India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru emphasized: “To be secure on land we must be supreme at sea”. This is no longer just a text book quote today. It has become a geostrategic reality.
Every big power has realised the importance of the Indo-Pacific region on account of various reasons and wants to dominate the region. The developments that are taking place in the Indo Pacific region and matters related to maritime security are extremely important for Sri Lanka in the present context.
After winning the three-decade old battle against terrorism in 2009, Sri Lanka is globally known as the only country to emerge victorious by defeating a terrorist outfit that was once considered extremely hard to beat. The role played by the Sri Lanka Navy especially in defeating the LTTE maritime capabilities in the near shore and deep seas made a huge impact on the victory achieved on land.
It was the Sri Lanka Navy that took the initiative in turning the tide in favour of Sri Lanka and regained the total sea control.
As an island nation, oceanic affairs are extremely significant to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka thus is part of many international and regional initiatives, which deal with oceanic affairs. Sri Lanka, right from the beginning was closely involved from with the UNCLOS on which a new legal ocean regime was developed.
Former Sri Lankan Prime Minister and present President Ranil Wickremesinghe had said at an Indian Ocean Conference 2017 that traditional and modern security concerns are yet to be addressed internationally.
Article 34 to 56 of UNCLOS are insufficient to deal with the concerns that are related to freedom of navigation. Therefore, Sri Lanka intended to work with all parties in creating a shared vision for economic and secured engagement.
Code of conduct
Sri Lanka is convinced that the code of conduct will ensure the freedom of navigation in our oceans. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that “respecting freedom of navigation and endearing to international norms are essential for peace and economic growth in the interlinked geography of the Indo-Pacific.”[1]More importantly, the example is being set here in the Indian Ocean by actions as well as words.
The Indo-Pacific emerges as a “region of opportunities”.
Within the shifting global geo-economics and geopolitical landscape of the 21st century, the Indo Pacific Region has been identified as a new expanded theatre of power competition. Development within the Indo-Pacific Region and its surrounding waters have subsequently held the attention of policy and strategic analysis.
The Indo-Pacific Region is central to the issue of energy security. Its Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) are critically located as conduit for the transit energy supplies from Gulf states to the economic power houses in South Asia and East Asia with China projected to become the world largest oil importing country and India to be the largest importer of coal in the next few years.
A reorientation of energy trade from the Atlantic basin to the Indo-Pacific is imminent with implication for cooperative effort to ensure energy Security.
The Indo Pacific Region is witnessing a global power shift from the West to the East. The emergence of traditional and non-traditional maritime security challenges is posing a challenge to the countries in the Indo-Pacific Region. This maritime region has always been of immediate relevance to the resident stake-holder, but has now gained greater eminence during an era of major global churn.
Since the end of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Indo-Pacific Region and resident countries in the region have been growing economically and their geopolitical significance is also growing in the world geopolitics. It is a region of great diversity and contrasts in terms of politics, population, economy and environment, as well as being a complex geopolitical framework where foreign powers and local states’ interests deeply intermingle.
Taking into account the significance of its strategic energy resources, the importance of its strategic shipping lanes, the ‘rise of China and India’ as a dominant economic power houses and regional and global military powers, the turbulences of the Islamic world,
East and South China Sea territorial claims and disputes, the deep and broad involvement of the United States (and its allies) in the region, as well as China’s increasing presence with ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) project in Indo-Pacific ocean region with aggressive Chinese funded maritime infrastructure in number of Indian Ocean countries has increased the geo strategic competition in the region.
The Indo Pacific Ocean Region has become one of the major spotlights in international security in recent times. With the importance of SLOCs which connects the Atlantic and the increasing appetite for energy resources for the booming Asian economy, security in the Indian and Pacific Oceans are a matter of concern for all stake holders.
With the US pivot to Asia policy and China’s maritime silk route ambition, India’s maritime activities has also heated up in the maritime domain of Indian Ocean in particular.
In the Western Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, the Somali pirates had paralysed the sea trade and freedom of navigation in and around the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Eden where majority of energy transportation takes place.
The piracy of this region impacted hugely to the world trade as a whole and incurred heavy cost since many nations are committed for UN mandated antipiracy patrol in the region and insurance companies started to impose the insurance surcharge to the shipping. The piracy hindered freedom of navigation significantly and disturbed the energy exports and imports through this vital sea area.
In this context, the Eastern Indian Ocean has set a good example in terms of effective management and cooperation among various nations for anti-piracy operations. The Strait of Malacca patrols, cooperatively undertaken by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand have helped to dramatically reduce the number of piracy incidents along that choke point since its inception.
Freedom of navigation
What UNCLOS says about freedom of navigation?
