Indian Ocean Currents

In his long and prolific career,Robert Kaplan — journalist,writer,strategic affairs commentator — has reported from many strife-ridden corners of the globe: Middle East and Africa,Balkans and the Caucasus,Central and Southeast Asia. Few conflict zones in the last three decades have escaped Kaplan’s attention. Over the years,he has also advanced and espoused a jaundiced and “tragic” vision of international politics. Kaplan’s new book,Monsoon,is refreshingly free of his earlier,unrelieved pessimism. It is also the most balanced and creative of his books. The book is an exploration into the past,the present and the possible futures of the vast Indian Ocean region. Kaplan’s central argument is that this region,stretching from Africa to Indonesia,“may comprise a map as iconic to the new century as Europe was to the last one”. The region,dubbed Monsoon Asia by the great historian C.R. Boxer,“will demographically and strategically be a hub of the twenty-first century world”. The region,he asserts,will be central to the future of American power. One doesn’t have to agree with Kaplan’s claims to enjoy this book. Never an arm-chair analyst,he takes the reader on a sweeping tour of the Indian Ocean littoral. The book is a deft combination of potted history,travelogue,reportage,and musings on strategy. Kaplan has a sharp eye for geography coupled with a weakness for purple prose. He is at his best,not when describing land and seascapes,but in reporting his encounters with an intriguing assortment of people. Kaplan takes us to Gwadar,the Pakistani port town in Balochistan,which until 1958 was held by Oman. In 2000,Pakistan approached China to fund and develop a deep-water port with refuelling and docking facilities at Gwadar. Given its strategic location,the Chinese accepted the offer with alacrity. Gwadar has ever since been a source of consternation to the United States and India. (Kaplan omits to mention that in the early 1970s,the Pakistanis had offered Gwadar as a naval base to the United States; but Washington chose Diego Garcia.) But,Kaplan notes,the project has engendered deeper tensions between the Baloch and the Punjabi elite of Pakistan. Referring to the fisherfolk in Gwadar,an official in Islamabad says: “They don’t have a chance… Modernity will wipe out their traditional life.” The Baloch,of course,know this all too well. A Baloch dissident tells Kaplan,“We’re an oppressed nation… No matter how hard they try to turn Gwadar into Dubai,it won’t work.” Further east,in Sindh,he meets another dissident politician who claims,“Pakistan is itself a breach of contract.” Kaplan is sceptical about the claims by Pakistani officials that Gwadar would be the next Dubai. The Gulf states,he wryly notes,were “the product of good government under ideal conditions,which Pakistan singularly lacked.”

On India,though,Kaplan confesses to being “very bullish”. But he is no starry-eyed traveller. Visiting Gujarat,he acknowledges the pace and scale of economic development in the state. But he minces no words about the pogroms of 2002 — “a hideous rebuke to Gandhi’s Salt March”— and wonders how a leader who exuded as much power and control as Narendra Modi could not be implicated in the ghastly crimes. Modi shares his own Indian Ocean dream with Kaplan: “There can be many Singapores and Dubais here… Gujarat as a whole will be like South Korea… Gujarat will be the centre point for East-West connectivity from Africa to Indonesia.”

In New Delhi,he finds the Indian security establishment closely following China’s growing naval footprint in the Indian Ocean region. A naval officer tells him that China was ready to “drop anchor at India’s southern doorstep”. The reference was to China’s construction of the port in Hambantota. During his subsequent visit to Hambantota,Kaplan learns that before the Sri Lankans inked the deal with China,they were in prolonged discussions with Canada. And India too,he might have noted. Further,as in Gwadar,the port in Hambantota will not be operated by the Chinese. Kaplan rightly notes that “there is no guarantee that China will have ready access to the very port facilities it is building”. Travelling to Myanmar,though,Kaplan becomes much less sanguine about the role of China and about Sino-Indian rivalry. Myanmar “is a prize to be fought over”,he grimly observes. But the most interesting parts of his account of Myanmar relate to his conversations with shadowy American operatives — former Special Forces personnel,who masquerade as missionaries while running covert operations against the junta.

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Despite his penchant for the hyperbolic one-liner — Sri Lanka as the “ultimate register of geopolitical trends in the Indian Ocean region”,Myanmar as a “code for understanding the world to come” — Kaplan’s conclusions are sober. In contrast to the views on Chinese naval strategy of the voluble “string of pearls” school,Kaplan holds that China’s plan for the Indian Ocean is “still far from clear and open to debate”. He goes on to note: “Instead of hardened military bases of the Cold War and earlier epochs,there will be dual-use civilian-military facilities where basing arrangements will be implicit rather than explicit,and completely dependent on the health of the bilateral relationship in question.”

The message for New Delhi is clear: getting its act together in the neighbourhood will be more useful than fretting about China’s.