India-Indonesia Naval Patrols Highlights Maritime Collaboration - The Diplomat, 22 March 2019

In this week's column for The Diplomat, I looked at the India-Indonesia growing maritime collaboration and some of the recent events are a reminder of efforts by both sides to forge greater cooperation in this realm.

The Indian and Indonesian navies have just begun their 33rd coordinated patrol exercise from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and it will go on until April 4. The exercise includes the Indonesian Naval Ship KRI Sultan Thaha Syaifuddin and Maritime Patrol Aircraft CN-235, along with Indian vessels and aircrafts, with the two militaries undertaking patrolling on their respective sides of the 236 nautical miles long International Maritime Boundary line.

Simultaneously, the Indian Coast Guard ship INS Vijit is undertaking a four-day visit to the Indonesian port of Sabang in a further demonstration of the increasingly close maritime collaboration. India’s growing involvement in Sabang port has been seen over the past year – last July, another Indian naval ship, INS Sumitra, had also visited Sabang.

These developments underscore the close maritime cooperation between the two countries over the past few years, and their widening defense relationship more generally. While the close relationship between the two countries in some senses is not new – they were both champions of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) in the 1950s for instance – strategic alignment had been far from clear, and the defense aspect of that has only begun to take off more in recent times.

For the full essay, click here.



That should come as no surprise. For one, generally, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has began to pay more strategic attention to Southeast Asia in general and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in particular, and Indonesia is a vital part of that. Last June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had travelled to Indonesia as part of this three-nation trip to Southeast Asia giving a big push to India’s Act East Policy.

For another, as this process has been underway, both countries have interests that are aligned somewhat in terms of addressing the rise of China and making advances in the maritime domain. This comes amid the rising conversation about the Indo-Pacific, with Indonesia hosting a meeting on the subject this week.

As a result, it is no coincidence that we continue to see defense-related and maritime-related developments continue to take shape between India and Indonesia. To take just one example, there has been an agreement signed between the two countries to advance economic engagements between Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Aceh and North Sumatra Province. This agreement envisions joint development of the region to promote cruise and eco-tourism, start air transport linkages by introducing commercial flights between Indonesia and Port Blair, and sea transportation connectivity in the form of RoRo vessel shipping to facilitate trade between the two regions. These have the potential to create a constituency on both sides that could propel the economic aspects of the bilateral relationship.

In another example, in order to push the economic relationship between the two sides, Indonesia just hosted the 2nd India Indonesia Infrastructure Forum (IIIF). The first such Forum between the two sides was held last year with elaborate plans for regional connectivity in terms of economy, infrastructure and energy links. India has also agreed to join hands with Indonesia in developing a deep-sea port in Sabang. The port will clearly give India a bigger foothold in the region while enhancing the maritime links between India and Southeast Asia.

The strategic imperatives as well as new developments at play in the India-Indonesia relationship suggest that we are likely to see the two sides continue to grow closer in the coming years. But at the same time, expectations about this new partnership must be tempered with reality. There are no shortage of challenges as well, including New Delhi’s continued lack of nuanced understanding on how Southeast Asian nations like Indonesia operate as well as India’s own changes in its China policy in the face of complications. These serve as important reminders that even though there are larger strategic interests binding them together, there are also limitations.

The Strategic Logic of Modi’s Indonesia Visit - my OpEd in The Diplomat, June 6, 2018

It has been a busy month and I am once again lagging behind in writing my posts but let me try and get up-to-date.

In the first week of June, I wrote a piece for The Diplomat looking at the strategic logic of Modi's Indonesia visit. Modi undertook a three-nation Southeast tour before heading to make his maiden speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue. His short visit to Malaysia was importance because of the change in leadership in Kuala Lumpur but I thought his Indonesia visit was a really substantial one. This visit has been planned for a while and the trip reinforced both the growing strategic alignment between New Delhi and Jakarta as well as its limits.

Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on a three-nation visit to Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore – in an effort to give a fillip to India’s ‘Act East’ Policy. India’s Act East Policy acquired fresh momentum when Modi re-launched the original Look East Policy at the East Asia Summit in 2014. Most recently, the leaders of the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries were in India for the 69th Republic Day celebrations in January 2018, a reflection of the growing strategic convergence between India and Southeast Asia in ensuring a free, open, and transparent Indo-Pacific.

Driven by the China factor, Modi’s visit to the three key states in Southeast Asia has the potential to propel greater strategic engagement especially in the maritime domain, but India’s capacity and strategic interest in playing a proactive role in the region is key. The most interesting of the three stops was Modi’s visit to Indonesia.

For the full essay, click here.



Indonesia remains a key player within Southeast Asia for several reasons. Most clearly, Indonesia will be essential in extending India’s maritime outreach. Indonesia is the largest archipelagic state, and has a coastline of 108,000 kilometers, 17,504 islands, and a total of maritime areas of 6,400,000 square kilometers, including its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The distance from India’s Andaman Islands to Indonesia’s Aceh province is barely 80 nautical miles, underscoring the importance to both India and Indonesia of the importance of enhanced maritime cooperation for the continuing peace, stability and economic prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region.

These make India and Indonesia two key maritime powers in the Indo-Pacific, and the two navies have partnered in naval exercises for several years now with naval ships patrolling between the Andaman Sea and Malacca Straits. But it has also become clear that is is time to deepen these engagements in the light of the changing strategic dynamics in the broader Indo-Pacific front.

Modi’s visit to Jakarta from May 29-30 witnessed extensive strategic discussions with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on everything from maritime issues to outer space and broader defense cooperation. According to the joint statement signed by the two leaders, the big underlying emphasis was the “importance of achieving a free, open, transparent, rules-based, peaceful, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region, where sovereignty and territorial integrity, international law, in particular UNCLOS, freedom of navigation and overflight, sustainable development and an open, free, fair and mutually beneficial trade and investment system are respected.”

Modi and Jokowi emphasized also the importance of rule of law, in particular the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS), clearly with China’s recent behavior in mind. Elevating the importance of Andaman Islands and increasing maritime connectivity were also emphasized during the visit.

Indonesia has also shown some interest in joining the Bay of Bengal initiative, which appears sensible both from an economic and security perspective. Given the geographical proximity of the Andaman Island with Sumatra Island to the south, Indonesia should be part of this initiative. The Lombok Strait also provides “an easy access to the Indian Ocean and Australia.”

India has also shown interest in joining the Malacca Straits Patrol (MSP), a four-nation arrangement between Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand for exchange of intelligence, and coordinated air and sea patrol through the Malacca Straits. But India may have to wait a bit on this. For one, New Delhi does not appear to have paid much attention to the mechanics of how the MSP operations actually work. For instance, a meeting among technical experts on May 10 explored the issue but it is reported that “both sides quickly realised that the Indian side had not fully come to grips with the nuts and bolts of the MSP.” India expected that its navy could undertake patrols in the Malacca Straits, whereas under the MSP, each of the four countries do “coordinated patrols” within their own territorial waters and do not cross into each other’s waters.

Similarly, New Delhi also appears not to have understood how MSP aerial patrols work, assuming that Indian aircraft could patrol on their own in the region, which is not the MSP practice. New Delhi will have to prepare much more professionally in future engagements. As a political face-saver, the joint statement issued by the Modi and Jokowi simply noted that the technical experts meeting on May 10 was “to explore ways in enhancing strategic technical cooperation on maritime security.”

For another, Indonesia and others in the MSP also appear to worry about setting a precedent that China can exploit if they allow an extra-regional power such as India join the MSP. These are understandable concerns, and New Delhi and the MSP countries will have to figure out carefully how they can cooperate but at a pace and manner that is comfortable for all.

India appears to have assumed that China’s aggressive push in South China Sea would make Southeast Asian states welcome India with open arms, but New Delhi must realize they have their own concerns about antagonizing China. Nonetheless, there is an underlying commonality of strategic concerns that can be the foundation for deepening ties, even if both sides have to be careful in how they proceed. But proceed they must.