Brian Finlay (Opening Remarks): Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll just give a couple of minutes for folks to enter the Zoom room and we will launch in 30 seconds or so. Welcome.
Those of you just joining us, we’re just giving a minute or so here for the Zoom room to fill. Well, ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to you all and really thank you for joining us today. My name is Brian Finlay, I’m the president and CEO here at the Stimson Center. We have been very eagerly awaiting this event so that we can showcase for you this great new resource that is brought to us all by our South Asia program here at Stimson. That program is launching today their newest online course. It’s part of the Center’s Strategic Learning Initiative. And if you are not familiar with the work of our South Asia program, first I might ask where have you been? It is Washington’s longest running dedicated South Asia program and I think it’s a testament to the importance we attach to the region, not just for US policy, but indeed for the world.
The program, our South Asia program produces policy analysis, academic research on regional strategic trends and geopolitical dynamics in order to inform both policy debates as well as scholarly work. And while I am in fact paid to say this, it happens to also be true that in my view, they really do it better than any other source. And I really encourage you to visit the Stimson website, stimson.org, visit our South Asia program and peruse the breadth of offerings that the program offers.
Our Strategic Learning Initiative is a flagship project for our South Asia program and I’m proud to note that that effort was really the brainchild of a gentleman that so many of you I know on this Zoom meeting will know and remember, the late co-founder of the Stimson Center, the great Michael Krepon. The project is meant to sharpen perspectives on strategic issues in the region and really beyond by tackling really quite complex ideas but doing so very accessibly and for a very wide range of audiences and even better, it is free for all.
And so I really do commend it to you. The team has assembled a really diverse set of experienced guest lecturers, including top academics from the region, former officials who really share their perspectives and expertise. Over the course of the past eight years, we have released four such courses covering everything from India and Pakistan’s nuclear history and development to deterrence in the wider Southern Asian region to missile technologies in the region, as well as the more social media specific content as well as a host of other resources. So I commend each of those previous courses to you.
Today, however, we celebrate the launch of our latest course on naval competition in the Indian Ocean region. Now this course dives into deterrence at sea and maritime competition among southern Asian states of China, India, and Pakistan. The initiative also really carries on the tradition of strategic learning to present really a remarkable diversity of perspectives from over 30 experts on the topic of growing importance clearly and in one of rather the most consequential regions of the world.
And this is both on land and of course increasingly at sea. We’re immensely grateful to Stimson’s South Asia supporters who have made this course possible, the experts in the region who gave so generously of their time and insights. You’re going to hear from several of them here today and of course to our South Asia program team itself led by the incomparable Elizabeth Threlkeld. In a moment I want to turn it over to our moderator, my colleague Zeba Fazli who is both a research analyst here at Stimson as well as the lead on our Strategic Learning Initiative. But first, we’d like to bring you a quick snapshot of this course in action with the following trailer. Once again, welcome and thank you for joining us.
Zeba Fazli (Moderator): Thank you so much, Brian. Good morning. Good evening, everyone tuning in. I’m Zeba Fazli. As Brian said, I am a research analyst at Stimson and the strategic learning project lead. If you’ll bear with me for a moment, I will start sharing my screen and we can all see our latest course in action. One moment please.
Trailer Narration: Competition between states is moving to the seas. From the South China Sea to the Taiwan Strait to the Red Sea and beyond, states are racing to send their most formidable capabilities out to sea. Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed what he called the urgent need to have a powerful navy. The Indian Navy plays a central role in ensuring security and furthering India’s national interests at sea. Today the Navy stands as a strong and vital arm of country’s armed forces capable of protecting our maritime frontiers and radiating deterrence.
As naval capabilities grow in the shadow of great power competition, what does deterrence at sea look like for the Southern Asian nuclear powers, and how does this impact the wider world? Explore these crucial questions and more in Naval Competition in the Indian Ocean Region, a free online course from the Stimson Center’s Strategic Learning Initiative. In this interactive course, you’ll hear from renowned experts in Southern Asia, the US, and beyond. Enrollment is free, easy and open to anyone seeking to better understand these critical issues and their impact on the region and the world beyond. Sign up today at Stratlearning.org.
Zeba Fazli: Exciting, isn’t it? Thank you all so much again. I have to say I’ve been leading strategic learning for five years now and have launched several courses before, but I genuinely think this might be our best one yet. And I want to thank my colleagues on the team who have devoted so much time and effort into making this and other resources, including Betzalel Newman, Omaer Naeem and former Stimsonites, Siddharth Sridhar, Sania Shahid, as well as experts and stakeholders who have provided their expertise and work throughout the process. This has been a real team effort and it is my pleasure to bring to you this new course.
It’s been developed as part of our pivot to more accessible short courses. As Brian said earlier, it only takes four hours to complete and to earn a certificate which you can then use to further your academic careers, your professional careers. Whatever it is you’re looking for, strategic learning courses can help, particularly this one. It’s available at your own pace and convenience, so it’s not that you have to log on at a particular time and devote a set amount of time at a specific day or anything like that. It is all available at your own pace and convenience.
It’s especially great for professors who’ve assigned select lessons to their students based on their curriculum. We work extensively with professors at the region as several of the folks on this call can attest to. A little bit more detail about Naval Competition in the Indian Ocean Region. It features, as we said, video interviews with over 30 scholars, extensive original text, mini-games, interactions, infographics, everything that you can possibly need to want to understand naval competition in this very important region.
