 Welcome to NewsClick. We have with us retired naval commander Atul Bhadwaj who is a defence and foreign policy expert to talk to us about India's maritime and strategic outreach both in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean especially its relationship with United States, Australia, Japan in the last few years. Welcome Atul. Thank you. Can we begin by asking why is it that India and Indians in general seem to be mesmerized by this whole notion of Indo-Pacific but they are completely ignoring what is happening in the larger world in terms of Eurasian, the developments that are taking place in Eurasia especially as a result of Belt and Road Initiative of China and the kind of communication links that they have been able to build and expand on and are still in the process of adding to it in the Eurasian continent. Welcome to understand this Indian fetish to be a power in the Indian Ocean. We need to go back into history a bit. When the British were leaving actually and there was obviously a vacuum created in the Indian Ocean region and our civil servants our foreign policy experts at that stage were largely had been trained under the British tutelage. So they imagined India to be taking over the role which British was fulfilling in the Indian Ocean region. So there we thought that since they are leaving now we are the inheritors of the British legacy but the fact was that we were not because the British never handed over the reins to us in the Indian Ocean region. All that they did was they basically America took over the Indian Ocean region because it did not want to leave a vacuum which could then be occupied by the Soviet Union. Similarly, we have also borrowed our strategy has borrowed excessively from what is known as the Monroe Doctrine where you think that you are controlling the entire neighborhood. Where but the fact is that we have never been able to control what maximum we have been able to do is protect the you know the British interests which were existing in the region. To say it in crude terms we have been acting as a chalky door in the region. We have not actually controlled the region and we never found anybody any resistance in the entire Indian Ocean literals or for that matter even in Nepal or otherwise is largely because China did not have the capacity to do that. Until recently you mean. Until recently if China was limited in its capacity to act in the region so were we. It is just that there was no resistance and we had the backing of the western paths throughout to exercise limited control in our neighborhood. That means that we are quite satisfied playing the role of a regional power confining ourselves so far until recently to the Indian Ocean like a self-contained ocean that we considered it to be as our domain and it is only now that we have been the US is enticing us to play a larger and a greater role in western Pacific. From that point of view do you see any possibility of India being able to I mean historically Indian say Indian strategic the limits that we defined of the area of interest stretched from Gulf of Aden to Malacastra. If it is going to stretch beyond that to western Pacific it obviously means that we are now entertaining and entering an arena which is fraught with dangers or eventual conflict especially with China. You know if you look at things realistically if you are stretching your area of your operations to extend into the what is now being touted as the Indo-Pacific then obviously you need more resources. You need capabilities so do you have that kind of capabilities imagine even if you have to operate one helicopter detachment in one of the islands in Seychelles or elsewhere or in Maldives for that matter you know the amount which is required is in the range of 25 crows to 30 crows in per month on a monthly basis. Now how much capacity do we have to sustain this kind of a presence in the Indian Ocean that's one big issue and for how long can we sustain that. You know we are a two trillion dollar economy at present so imagine what was China doing actually when they were a two trillion dollar economy. Did they talk about Belt and Road Initiative? No. Did they talk of entering Indian Ocean? No. So why aren't we reconciling ourselves to our economic realities? The other issue of going into the Indian Ocean is do we understand the dynamics of sea power putting out naval ships in various areas means nothing unless and until you are able to leverage that naval power to to to gain economically from the oceans there is no point in just doing the watchman's duty at sea because how does if you actually see how does the western parts navy and their control of the oceans ocean trade is one of the singular you know reasons for the western parts to have controlled the world for such a long time and that they do by controlling the marine service industry the western powers have ensured that 90 percent of the global trade continues to flow on the oceans and those oceans where their service industry prevails where they determine what is going to be the insurance and the reinsurance rates where they determine what is going to be the freight rates where they determine the movement of goods across the world so that is where navy is one small part of that entire arrangement in our case our problem is that we have always given preference to power our strategic thinking is shaped to giving a shape to think of power which actually entangles you into a greater web which entangles you to play not your own role but somebody else's role our strategic thinking has never been shaped by the concepts of freedom because once we mean freedom of navigation no freedom of imagination freedom of we've never even now when we are talking in terms of Indian Ocean the problems that confront the world for such a long time has not been given to us by China those problems which are which the world is facing now comes from the international order that the west had designed for the world and in that the Indian Ocean plays a critical role especially because of location of of the oil resources and the natural gas resources in and around Indian Ocean which also is the critical for both India China Japan South Korea in terms of its oil requirements and dependency on west Asia or