Why the India-Sri Lanka-Maldives NSA-level Talks Matter - The Diplomat, 4 December 2020

In my first column for The Diplomat in December, I looked at the increasing strategic relevance of the India-Sri Lanka-Maldives NSA-level talks.  I argue that the nature of bilateral political relations in the Indian Ocean region has an impact on the quality of subregional engagements such as the NSA-level talks held in Colombo.  

Last week, Colombo hosted an India-Sri Lanka-Maldives trilateral maritime security dialogue. The meeting saw the revival of the national security advisor (NSA)-level dialogue among the three countries, which began almost a decade ago in 2011. That the meeting took place six years after the last edition in 2014 is significant. Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives are rcritical maritime neighbors to India in the Indian Ocean region and there have been continuous efforts by both India and China to win friends and favors in Colombo and Male.

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The NSA-level talks are also a demonstration of the Indian intent to push subregional diplomacy, which has been gaining traction in India’s foreign policy in the last few years. The Modi government has made efforts to engage in subregional diplomacy as a useful track following the near-complete halt in regional diplomacy in South Asia under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). 

For the Colombo trilateral, the Indian side was represented by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval whereas the Maldives sent its defense minister, Mariya Didi, and Sri Lanka was represented by Defense Secretary Maj. Gen. (retd) Kamal Gunaratne. Mauritius and the Seychelles were also present virtually at the level of senior officials. With the goal of encouraging meaningful maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean region, India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives discussed a number of areas for possible collaboration such as maritime domain awareness (MDA), humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), joint military exercises, capacity building, maritime security threats, marine pollution, and maritime underwater heritage. The Heads of Delegations decided that they would meet periodically to maintain the momentum of the dialogue and to ensure timely execution of the decisions taken at the NSA-level meetings. According to the joint statement, a decision was also made to institute deputy NSA-level working group meetings biannually for cooperation at the operational level.  

So far, there have been several iterations of the trilateral meetings at the NSA-level. The first, hosted by the Maldives, was held in Male in 2011, following which Sri Lanka hosted the second edition. The third was held in New Delhi in 2014, which was attended also by Mauritius and the Seychelles as “guest countries.”   

Following the first trilateral meeting, the India-Maldives “DOSTI” joint coast guard exercise in 2012 added Sri Lanka and was held as a trilateral exercise. The India-Maldives DOSTI exercises have been going on since 1991 and are aimed at strengthening capabilities of the three partners in the area of search and rescue operations, combating piracy and armed robbery, damage control, and casualty evacuation at sea. India and Sri Lanka also have held bilateral naval exercises called SLINEX since 2005. The latest iteration, the eighth, was held off Trincomalee in Sri Lanka in October 2020. India’s official statement on the exercise noted that the synergistic approach developed by the two navies for “seamless coordination” was in evidence when the two navies came together in September 2020 to assist MT New Diamond, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), that caught fire off the East Coast of Sri Lanka. 

While broader maritime security, anti-piracy, and HADR are important components of the growing India-Sri Lanka-Maldives strategic narrative, the real worry for India is growing Chinese activism in the Indian Ocean region. China’s efforts at cultivating the Indian Ocean littoral states have been a concern for New Delhi. In response, New Delhi has pursued many paths to build rapport with these neighbors, including bilateral, trilateral, and minilateral conversations in the region.  

While India is a resident Indian Ocean power and has its own advantages, there are capacity gaps in India’s ability to play a sustained or dominant role. Meanwhile, China has the economic and military wherewithal to expand its military presence in the Indian Ocean and has been developing serious inroads into the region through bases and other strategic networks. It is these that India is most concerned about and to which it is responding.  

While India is stepping up its efforts in naval modernization, these are capital intensive and time-consuming projects. The small budget allocations for the Indian Navy are not helpful either. Therefore, India has also entered into a series of partnerships with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific, such as Australia, Japan, and the United States, to offset the growing Chinese influence as well as to enhance India’s own capabilities. The logistic agreements that India has signed with a number of countries — including the United States, Australia, France, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan — in recent years are a demonstration of the Indian intent to enhance the geographical reach of the Indian Navy, and also to strengthen the combined capability mix that is available to deal with China’s aggressive maneuvers in the Indian Ocean region. It is also an important tool for messaging both to its friends and foes.  