The course goes through the technology of naval vessels, particularly submarines, as well as the strategy behind their potential use and deployment. The theory of deterrence at sea and the challenges of bringing theory to practice. So putting what we learned about the technologies into a wider theoretical context. Then we go into naval nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean region among our three Southern Asian nuclear powers, China, India, and Pakistan, and then we wrap up with a whole host of things including future trends in the region, future technologies to keep an eye out for that might have the greatest impact on strategic competition as well as risk reduction measures that states in the region, stakeholders in the region who care about these issues can be thinking about as they go forward.
I think overall the theme of the course, there are several, but one thing that I would emphasize is that SC-based nuclear weapons proliferate increasingly in the region. They’ll also play an increasingly significant role in regional security dynamics and better understanding these vessels, these weapons, their purpose and their limitations will allow you as a student of strategic learning or an observer of international affairs to better evaluate their strategic implications both in the region and beyond.
So I highly encourage you to check it out. As Brian said, it is all free and all available for you to look at your convenience and to explore. There’s so much to learn. Every time I have the privilege of shepherding a new course into being, I learn a ton and I know you will too.
Now without further ado, let’s get into the main event for today, which is our panel discussion featuring a really brilliant array of experts and we’ll introduce them briefly and then we can get into the conversation. So first we have Dr. Rizwana Abbasi, an associate professor of security studies at the National University of Modern Languages, as well as a research fellow at the Central European University in Vienna. I should also say Dr. Abbasi is a former Stimson South Asia Visiting Fellow, so it’s really lovely to have her back in the fold.
Then we have Dr. Christopher Clary, who is an associate professor of political science at the University of Albany, and also a great friend of the program and a non-resident fellow. Wonderful to see you, Chris. And last but not least, we have the retired Rear Admiral Monty Khanna of the Indian Navy, who is adjunct faculty at the Naval War College in Goa. Very good to have you, sir. Thank you so much for taking the time.
So as an introduction to the flow for today, we’ll start with a bunch of moderator’s questions from myself and then open it up to audience Q&A. So please be sure to submit your questions via the Q&A box on Zoom. We’ll also be checking social media, so if you are watching on the YouTube livestream, feel free to tweet at Stimson Center and we will try to get in as many questions as we can.
Panelists, I’ll ask you to keep your responses brief, about two minutes max so we can get to as many questions as possible. All right, here we go. First question is I think kind of a scene setting one. Southern Asia, as many of us know and certainly all of you on the call know, has a history of land-based conflict, but increasing naval competition in the Indian Ocean region has taken our attention to the maritime domain. And so a question we get a lot when we talk with students in the region about this course is why focus on the maritime domain when we’re looking at relationships between China, India, and Pakistan?
So in your opinion, why is understanding naval competition important for understanding international security issues more broadly in the IOR and beyond? And in other words, what can a course like Naval Competition in the Indian Ocean Region region offer to audiences, especially those who may not be as familiar with maritime issues in the first place? We’ll start Dr. Rizwana with you and then go to Chris and then Monty.
Rizwana Abbasi: Thank you Zeba for throwing such an important and broader question. I believe that significance of the maritime domain has markedly increased in the present century. For the students, particularly and researchers to actively pursue their careers and goals and broaden their knowledge base and more so provide informed policy assessments and narratives.
I would say that Indian Ocean, as we all know, serves as a conduit for some of the fastest growing economies by linking them with both the Atlantic and Asia-Pacific region. So the broader IOR maritime trade routes, as we all know, facilitate connection between the Middle East, African region, East Asia, Europe, so on and so forth, and also the United States. So through which the majority of the world’s maritime oil and particularly approximately I would say one third of total global trade passes through these blue seas. So I, for students particularly classify maritime domain into two sub-areas and sub-sectors.
For example, traditional security and non-traditional security. Or first I would like to broaden my view on non-traditional security saying that there are economic sectors where international trade, energy transportation, sustainable livelihoods, fisheries, tourism, so on and so forth are the areas that are directly connected to sea lines of communication in the IOR. And these constitute basically assessments and critical areas for students’ analysis and assessments.
Then we have further segments under non-traditional security is environmental sector, where ongoing and emerging threats such as viruses, we save part of maritime ecosystem from pollution, climate change-led threats and impacts are crucial areas for students to assess and bring out new investigation and solutions. Then we have human security sector where issues such as human trafficking and migrant smuggling and so on and so forth are taking place and require a lot of broader assessments. More significantly, cybersecurity is an area under non-traditional security threat that actually creates challenges for I would say infrastructure and increasingly that is dependent on digital ecosystem nowadays and naval operations and port managements are directly interlinked with digitalization.
So these are again, I would say significant sub-areas. And when we talk about broadly traditional domain where we bring particularly territorial disputes that directly interlink with exclusive economic zones and territorial waters such as island disputes and rocks, reefs, so on and so forth. These exacerbate, I would say, likelihood of confrontation between the states and thereby propelling them to get into militarization of a blue sea. So this militarization then broadly creates high probability of chances and probability of naval warfare between and among states and players, between members involved in the maritime domain. So these players particularly are one, acquiring technologies and planting platforms in the blue seas, but at the same time I would say that transforming and changing their doctrine and doctrinal strategies that directly then I would say that impact and create high probability of conflicts. So these are the areas that really need to be investigated in the current times and and in the futuristic ones.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you Dr. Rizwana. Chris, over to you.
