The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [222]
It is unclear to neighbouring states, and especially Pakistan, whether India wants its navy to play a defensive, or an offensive, role. Certainly India, especially under a more nationalistic and even chauvinistic BJP government, has made it clear that they expect as of right to be seen as the dominant local power in the Indian Ocean, but this does not necessarily mean any aggressive role. Indeed, despite the exercises and projection of Indian power all around the ocean, there are also major problems. The collapse of the Soviet Union and liberalisation of the economy had a directly restricting result for the Indian Navy. One influential commentator complained that the navy is still the poor relation. Ships are usually at sea only seven days in every month, and the number of frigates and destroyers has gone down between 1976 and 1996 from thirty-one to twenty-four.101 The focus of the Indian defence establishment has always been on Pakistan, with the conflict in Kashmir central, and this is a matter where navies have little role to play. Two recent events may have altered significantly the whole strategic situation. In May 1998 both India and Pakistan became overt nuclear states. The 'war against terror' after September 2001 has produced a whole new scenario, where at least for a time America is much more supportive of Pakistan. The re-entry of America in force into the region is obviously a significant event whose consequences are yet to be fully worked out.
Beneath these high policy matters, there are other roles for the region's navies to play. Coastguard duty, to stop smuggling, continues to be a major preoccupation. The other important task, especially in southeast Asia, is the need to combat piracy, which in the last few decades has had something of a revival. In the past, in the Sulu Sea, pirates ventured out in proas with matting sails and slave rowers. Today they have diesel-powered fast craft, armed with bazookas, machine guns and Molotov cocktails. Off Somalia they even have mortars and rocket propelled grenades. They use satellite navigation systems, and often have pre-arranged buyers for both the cargo and the ships they capture. In the first half of 1998 there were eighty-six recorded acts of piracy world wide. Of these, thirty-eight were in southeast Asian waters, and fourteen in the area around South Asia.102
Combating piracy has to be a multilateral task, and indeed it may be that if cooperation between the states rimmed around the ocean is achieved there will be less need for navies. So far the results have been disappointing. The lead was taken by Jawaharlal Nehru shortly before Indian independence. At an Asian Relations Conference in March 1947 he put forward the idea of some sort of unity around the Indian Ocean. Nothing happened until the 1970 Non-Aligned Meeting in Lusaka, when the notion of a Zone of Peace, including all the Indian Ocean, was adopted. The next year Mrs Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, brought the concept to the United Nations General Assembly, where it was adopted in December 1971. Despite support from all the littoral states, neither the Soviet Union nor the United States were interested. India, perhaps hoping to become the dominant regional power, got the initial proposal watered down so that it referred only to limiting the activities of powers from outside the region. An Ad Hoc Committee on the