“Already the world’s preeminent energy and trade interstate seaway, the Indian Ocean will matter even more as India and China enter into a dynamic great-power rivalry in these waters,” writes Robert Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and senior fellow at the Center for New American Security. Appearing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Center Stage for the Twenty-first Century – Power Plays in the Indian Ocean details the importance of the Indian Ocean for global commerce and security. Half of the world’s shipping containers and 70 percent of its petroleum products pass through the globe’s third-largest body of water. The Indian Ocean will be the center of competition between China and India and despite the West’s declining power, the United States must continue to respond to the area’s crises and issues.
“It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered, multipolar world…
“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…
“With China building deep-water ports to its west and east and a preponderance of Chinese arms sales going to Indian Ocean states, India fears being encircled by China unless it expands its own sphere of influence. The two countries’ overlapping commercial and political interests are fostering competition, and even more so in the naval realm than on land…
“And the rise of the Indian navy, soon to be the third largest in the world after those of the United States and China, will function as an antidote to Chinese military expansion…
“During the Cold War, the Pacific and Indian oceans were veritable US lakes. But such hegemony will not last, and the United States must seek to replace it with a subtle balance-of-power arrangement…
“The Indians and the Chinese will enter into a dynamic great-power rivalry in these waters, with their shared economic interests as major trading partners locking them in an uncomfortable embrace. The United States, meanwhile, will serve as a stabilizing power in this newly complex area. Indispensability, rather than dominance, must be its goal.”
Also, check out Robert Kaplan’s commentary in the Washington Post about America’s “gentler hegemony.”
Photo from Xinhua.