Christopher Clary: Thanks. The reason that students of security broadly, and especially those people focusing on Southern Asia, need to think more about the maritime domain is we have this convergence, we’ve got an enormous amount of trade going through the Indian Ocean region, something like a third of containerized cargo, more energy, 80% of Chinese energy imports going through the Indian Ocean. So this is at the crux of being able to supply the growing economies, not just in China but also India of course, and a lot of that’s going to be seaborne traffic.
And the second thing that intersects with that is this is an area of growing great power contestation. That’s partially because China is vastly, quickly, rapidly, impressively expanding its navy and that’s going to involve increasing Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean. India is responding to that and Pakistan is responding to both of those developments.
And then the third intersecting trend, which is again not unrelated to the previous two, but it brings its own importance is we’re talking about naval nuclear powers. So for the Chinese interest was this sort of long-term science project in a submarine that appears that China now is able to do deterrent patrols. I think we may talk about that later. India also has rapidly increased its capabilities with SSBNs and I think there’s growing signs too, that Pakistan today is likely deploying cruise missiles or at least has the ability to do so aboard its submarines. And so there’s not that many nuclear powers on the planet and a number of them are intersecting the Indian Ocean. And so it’s important for students of the region to get their heads right on this issue.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you so much, Chris. Monty, over to you.
Monty Khanna: Yeah, so I think a lot has already been said of this, but largely I would tend to agree with both the previous speakers that the maritime domain is ubiquitous, it’s 70% of the global sector, trade is an important issue, and it is part of the global commons so anyone can operate where they chooses to. So there are three sets of issues I would say, which are really being played out. One has been talked about, great power competition and if great power competition is going to play out in all domains and the maritime domain is one of those important domains that is going to play out.
The second set I would say is of regional issues. I mean there are regional tensions, we have some stresses between India and Pakistan, there are stresses between Bangladesh and Myanmar. West Asia has got its own set of problems between I would say Iran and some GCC countries. There is a Houthi problem, there is a piracy issue. So these are the regional issues and several of them are mapped out.
The third would be the interplay between the great power competition and the regional issues. They all interact with each other in different ways. So I would say for any young person to understand nuances of decision-making that take place over here, a course like this would be important. And so you understand exactly why people are doing what they are, why they’re saying what they are. And if you are in a decision-making position, I think a course of this would be useful in making more informed decisions.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you so much everyone. I should add as well that all three of our speakers today have had a hand in the naval competition course. Rizwana and Chris are lecturers. Monty was kind enough to provide his expertise during the review process so they know of which they speak and we’re really excited to have them again to continue this conversation.
So my next question is for both Monty and Rizwana kind of looking back at the past year or so of developments in the Indian Ocean region, particularly on the India-Pakistan side, China launched the first of Pakistan’s hangar class submarines last April. India inducted the Arighat in the fall and has launched additional SSBNs as well. This year so far we are off perhaps to a roaring start just last week or the week before, India simultaneously inducted a submarine, a destroyer, and a frigate with Prime Minister Modi in attendance to preside over the commissioning.
So in light of all these developments and procurements that we’ve been seeing, particularly on the India-Pakistan side, how do you assess the evolving balance of power in the Indian Ocean region and what developments do you believe will have the most significant impact on that balance of power and on stability in the region more broadly in the near to medium term? Maybe we’ll start with Monty first and then go to Rizwana.
Monty Khanna: So you’ve spread out a lot of issues and I would say there are many. The Indian Ocean has largely been a zone of peace. I mean that even the disputes that you’ve seen, there been maritime disputes between India and Bangladesh over a maritime border, there’s been a dispute between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Both have gone for arbitration to an international body and both have been resolved to the satisfaction of all countries. So largely I would say that it has traditionally been a zone of relatively globally speaking, but there are fresh developments which are taking place and I would flag three of them.
First I would say is a spillover of great power competition from the western perspective to the Indian Ocean, so you’re seeing signs of that already. And in some ways I think it’s going to be inevitable because China has a lot of, I would say a large part of the trade is coming from this part of the world and therefore they feel certain insecurities which they try to address.
The second I would say is the empowerment of the non-state actor. You’re seeing it, it started I would say with piracy where you had quite on a low scale, but the Houthis are on a different state altogether, use of anti-ship ballistic missiles and things like that which are, so this I would say is another issue that confronts this area.
And the third I would say is the disruption in the status quo, which again relates back to the first by the growth of Chinese fire in the Indian Ocean. And it’s playing out in various dimensions, it gets playing out in port infrastructure which has been set up in various nations. It’s playing out in the number of naval assets, the number of Serbian research vessels in greater fishing activity. So in various dimensions it has been played out and it’s upsetting what has traditionally been a status quo and how countries are going to react to these changes, I think are the major issues that are going to play out.
Rizwana Abbasi: Okay. I think the recent developments in various domains have significantly influenced the balance of power among nations, specifically through the modernization of I would say naval assets and naval forces. The emergence of new technologies, as I earlier highlighted, evolving nuclear doctrine and post-postures as well as shifts in the regional alliances and groupings that favor certain states or others.