Meanwhile, even as India pursues a neighborhood first approach, it has also acknowledged the limitations of regional groupings such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which came to a grinding halt a few years ago. Modi had reached out to the SAARC nations when he came to office in 2014 but the bonhomie did not last long. Therefore, India has energized other regional groupings such as BIMSTEC and subregional arrangements such as the BBIN and India-Sri Lanka-Maldives trilateral. While the subregional initiatives have primarily focused on connectivity and similar issues, India is also exploring the possibility of engaging in subregional security cooperation.  

But subregional initiatives are not free from the state of bilateral relations with these countries. As K. Yhome explained in a recent essay, the nature and framework of bilateral political relations will have an impact on these subregional initiatives. The case of the NSA-level trilateral maritime dialogue between India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives is a case in point. The talks were stalled from 2014 primarily because of India’s poor relations with Maldives under then-President Abdulla Yameen. India, as a big state, has to be mindful of the needs and aspirations of its much smaller neighbors and has to be able to adapt to meet their requirements. 

What Does the New Counterterrorism Exercise Mean for the Quad? - The Diplomat, December 6, 2019

In this week's column for The Diplomat, I looked at the recently concluded counter-terrorism exercise of the Quad. Certainly, the recent development again put the minilateral arrangement in the headlines.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”) between the U.S., Japan, India and Australia has often been questioned about its purpose and capacity. For critics, other than occasionally irritating Beijing, the Quad did not appear to have much purpose. And, at times, even these expressions of occasional irritation from China had been sufficient to send one or the other Quad countries into a funk.

But in the last two years, the Quad has slowly become somewhat sturdier, with the level of interaction between the countries improving, and the members themselves becoming less skittish when Beijing criticizes the venture. Now, the Quad countries have taken a new step, holding a table-top counter-terrorism exercise together. What can we make of this?

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Details are skimpy. India has hosted the first counter-terrorism table-top exercise (CT-TTX) among the Quad countries in New Delhi on November 21-22. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), which hosted the TTX, is reported to have said the exercise is meant to assess and validate counter-terror mechanisms against a range of existing and emerging terrorist threats at both the regional and global levels.

At the most basic level, the CT-TTX is not surprising considering India’s concern about the issue. India’s own insufficient military capabilities are well-known, and New Delhi has been open to cooperation in this regard. This is clearly an important reason why India has shown willingness to tie up with the Quad on counter-terrorism.

The exercise was also aimed at sharing best practices in terms of preparedness, mitigation strategies and in developing coordinated strategies, and to expand the areas for strengthened cooperation among the four Quad countries. Seen from that perspective, the exercise would help highlight the interagency coordination issues within each of the countries and also bolster the multi-agency coordination between security and counter-terror agencies among the four countries.

The exercise is significant because this was the first concrete joint security initiative by the four countries. The TTX also reflected the shared resolve among the Quad countries in addressing a major challenge they all face. Importantly, though this was a security exercise, it did not target China. But still, it is a step up from the usual HA/DR type of exercises that many of these countries, especially India, prefers. The fact that the Quad has been upgraded to foreign ministerial platform is also an important indicator of the significance the four participating countries attach to the Quad.

That said, one should not exaggerate the significance of this development. The Quad’s revival and the carrying out of the exercise reconfirms the fact that the original concerns that led to the Quad were valid and getting more serious. But the level of commitment of different countries within the Quad has been suspect, and their mutual trust is still a work in progress.

India is no exception to this. On the one hand, India has been open to the Quad as one of several mechanisms that allows it to build on partnerships without entering into alliances, and China’s behavior and its hostility (despite the Chennai informal summit) towards India has pushed New Delhi to be less reluctant about the Quad. But on the other hand, for the time-being, India’s willingness to participate in the Quad is limited to testing out non-military alliance initiatives such as the CT-TTX to assess the possibilities and limitations.