indian Ocean. The highlight will be the presence of three carriers, one from each participating country: India, the US and Japan. Along with their respective escort ships, this could result in 20 or more ships participating. Malabar is probably today the most significant naval exercise in the Indian Ocean, militarily and politically. A true measure of its symbolism is that China, as it has done almost every year, has already wagged a finger and sent a spy ship to watch the proceedings.
The present exercises reflects the common concerns India, the US and Japan have about the future of the maritime IndoPacific. A slow shrinkage of the US footprint in the region is merging with the growing military presence of China. These three countries share a view that Beijing’s idea of how the world should be run is incompatible with their own. Naval exercises can be treated as a dating game but they fall short of a marriage. That has to come from a broad foreign and economic policy engagement. Security cooperation, trade and investment, common political values and a convergence of world views are among the ways true alliances are forged. Trying to use all that to stitch that together a disparate bunch of countries and in the face of China is not easy.
When dealing with a power like China, maintaining discipline in the ranks is always an issue. The collapse of the Quad – which at one point included five navies – is a testament to the reluctance of governments to be on the wrong side of Beijing. Malabar has weathered a number of episodes when New Delhi, Tokyo and Washington, individually, sought to unsuccessfully woo Beijing. But with this maturity must come progress. There is a need to take these naval exercises to a higher level. Inter-operability and much greater integration is what these navies – and their respective governments – need to be considering for the next generation of Malabar exercises.