So more significantly and specifically I would say the development in submarine technologies, aircraft carriers, introduction of ballistic missiles and defense systems, hypersonic systems, and then autonomous underwater unmanned vehicles particularly I would highlight and artificial intelligence-led and of course maritime cyber capabilities. In addition, further enhancements of submarine capabilities including air-independent propulsion and fighter designs that are being introduced. These all lead to profound impact on region stability.
I would argue the enhanced maritime domain awareness capabilities will also bolster surveillance and monitoring capabilities and facilitating the detection and tracking of naval movements. So the formation of emerging alliances, I would say, and tendency of states to disregard each other’s security considerations. And the adoption of hedging policies to support one state at the expense of another will further complicate the of course dynamics within the maritime domain.
So as all players involved are engaged in naval buildup, I mean extra regional forces, regional forces, and of course some of the neutral states and their efforts to safeguard their broader commercial and security interests within the IOR, the absence of established maritime CBMs and any sort of security mechanism heighten the likelihood of any sort of misinterpretation and potential confrontation. Particularly I would say that in shared or contested waters, thereby posing an additional risk to strategic stability and existing balance of power.
Zeba Fazli: All right, thank you both. Super useful remarks, especially Monty, I think your positioning of the wider Indian Ocean region with the Indian Bangladesh and Bangladesh-Myanmar discussion is really helpful and Rizwana, I think we’re going to aim to get into a lot of what you mentioned, especially regarding alliances later on in the hour. For now, I’m going to continue on the note of India’s SSBNs, Arighat this fall, and ask Monty and Chris how you would both assess India’s progress in operationalizing the sea-leg of the nuclear triad and what challenges remain. Chris, can you start us off and then move to Monty?
Christopher Clary: 25 years ago I was a little baby Stimson intern and Michael Krepon handed me a book by Raja Menon, the blessed naval expert of India and a blessed naval nuclear expert. And Raja lays out long time ago, shortly after India nuclearization that India should desire a naval sea-leg because it is the most survivable of the potential nodes in a triad. And that argument has been persuasive in India for long enough that India has managed to build and induct and to start deterrent patrols with a very complicated thing, an SSBN. It’s had some help from old friends in the process, but it’s also figured out a lot of these things itself.
There is still more work to be done. It doesn’t look like the long-range missile, the K-4, it’s quite ready though that is a work in progress. Until that long-range missile is done, the SSBN does not credibly threaten the major cities of eastern China because it would have to sail a very long way in order to get those missiles onto the target. But India has shown real expertise in missile developments and I have no doubt in some reasonable timeline the K-4 will be ready and then you will have a different option. And something that India, Pakistan, China, the United States are struggling with is the surface of the earth is more legible because of drones, because of an enormous increase in space-based surveillance assets than it has ever been. And submarines do have some advantages for cyber ability in that context and it’s not a surprise that India is particularly interested and that Pakistan has also shown some interest.
Zeba Fazli: Monty, over to you. Thank you.
Monty Khanna: Yes, Zeba. So I think Chris has already addressed most of the issues over here. Needless to say that Arihant has been now in service for more than eight years and Arighat is just come in last year. So the deterrence patrol, I would say at least my understanding from what I would assume is that it’s fully established this as well. But when you establish with fewer assets, you cannot maintain, obviously with two assets, you can’t maintain a continuous deterrence at sea. So therefore you have periods of patrol and you have non-patrol periods.
With time as more assets get inducted, you will be able to reduce a non-patrol period. So you can maintain an asset at sea for larger and larger durations. I mean a combination of submarines will maintain at least one asset at sea for longer and longer durations, and you’ll progressively reduce your non-patrol period. Of course, it’s a complex weapon platform and therefore it’s a steep learning curve for anyone, particularly someone who’s doing it largely through homegrown resources. And India is very much in that process. But needless to say, deterrence has already been established at sea and it’s only a question of adding more assets until you hit the desired continuous deterrence at sea posture.
Zeba Fazli: All right, thank you both. And Chris, thanks for mentioning the K-4. I think it’s incredibly important. I’ll also add that we, as I said earlier, also have a course on missile technologies in Southern Asia. So to the extent that these topics intersect and I think they do quite significantly, I would also encourage you to go to that course if you’re interested in learning more.
For now, Rizwana, over to you. I wanted to ask about Pakistan’s place in all this. As we know, Pakistan does not yet have a sea-based deterrent, but has certainly expressed interest in achieving this capability within its particular constraints. So in your view, what are the challenges Pakistan faces in developing that sea-based deterrent and what are the implications of pursuing it as it seems to be doing now by inducting conventionally powered submarines armed with cruise missiles?
Rizwana Abbasi: Okay, Pakistan, as you know, that sea-based deterrence and nuclear weapons program has its roots in the country’s strategic considerations and security concerns, particularly driven by India’s nuclear and conventional military advantages as a threat. And that in turn drives Pakistan’s need for credible deterrence. So I would argue that Pakistan seeks to ensure survivability of its nuclear force and maintain a second strike capability considering transformation in India’s nuclear doctrine of no first use. And also denying India the ability to launch ERBO. First in terms of striking or launching disarming first strike.