International Customary Law and United Nations Convention of Laws of Sea (UNCLOS) states freedom of navigation in oceans as long as ships ensure innocent passage irrespective of territorial sea, Contiguous waters, EEZ as well as international waters. In the modern law of the sea, freedom of navigation was perceived as equally important, and this status was reflected in the now superseded Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea. Article 14 of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone 1958 guaranteed a right of innocent passage to vessels, non-suspendable for waters in international straits, and article 23 indicated explicitly that such rights were available to warships. Freedom of navigation on the high seas was guaranteed in article 2 of the Convention on the High Seas 1958, with article 3 of the Convention of the Continental Shelf Convention 1958 ensuring that the status of waters above a State’s continental shelf remained as high seas, and therefore enjoying freedom of navigation. These efforts had been prefaced by the International Court of Justice in 1949, in the Corfu Channel Case, which confirmed the right of innocent passage, available even to warships, passing through ‘straits used for international navigation’. The court was also prepared to state that foreign vessels, including warships, during peacetime had a right of innocent passage through all international strait.
Need for a strong maritime security architecture in the Indo-Pacific region.
It is a reality than the fact that Indo-Pacific Region is the life line of world trade thus ensuring unimpeded sea passage is imperative for any vessel for any country under the obligation of international law need to be preserved and safe guarded.
Due to complexity of many different issues in the ocean region from nation states involving East and South China issues to Western Indian Ocean piracy that involve both State and non-State actors are clear impediment and interruption to the freedom of Navigation. There is a necessity of collective security architecture in place which covers entire Indo-Pacific region with the involvement of all stakeholder states.
There are some issues where the Indo-Pacific region lacks a credible maritime security architecture initiative to enhance maritime security which are mentioned below.
a) No collective regional organisation with maritime domain awareness which is urgently required for tackling the current situation.
b) No reliable and dominant leadership who can muster and partner with regional stakeholder nations to initiate the organisation responsible for maritime security and lead to collectively identify initiatives for architecture development in the Indo-Pacific.
c) Absence of proper analysis of the current security status and views on maritime security issues and disputes ranging from East and South China seas to sea piracy in the Horn of the Africa region by central authority to find the course of action against the existing and potential threats for freedom of navigation from State and non-State actors.
d) Lack of initiative in resolving maritime disputes through discussion and consultation based on international law in a multilateral environment among State actors.
Framework for proposed maritime security architecture and infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific Region.
All stakeholder countries should be part of the maritime security architecture of the Indo-Pacific Ocean Region countries. The US, China, India, Japan and Australia can play a major and dominant role while other nations in the maritime region should also play a significant role.
All regional organisations should be part of it for instance ASEAN, BIMSTEC, SAARC, IORA and so on. Integrated maritime strategy should be adopted by the regional and stakeholder States.
Each maritime zone needs to be equipped with monitoring and enforcement mechanism and staffed with representatives of countries of that zone. Regional maritime coordinating centres should be responsible for the strategic coordination of the zones. It should also serve as an information collection and dissemination point and liaise with Maritime Inter-regional coordination Centre (ICC) East, South and West Indian maritime domain. The purpose of implementing and strengthening maritime security architecture and infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific Ocean is as follows:
a) To ensure freedom of navigation to all stake holder nations that abide by the international law in particular UNCLOS.
b) To deter/counter increasing piracy activities in the horn of the Africa region.
c) Large scale drugs and transportation through the Indian Ocean region.
d) Human smuggling.
e) Marine pollution.
There is also a need for Multinational Maritime Coordinating Centre (MMCC) towards the strengthening of the regional maritime security architecture in the Indo Pacific Region which can be jointly coordinated by regional organisations and stakeholder countries of the Indo-Pacific Ocean region.
The regional navies should strategically support in partnership with Government, regional and international organisations in the region for effective policing of the Indo-Pacific waters in order to avoid the spillover effect of nefarious maritime activities, ranging from piracy, sea robbery, human smuggling, drug trafficking, Illegal migration, Illicit toxic dumping and so on.
The operationalisation of the Indo-Pacific Region Maritime Zone is part of the implementation of the broader scope of the Indo-Pacific Regional maritime security management mechanism which seeks to achieve among others, enhanced information/intelligence exchange, training and capacity building including basic and improved specialised training for staff dealing with maritime security and establishment and expansion of operational networks among law enforcement entities operating at all sea routes
In the strategic context, all countries need to be mindful and understand the evolving security partnerships that are centric to the Indian Ocean Region.
The maritime cooperation between India and the US is of great importance. Both countries have a large presence and foothold in the Indian Ocean Region and the commitment shown by both nations for increased cooperation and partnership and for a rule based maritime order is encouraging and such cooperation would bring greater stability to the region.
In this background of building a maritime security architecture, there has been nevermore opportune and necessary time.
A new architecture should allow cooperation and partnership, promote rule base maritime activity, allow bilateral and multilateral cooperation, create space for assistance of needy nations to be supported by advanced nations for capacity building in a transparent approach, enhance maritime domain awareness and most importantly should have voluntary consensus on refraining of planning or carrying out actions that hinders the security balance of the Indian Pacific Ocean Region.