Review of India's Ocean in Strategic Analysis

Strategic Analysis, 2015 Vol. 39, No. 4, 466–467, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2015.1047224 Book Review David Brewster, India’s Ocean: The Story of India’s Bid for Regional Leadership, Oxon, Routledge, 2014, xii + 224 pp., $145.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-52059-1 Amrita Jash* dmiral Alfred Thayer Mahan once stated: ‘Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene. Whoever controls the Indian Ocean dominates Asia. This Ocean is the key to the seven seas in the 21st century, the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters’.1 It is these prophetic words that are the pivot for the book under review, India’s Ocean: The Story of India’s Bid for Regional Leadership. This topical volume seeks to study the momentum of India’s role as an active and powerful player in the Indian Ocean in the 21st century. The backdrop of the book can be found in Robert Kaplan’s critical assessment of the Indian Ocean as centrestage for the challenges of the twenty-first century.2 Kaplan’s article argued that the Indian Ocean will be the epicentre for global power struggles, conflict for energy security, the clash between Islam and the West and, most importantly, the rivalry between a rising China and India, providing a realist frame for the study. It is in this complex frame of strategic shifts in international politics that David Brewster analyses India’s strategic ambitions in the Indian Ocean as part of the shifting balance of power in Asia. The author investigates whether India has the wherewithal to become the leading power in the Indian Ocean. In doing so, Brewster assesses the history of India’s emerging role and strategic outlook in the Indian Ocean and provides further enquiry into the prospects for India to achieve its ‘manifest destiny’ of becoming ‘the dominant power in the Indian Ocean as part of India’s larger destiny to become a world power’ (p. 202). Brewster has divided the book into 11 chapters based on the content, context and scope. It examines the history of domination of the Indian Ocean, including the historical role of India as an independent actor or rather a natural actor in the region, the presence of other actors in the maritime domain of South Asia, the south-west Indian Ocean, east and southern Africa, the north-west and north-east Indian Ocean, and also the dominance of extra-regional actors such as Australia, the US and a rising China. In this book, the crux of the matter lies in examining India’s growing strategic role in the Indian Ocean and assessing the trajectory of this growth, Brewster puts forward some pertinent questions, such as: what are India’s strategic ambitions?; who are India’s regional military partners?; how is India countering the rise of China in the Indian Ocean?; and, lastly, how will this battle of the giants affect Australia? In A © 2015 Amrita Jash Strategic Analysis 467 addressing these key issues, the author has adopted a comprehensive approach in understanding the potential of India’s role in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), assessing India’s strategic thinking derived from the legacy of Nehruvian thought of nonalignment and India’s Monroe Doctrine in South Asia, the lessons from past Indian military interventions, the existing security factors and the relational dynamics in the Indian Ocean with respect to other countries, the role of maritime security and, most importantly, the role of the Indian navy in acquiring maritime leadership in the Indian Ocean. In his attempt to weigh India’s role in the Indian Ocean, Brewster defies the commonly held understanding that India is the natural leader in the Indian Ocean (internally believed to be ‘India’s Ocean’), as he strongly contends that India at its present stage of emergence has to go a long way before it can achieve regional dominance and make it ‘India’s Ocean’. The author believes that India’s conception of its role in the Indian Ocean lacks clarity. By adopting a realistic approach, Brewster refrains from drawing a linear equation in order to calculate India’s destiny as a leading power in the Indian Ocean, that is, for the Indian Ocean to become ‘India’s Ocean’. Here, the apprehensions lie in the constraints that India’s accumulated power will face from the US military presence in the region, the limited interaction with the middle powers such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Australia, the Pakistan factor and China’s rise, which will tend to limit India’s strategic space and role in the Indian Ocean region. Hence, it is these constraints, combined with India’s lack of a clear strategic vision for its role in the Indian Ocean, that tend to pose uncertainties over India’s future strategic role in the region. Keeping this context, Brewster states that the larger question that needs immediate deliberation is whether India will seek a dominant role in the Indian Ocean through demonstrating leadership or whether it will try to achieve this goal through the creation of a hegemonic regional order. Only when the trajectory of growth is identified can it be clearly stated where India will stand in the future of the Indian Ocean region. Since India is emerging and has all the credentials to become a dominant power, with its historic role as the natural centre of gravity in the Indian Ocean, this volume makes a topical study of India’s much debated role in the Indian Ocean region. With its cogent understanding, the book gives a new vision to the debate. Overall, David Brewster’s book makes a valuable addition to the existing literature and a significant contribution to the arena of Indian Ocean studies. Therefore, this incisive volume is noteworthy and an essential read for research scholars and practitioners. Notes 1. 2. Quoted in P. K. Ghosh, ‘Maritime Security Challenges in South Asia and the Indian Ocean: Response Strategies’, Paper prepared for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies American-Pacific Sea Lanes Security Institute Conference on Maritime Security in Asia, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 18–20, 2004, at http://tamilnation.co/intframe/indian_ocean/pk_ ghosh.pdf (Accessed September 6, 2014). R. D. Kaplan, ‘Centre Stage for the 21st Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean’, Foreign Affairs, 88(2), 2009, pp. 16–29. *The reviewer is a Doctoral Research Scholar in the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.