So given the increased asymmetry between India and Pakistan in navies, I would argue that Pakistan currently seeks to create balance by reinforcing its conventionally deterrence ethic. So India’s navy with, I mean of course it’s two operational, I would say aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered submarines and advanced surveillance means and systems significantly outpace Pakistan’s smaller navy and conventionally equipped navy, which I would say that includes a limited fleet of submarines and surface ships.
So in my view, Pakistan’s current submarine capabilities and technologies may not support more complex operational concepts. The challenges it faces in this regard are technological deficiencies, and I would say unlike India, Pakistan’s program is based on huge transparency, yet it lags behind in global mainstreaming. While India, on the other hand has considerably benefited from these of nuclear submarines and access to technologies outside the NPT framework, I would say under the NSG program. So Pakistan’s smaller program creates, in my view currently no challenges in the IOR, rather the systemic security dilemma. I argue between India, China and US, China and India, and India and Pakistan will broadly drive the regional players into an arm-racing problem and uncontrollable escalation risks I see if not addressed within a broader security framework.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you, Rizwana. That’s super helpful and I think will ground a lot of our conversation as we continue. I want to stay on the theme of Pakistan for a moment to kind of broaden the discussion of its procurement and what it’s searching for at sea. They’re also working to modernize their naval forces overall, including by inducting vessels and capabilities like frigates and corvettes from China, from Turkey, among others. In a recent interview, the chief of Pakistan’s Navy described the strategy as “progressive capability enhancement.” So Rizwana and also Chris, let me bring you into this as well. What can these and other modernization efforts and procurements tell us about how Pakistan views its own positionality and strategic priorities in the Indian Ocean region? Chris, can we start with you and then go to Rizwana?
Christopher Clary: You know, it’s tough to get your adversaries and your strategic rivals to give up. And Pakistan, despite quite considerable economic challenges, has managed to prioritize defense investments and the Navy has received some of that. Now, there has been some technological benefit from its relationship with China that may not have always been as beneficial as Pakistan had hoped, but has generated some benefits.
But at root we have a quite interesting, I think Professor Abbasi was talking about this as well. Quite interesting asymmetry in the naval competition here. If you look at the most recent numbers available from the IISS military balance, India has something like two and a half times the principle surface combatants and submarines as Pakistan. And then the big challenge in the region is China has about three and a half times those same types of ships, larger capital ships compared to India. And both India and China are moving fastly and Pakistan is doing its best to also stay up.
Now Pakistan’s naval goals are fairly limited, to try to prevent a blockade of Pakistan to try to prevent the Navy, the Indian Navy, from being able to be used as an important coercive arm against the state. And like a lot of Pakistan’s military, the goal of the Navy is to deny India victory on the cheap so that you have to have a big war. And if you have a big war, the nuclear weapons use becomes something that people can imagine. And the Navy is consistent with that. It’s trying to make it hard for easy victories, but it also means that the Navy is still part of the military balance. And so students of South Asian security should take the Indo-Pak and the of course the Sino-Indian naval balance seriously.
Rizwana Abbasi: Okay, in my view, I would repeat that Pakistan’s naval expansion and modernization efforts aim to counter India’s growing naval capabilities and protect vital sea lines of communication as Pakistan’s reliance on, of course, in my view, sea-based trade and energy imports underscore the importance of securing its maritime interest and trade routes.
So Pakistan is not merely I would say a passive observer in the maritime domain of in this regard, but I would say that it is proactively engaged in efforts to maintain a balance within the maritime domain to secure national interests with a significant emphasis on blue economy. That is a bold word, buzzword that we have been hearing for quite some time. So the defense partnerships between the United States and India in conjunction with India’s forward military positioning and increased militarization of Indian Ocean enhances India’s power projection capabilities, thereby creating the security dilemma for Pakistan.
So this situation in turn, I would say that then heightens Pakistan’s insecurities for the requirements of its positioning at sea. So Pakistan has been outspoken regarding the necessity of demilitarizing and denuclearizing, the IOR and advocates for a cooperation-based policy aimed at fostering a shared understanding to mitigate common tests. My country seeks to establish partnership from the outset with friendly nations and global economic entities, thereby promoting I would say the concept of cooperative maritime security in IOR to mitigate risk and enhance regional stability.
Among exercises that Pakistan initiated and conducted by represent an effort in this regard to enhance communication and promote region cooperation, understanding leading to stability, thereby improving interoperability and demonstrating united, I would say resolve against shared threats.
More significantly and lastly, I would say that Pakistan adopts a policy of neutrality aimed at, in regard to greater power in the Indo-Pacific region, thereby maintaining, I would say diplomatic relations with both China and United States fairly thereby advocating for peaceful conflict resolutions in the maritime domain and cooperative approaches to security in the region.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you both for that. I want to step back a little bit and talk about what Chris and Monty and I think what Rizwana everyone was saying about the role of China in the region. Last fall, as many of you might’ve seen, the US Department of Defense released its annual report on developments regarding Chinese military strategy and capabilities. And it stated this year among other things that China now has the capacity to maintain continuous sea deterrent patrols. So Chris, let me ask you this, what does this mean for the future of naval competition in the Indian Ocean region, particularly for India and Pakistan in this case?
