Comprehensive Maritime Security In The Indian Ocean Region

This book provides a synoptic view of the Indian Ocean and maritime security in its contested waters. Using a historical approach, it reveals vital links to events in the present day. The volume: Highlights the competition between major Asian powers to control the ‘String of Pearls’ — a reference to the Chinese attempts at controlling the Indian Ocean periphery. Shows that cooperation amongst the major powers of the region could abate the threat of the potential of conflict becoming global and inviting external intervention. Discusses India’s Look-East policy and the deepening relation between India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Argues for the need of Indian Ocean states and particularly the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) to look afresh at their political and security issues and common interests. Suggests measures for evolving a robust mechanism of maintaining the Indian Ocean as a sustainable zone of commerce, energy, security and peace rather than threat. A major contribution on a critical area in Asian geopolitics, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of international relations, politics, defence studies and maritime security studies, along with strategic affairs experts and think tanks.

Scholars and policy makers have traditionally viewed portions of the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific as separate and discrete political, economic, and military regions. In recent years, however, a variety of economic, political, and military forces have made many within the academic community, as well as a growing number of national governmental leaders, change their perceptions and recognize that these maritime expanses are one zone of global interaction. Consequently, political, military, and economic developments in one maritime region increasingly have an impact elsewhere. Analyzing and assessing the contemporary maritime challenges in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, this valuable study highlights the current prospects for peace and security in what is rapidly becoming recognized as an integrated and interactive political, military-strategic, and economic environment. This work will be of interest to researchers and policy makers involved in regional studies, as well as security studies, conflict resolution, military, and peace studies.

This book studies recent attempts to restructure maritime security sectors through capacity building. It innovates both theoretically and empirically. It proposes a new framework for understanding maritime capacity building, drawing on work in peacebuilding and security sector reform. The framework is then applied across empirical case studies from the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region written by scholars from the Global South. The WIO region is a paradigmatic case to study maritime security and capacity building in action. Countries in the region face the full gamut of maritime security challenges, while their indigenous capacities to deal with these are often weak. In consequence, the region functions as an engine of innovation for maritime capacity building more widely. The lessons and best practices from the region have importance consequences for addressing maritime security across the globe.

This book uniquely employs risk and vulnerability approaches to advocate international policy options for enhancing maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean region. Understanding shared risks and common vulnerabilities that impact the achievement of mutual objectives in the oceanic domain present practical bases for progressing collective action. The Indian Ocean sea lanes are the world’s most important thoroughfares for energy resources (oil, gas and coal) and other cargoes. Secure maritime trade routes are vital to global, regional and national economies. Further, security challenges resulting from marine environmental degradation impacted by climate change are rising. Regional and extra-regional actors need to work more closely together to impose law and order at sea, control regional conflicts, respond to humanitarian crises and natural disasters, and conserve the marine environment. This book provides an invaluable resource for political leaders, policy advisers, academic researchers, military professionals, and students of international security and strategic studies.

This book analyses the emergence of the Indian Ocean as security complex and a strategic space of central importance and also looks at its prospective future. As well as US-China rivalry, the India-China rivalry is now the defining factor in the Indian Ocean – irrespective of the strategic asymmetry. This new situation has opened a space for middle-powers, old and new, to intervene. The authors argue that this situation may turn into an additional source of instability and that the creation of an inclusive and comprehensive regional security architecture, as well as the strengthening of regional multilateralism, should be the priority of all stakeholders in the coming decade.

First published in 2007, this book focuses on the security of sea lanes of communication. It was a joint publication between the Maritime Institute of Malaysia (MIMA) and the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG) and is an important book for three particular reasons. First, it takes a step forward in identifying key policy themes that can be applied to interstate cooperation around the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Second, the particular theme discussed is not only central to the economic well-being of Indian Ocean countries, but also to many of the world’s most important trading states, and finally the various discussions within the book raise a host of issues to which regional as well as non-regional policy-makers should give serious consideration.

Unregulated or lesser regulated maritime spaces are ideal theatres of operation and mediums of transportation for terrorists, insurgents and pirates. For more than a decade, the Indian Ocean waters adjoining Somalia have been a particular locus of such activities, with pirates hijacking vessels, and Al Qaeda and Al Shabab elements travelling between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, operating lucrative businesses and even staging deadly operations at sea. These operations and threats however, remain, by and large, understudied. Responses to the two threats have varied, highlighting the lack of cohesive regional and global institutions with the mandate and the capacity to address them. Those scholarly deliberations on Indian Ocean maritime security focus on piracy and armed robbery at sea, while their terrorist/insurgent counterparts have eluded sustained scrutiny. This volume will help close that gap by looking at both from the field in Somalia and Yemen, within broader frameworks of regional maritime security and port-state control, international maritime law and the ongoing search for maritime resources. The European, African and Middle Eastern case studies add salience to the regional and international complexity surrounding maritime security off the Horn of Africa. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region.