for for its oil imports China is the only country which is actually going out and challenging the US command of the oceans it is developing those kinds of capabilities and those number of ships that can actually challenge the American order at sea now America needs the help of other countries because it is highly indebted at the moment its debt levels are very high America cannot afford to spend that kind of money on its navy it needs the allies to basically do it's the job that its navy would have performed it is basically trying to multiply its power by having the assets of Australia Japan India placed all under its command if China is having a large amount of trade moving through these routes there is no reason for China to actually disrupt those routes and since the world is so globalized at the moment nor is there any interest for other parties to actually disrupt the trade disruption of trade in the ocean actually harms the western parts and in any case in the Indian Ocean for the past so many decades after the second war Americans took over the Indian Ocean island base of from UK in Diego Garcia and Chagos archipelago and other places which were earlier occupied dominated by the British navy these were one after another handed over to the US and they took over so it's not as if the big power presence has not been there France is very heavily present in Indian Ocean so is UK and they have now recently announced that they're building a permanent base in Bahrain which is going to play host to the fifth fleet of the United States so all these countries are already present there India does not see that Indian strategic planning does not perceive them as as something which is threatening to to interest to India's interest but it sees the presence of China in Indian Ocean as something of a big threat does it make sense to me it really doesn't make sense because on one hand if you're supporting the very concept of freedom of sea then you can't really be saying that I'm preparing through thought Chinese freedom at sea in the Indian Ocean you know the movement of Chinese ships in or submarines in the Indian Ocean because that is granted by the international law and that freedom probably only you can you know curtail that freedom of action of the ships if you declare hostilities till the time hostilities are actually declared the law does not permit you to hamper the movement of ships or submarines the basic issue is what purpose if I place my ships if I advance my navy what purpose am I solving if China is building the Eurasian line as you said which they have built the entire rail network and they are building subsequently it will take another 30 40 years for a lot of trade to travel through those routes through the Eurasian routes but China is also building all along with it a service industry which will feed the movement of the trade and that is the service industry with China would control now but we are not understanding what is it that we want to achieve in the oceans do we want to achieve the Chinese you know just we just want to stop the Chinese ship to me that is a very very ridiculous kind of strategic logic admiral Arun Prakash wrote the other day that with Russia and China moving close towards a military kind of an alliance it's become all the more necessary important that India look to United States as a counter and obviously there is also this thinking that even if you want to you know manage your conflict and tensions with your neighbor China you still have to build up quadrilateral alliances to give you a little more space to maneuver how realistic are these assessment I mean are we in a position to maneuver ourselves if we become part of a quadrilateral alliance to you know send a message to China to relent elsewhere to meet India some way to address some of its concerns these postulations are actually based on that imagination that you know China is a natural enemy these postulations are based on the fact that you know there is there is no alternative to the western hegemony yeah you're right sham sarin in fact wrote and said so in so many words that all this talk about China as as the new global power it's it's not realistic that you are still remains the lone superpower or the lone global power so basically you know India's interest would lie if one is to look at strategically the kind of an order which you know which is basically what has been designed and what has been created the post war international order which is created by America largely when the Anglo-Americans if you would say you know it is it has it has not delivered the international liberal order what they call it is it has failed to deliver to the world what it promised it has failed to deliver a peace in the world it has actually aggravated the inequalities in the world so we've all seen that for the past 20 years the way Middle East has been destroyed do we want the same order to now transpose itself into Asia-Pacific do we want that order to cause problem do we want Maldives to become another Syria so that is the question that India needs to ask and that's that's exactly why is peace more important or is protecting western hegemony more important for our strategy can Russia and China the combining coming together of Russia and China can it be used as a counterpoise to the western hegemony India can find its rightful place in this order only if this order is cracked only if this order becomes more multipolar unless and until you have that kind of a multipolarity in that order you will not have the room or the leeway to move around and that multipolarity I believe is possible with the rise of China Russia and also India now if we are not able to grab this opportunity and like you know as we had sustained the British Empire for such a long time because without India the Britain would never have existed or would never have lasted for such a long time so are we ready to be used in a similar manner again is the question that you know we must pose ourselves I think on that note we conclude today's interview thank you for agreeing to this interview and we look forward to talking to you again on other matters related to India's strategic and defence related matters thank you very much thank you for watching news click