Christopher Clary: I think there’s kind two things I would say. One is for a long time it wasn’t clear whether the PLA navy was serious about getting nuclear weapons at sea. This has been a very long-simmering project and it’s still not entirely clear to me how loud that submarine is. The louder the submarine is, the less survivable it is, the less… and of the whole point of having a naval sea arm is to be survivable, then a submarine doesn’t really accomplish very much. But the fact that China’s continued to move in that direction, I think probably will reinforce the beliefs in India and Pakistan that this is also a worthwhile direction to go.
In the second point though, I would say, and maybe the one I would emphasize is if I’m reading the China military power report, the important part is not those naval submarines. The important part is the incredible increase in the size of the Chinese nuclear arsenal. And I think India especially will have a lot of thinking to do about what it means to have a credible minimum deterrent in the context of a China that could conceivably have three or four times the number of nuclear weapons deployed, maybe five or six depending on what numbers you use.
And so I think there’s a lot of indications that we’ve had an arms jog in Southern Asia for the last few years, and that may be turning into an arms race, but India will have an important role to play to figure out how fast it wants to run and how easy deterrence is. India has argued for some time that deterrence isn’t that hard, but the Chinese nuclear buildup is going to put some pressure on that belief.
Zeba Fazli: No, that’s fantastic. Thank you, Chris. I think this question of how much is enough is one that is increasingly relevant I think for ours across what we call the strategic chain. Maybe one or two more questions before we open up to the audience. I know you’re all filling in your questions, please continue to do so and we’ll try to get through as many as we can. But first I want to also ask about technologies in the region, particularly anti-submarine capabilities. This is becoming more and more an area to watch as more and more stealthy submarines are deployed in the region.
So maybe Chris and Monty, can you share with us what you see as the future of ASW in the Indian Ocean region, particularly as it relates to emerging technologies, whether unmanned systems, AI, quantum technologies, anything like that? Maybe Monty, we can start with you and then go to Chris.
Monty Khanna: Well, ASW is a complex science, and I would say much more complex in the Indian Ocean because of the presence of hydrology, which make it difficult to detect submarines over here. The way the hydrology is structured, you have a layer on top, and so if you’re below the layer, then the sound tends to get trapped in the layer and therefore it becomes difficult.
Now there are many sort of sciences which are out there. There’s this talk of using lasers, of using quantum sensors, of using quantum clocks. In fact, a very unique way in which you measure the time distortion that takes place because of gravity of a submarine passing underneath. So blue-green lasers, one has been hearing about, temperature trails, hump detection of water level rise when a submarine is passing deep down below.
But we’ve been hearing about this for the last, I would say 20, 30 years, and there’s never been a major breakthrough when it comes to detection itself. So certainly with UUVs, with increased number of sea gliders, sensors, movable sensors, sea-based sensors, etc, things will improve. But if you ask me, these are all going to be iterated, I don’t think there’s going to be any major breakthrough which is going to make the oceans transparent and submarines obsolete at the near term.
Christopher Clary: Yeah, on this I defer to Admiral Khanna. I think anti-submarine warfare is something where professionals understand its intricacies, but as an informed outset observer I, one agree that these technological concerns have been in place. You can find very good discussions of blue-green lasers going back into the eighties, if not earlier, and there haven’t been a breakthrough.
We have a game of hiders and finders. The hiders have some things they can do now that they couldn’t do in the past, including unmanned underwater vehicles as the Admiral mentioned, and lots of things you can put on the seabed. But the hiders also have the proliferation of air-independent propulsion systems, much quieter submarines, not just diesel, but also on nuclear side, lots of new blade technologies. So this game will continue and it’s one I think motive honestly for quad cooperation on security issues because one way that you do anti-submarine warfare is you don’t lose track of the target.
So if there is a PLA navy submarine at the Indian Ocean, ideally the US, Japan, Australia, and India would cooperate to listen for that submarine during its entire patrol, and so that it never lost track of where that submarine was. We have another challenge though about hiders and finders, that the ability to hide surface vessels is meaningfully declining and we’ll have to think about how to defend those vessels in combat and conflict. And the Indian Navy will have to think about, and the Pakistan Navy for that matter, how to defend surface vessels operating quite close to territorial waters in some cases from long-range missiles. And certainly the kill chain is possible, at least theoretically, to work out long-range shots that endanger naval assets from far away. And that means that that transition from crisis to wartime could be very abrupt if there is the advent of full-scale war between either India and Pakistan or India and China.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you both. That is super helpful and brings up a ton more questions, but it is high time we turn to the audience. So we’ll be going through some questions and I’ll remind folks since we are in our last 15 minutes to please keep your responses brief. We’ll start with a question that came on earlier in the call that I think is super important regarding the role of the United States in all of this. It’s important that we don’t discount that, especially us sitting here in Washington at Stimson Center.
So in your opinion, any speakers who’d like to answer, in your opinion, what are the key challenges and opportunities for American engagement in the IOR, particularly in balancing its relationships with multiple regional partners in whether bilaterally or as we were talking about a moment ago with the quad and other structures and multilateral groupings? Let’s see, Monty, over to you and then I think, Chris, you seem to have your hand up. All right, Monty, go ahead.
