Malabar 2017 isn’t aimed at China
level of interaction despite their asymmetry in capability.
One could make a case that the Malabar exercise represented the gradual security outlook liberalisation of the Indian octopus and that Rao in an unobtrusive manner provided the trigger pulse not just for economic liberalisation, but also for a strategic re-orientation of the insular Indian world view.
The resilience of the Malabar exercise is reflected in the fact that though India-US relations plummeted as far south as is possible after the May 1998 nuclear tests, the two sides picked up the naval thread after 9/11 and India provided escorts for US ships in the Indian Ocean at the time.
The deeper geopolitical salience of the exercise is about joint stewardship of the maritime domain – the traditional global commons. It is instructive to note that the concept of a ‘global common’ has now been extended to include the cyber and space domains and in many ways the Malabar exercise is a symbol of the depth of such collective endeavour.
The US with its qualitative technological profile is the lead global navy – and there is no other nation in the next 10 places. China is seeking to bridge the naval gap with relation to the US with a heightened sense of urgency and anxiety, and this is often reflected in its reaction to the Malabar exercise. Hence its irate response in 2007 and subsequently signals have been conveyed by China to both Australia and Singapore to desist from donning the Malabar hat.
The current stand-off in the Dokalam plateau is one strand of the troubled India-China relationship. But for now it is evident that Delhi is not seeking to play the Malabar card and stoke China’s imagined anxieties about a democratic naval/maritime coalition that will bring alive the Malacca dilemma first outlined by then Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2003.
Malabar 2017 will have three carriers participating – the US Navy’s Nimitz (the world’s largest carrier), the INS Vikramaditya, and a Japanese helo-carrier and a nuclear submarine. While interoperability is at the core of such exercises, Malabar will burnish India’s credibility in the maritime domain and punctuate the Indian Ocean region in a manner that prioritises collective effort to secure the first of the three global commons.
Whether this can be extended to other maritime domains remains to be seen.