Monty Khanna: Yeah, so there are, as you pointed out, challenges and opportunities. I’d like to spread out the opportunities first. So the opportunities, I would say firstly, there is a huge deficit in capacities and capabilities, particularly in the Indian Ocean Island states. If you take Monty, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, etc. Tremendous EZs, they’re huge EZs with few capacities to develop. So that I would say is an opportunity. The other big opportunity I would say for the US is a convergence of interest with India, finding a greater and greater overlap between our interests. And I think that stems out as an opportunity.
On the challenges side, I would just mention too, one I think would be of course the growth of Chinese footprint in the Indian Ocean, and that’s certainly how it plays out and that becomes competitive in nature. So how are you going manage that competition? The second I would say is a bit of a structural issue from the US side is that the Indian Ocean from a DOD perspective, from the Department of Defense perspective is divided into three commands. You have INDOPACOM, you have CENTCOM, and you have AFRICOM and that creates scenes. So to see this area as holistic and you have where you can have a coherent policy, these scenes become slightly disruptive at times. So I think that is also a challenge for the US and India.
Christopher Clary: Professor Abbasi, please.
Rizwana Abbasi: Oh, okay. Thank you. Sorry to cut you. I just wanted to highlight that on opportunity spot. I would say that there are no set of multilateral active forum in that context. So there should be a regional security mechanism within the IOR that includes, I mean all regional states, region states, and of course extra-regional states ensuring equal participation and collaboration in resolving disputes, and of course addressing shared challenges. So use of course region forums such as IORA and the East Asia Summit Forum need to be broadened and effectively utilized to promote regional cooperation and peace. And geo-economics paradigm is crucial in my understanding in present time, emphasizing regional connectivity and development partnerships. That would be a key pathway to navigating the complex dynamics of the greater power competition in the 21st century in the IOR region.
Christopher Clary: I think the US has for a long time wanted to help India’s rise, wanted to make that process easier, and the place where maybe the US is least conflicted about that is helping the Indian Navy. And the part of that help that the US is least conflicted about to get one more layer of the inner circle is helping the Indian Navy find and destroy the Chinese navy in the event of hostilities. So we’ve seen sonobuoys and quad initiatives to help with maritime domain awareness. And I assume there is a very deep and wide-ranging intelligence cooperation relationship as well.
It is the case that India has largely turned to other partners, primarily its historic Russian partner for many types of naval technology, but the US with the PA and sonobuoys and some other things also is in contention along with certain types of UAVs. So Pakistan is going to largely be left out of that, and I think we should think about what the regional balance connotations of that are. But Pakistan will have to rely on its own self, on Turkey, on China especially because I don’t think the US is going to prioritize helping the Pakistan Navy in any meaningful way, though the US-Pakistan relationship is likely not to tilt into a full adversarial one, despite the words of concern that Deputy National Secretary-Advisor Finer said in his final weeks in that job under the Biden administration.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you for that. The Finer comments certainly generated a lot of discussion here in D.C. And beyond. Thank you for bringing that in. Thank you everyone. The next question comes from the audience regarding India’s nuclear force structure. So the question is, as India’s SSBN force matures, do you anticipate a rebalancing of their nuclear forest structure away from land-based platforms in favor of sea-based ones similar to France, for example? Maybe Monty, I’ll put you on the spot and if anyone else wants to chime in briefly, feel free.
Monty Khanna: So our nuclear blockade theory specifies a triad and I think the requirement to maintain a triad with a country. So while they might be minor alterations that take place, and we wanted to put on which vector sector, but it’s a hypothetical question really, but in my understanding at least even as forces increase, all three vectors will be maintained in some way or the other.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you for that. One question regarding cyber technology in the naval domain. The question is how far is cyber tech technology being used in sea-based weapons by these three countries? And particularly of interest, what kind of maritime confidence building measures are necessary to mitigate conflict risks that might come whether of cyber technology or more broadly? If anyone would like to go first, please feel free.
Christopher Clary: I can jump in there. Let me say two things. One, cyber it’s the most opaque of the domains, right? Whether someone is able to hack into the radio frequency of a certain radar system on a certain frigate and successfully nullify, that is going to be very difficult to know until it’s done. And so as an outside observer, it’s almost impossible to know if it is entirely illusory as a capability or something that’s meaningful.
And in the naval nuclear domain that’s most meaningful in terms of the ability of command and control systems to operate over radio frequency because you need to be able to broadcast these messages often with very large antenna array in times of deep crisis and war. So it may be an important part of the competition, it certainly is an important part of any game of hiding and finding that might be going on, but it’s the one that’s most challenging to observe in the open source realm. And so at least I just want to say that from that position of ignorance that I think all of us have to confront.
I think there are spaces, Professor Abbasi talked a little bit about this earlier in the panel as well for confidence building measures at sea. I still think the template of what the US and the Soviet Union managed to work out in the 1970s, something called the Incidence at Sea agreement is something that could be workable in a southern Asia context. It could work in either direction, it could work with India and China. The US and China had a military maritime confidence building measure agreement that didn’t really work but probably didn’t do any harm either.
So there’s some places you can do things here. The activities of the Indian and Pakistani navies and the Chinese Navy vis-a-vis India as well are not quite as boisterous as some of the navies in the South China Sea. So I think that gives us some room to help implement some norms there. And already there’s a fair amount of confidence building measures that are designed. A huge number of poor fishermen from both sides get arrested every year and they have to languish in jails and their boats get confiscated. I think there’s space to make that better. It isn’t a conflict risk, but it does make a lot of people’s lives miserable every year. And I think there’s probably more we can do in that space from just a humanitarian standpoint.
Rizwana Abbasi: Should I just intervene?
Zeba Fazli: Yes.
Rizwana Abbasi: Just precisely. I think China is pretty ahead in of course cyber mechanisms. India, Pakistan both have cyber commands in place and they’re effectively, I think in that direction working on intervening cyber mechanism and cyber capabilities. But at the same time, I would say the cyber attacks, particularly essential, obvious systems such as radars and shift communications or navigations, are the crucial areas and that are areas of concerns I would say. That disruptions could then in turn lead to misinterpretation via one party or their hostile actions. So the involvement of non-state actors in this domain are politically motivated. Any sort of hackers I would say can further complicate these dynamics.
So cyber attacks that compromise surveillance and intelligence gathering capabilities could create operational blind spots resulting in misperception and misunderstandings. Most, I would say that risk of escalation is exacerbated by the disruption of impact on command control systems and communication systems. That east side may perceive a communication blackout as an interference with the operational readiness of the other. So I think these are the areas that are really quite vague as was highlighted by Christopher. These are the areas where all the players involved, particularly India and Pakistan, need to come close to each other to discuss what thought of mechanisms can be initiated and understanding and awareness can be promoted to mitigate any sort of emerging threat in this area.
Zeba Fazli: All right, thank you so much both of you. We are in our last couple of minutes, so I’ll take the prerogative of choosing our last question. Thinking a little bit about what we’ve talked about and around all morning or all evening depending on where you are regarding escalation concerns. As we said at the very beginning, conflicts among particularly the Southern Asian countries have tended to be on land, but there were reports, for example, that India deployed the Arighat in 2019 during the Pulwama-Balakot crisis and we can’t discount the possibility of maritime domain risk playing a larger role in future crises, whether between India and Pakistan, whether between India and China. So as we close out today, what crisis risk pathways or greatest concern to you all with regard to nuclear weapons deployed at sea in the Indian Ocean, and how can states mitigate escalation risks, particularly inadvertent or accidental ones? Monty, maybe we’ll start with you then go to Rizwana and then have Chris close this out.
Monty Khanna: So this I would say at a couple of levels, at least. First we have the policy level, and I think it’s a useful trend, it’s a useful thing for any nation to declare a no first use policy. That I think is a huge stabilizing factor. And to move towards, to drift away from a move first use policy and to go to tacticalization of nuclear weapons or to nuclear weapons at lower and lower echelons et cetera to local commanders, I think is a dangerous precedent to set. So in that sense, I would say that’s from a policy perspective.
And inadvertent event, I think what is really required is strong and robust communications. So if something happens, there has to be communication at an appropriate level so that the issue can be addressed in a mature and capable manner to prevent it from entering into an escalatory spiral so that it can be stopped ultimately. One other risk I think is on nuclear weapons of course is the safety of nuclear weapons, physical safety of nuclear weapons. Also, nations have to be absolutely sure in the way that these weapons are protected in turbulent conditions.
Zeba Fazli: Thank you. Rizwana, very briefly?
Rizwana Abbasi: Yeah, very briefly. I would say that India’s acquisition of advanced technologies and then of course consideration of interjecting air-led mechanisms and particularly inclusion of technology such as autonomous underwater vehicles. I would say that these are designed for basically various military surveillance applications that introduce significant complexities and risks to the existing security data. So I would say that the inherent stealth and autonomy of these raises concerns regarding their potential unintentional intrusion and incursion into disputed waters. So that would probably increase a lot of this.
But finally I would just simply, my own hope and aspiration is that we understand that the Indian Ocean basically offers a lot of appetite and capacity to all the players and stakeholders to be accommodated based on the principle of inclusivity and mutual and shared benefits for all. So if we just understand that regional vast potential of the IOR can be fully realize if all the participants and players involved build understanding, cooperation and awareness over understanding over conflicts and should basically think collectively instead of maximizing the individual gains. Thank you.
Christopher Clary: Well thanks for the very rich discussion. Let me just conclude by saying on escalation risks, one thing that navies have, especially navies with lots of submarines, especially navies that have a nuclear weapons aboard their submarines, is they have a lot of assets in port at any given time. And to have a war, everybody, you have to have leaders believe it’s better to have a war today than it is tomorrow. And one reason you might want to start a war today rather than tomorrow is because you’ve got some big juicy targets that you can see on satellite imagery that are in port. And so that danger, especially for countries that are not able to maintain continuous deterrent patrols, is going to be with us as we go through at least a period of transition. And that is perhaps the escalatory risk I’m most concerned about in Southern Asia for the next bit.
Zeba Fazli: All right. Thank you all so much. Thank you everyone for submitting your questions and they’re amazing questions. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to all of them, but please continue to think through the questions and particularly how you might answer them for yourself. I think resources like Naval Competition in the Indian Ocean Region, our latest course, will help you develop those answers and certainly experts like the three we have today hopefully have shed some light. They certainly have for me. So thank you again so much for spending your morning or your evening or indeed your afternoon with us. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you all so much for joining us and thank you to our panel. Have a great rest of your day.
