Michael Rubin’s article “Why India needs to consolidate its control in the western Indian Ocean” suggests that India must establish itself as the dominant power in the region, particularly along the African coast from Somalia to Mozambique. India’s strategic importance in the Indian Ocean is crucial, but it must take proactive steps to maintain control amid rising challenges from China and Turkey. India faces threats from Islamic State affiliates, Al-Shabaab, and Turkish expansion in Somalia. To secure its interests, India should strengthen partnerships with African nations like Rwanda, Mozambique, and Somaliland, establish military bases, and enhance relations with Kenya and Tanzania. A cooperative approach with African nations can promote trade and sovereignty while creating a stable regional order.
The complete article is as follows:
Why India Needs to Consolidate its Control in the Western Indian Ocean?
By Michael Rubin
If India is to protect its national and strategic interests, it is time to conceive of the African coast from Somalia down to Mozambique as an Indian sphere of influence
The Indian Ocean basin is India’s strategic waters. India may not have formalized its claims as James Monroe did two centuries ago when he issued the “Monroe Doctrine” to declare the Western Hemisphere an American sphere of influence, but for decades Asian and African states understood India would be the uncontested power in the basin.
The Indian Navy regularly plies the Indian Ocean’s waters, and the Indian military maintains small facilities in Madagascar, the Seychelles, and Oman.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mauritius Premier Pravind Jugnauth inaugurated an airstrip at Agaléga, more than 3,000 km southwest of Kochi. While Modi builds infrastructure on the Indian Ocean islands, he is essentially catching up as his predecessors were complacent for too long.
In both Washington and New Delhi, much of the attention to the Indian Ocean challenges centers on China. After adroit debt diplomacy reminiscent of 19th-century British and French imperial behavior, China won a 99-year lease over the Port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka.
The Chinese interest in Gwadar, Pakistan, is less commercial than strategic. Pakistan is a morass of corruption, but Chinese military engineers ensured that Gwadar not only became operational but that it could also accommodate the Chinese Navy in times of war.
Hambantota and Gwadar might be unofficial bases, but the People’s Liberation Army Navy base in Djibouti dispensed with any such pretext. Operating since 2017, China’s base is a logistical hub that gives its navy a blue water capability across the entirety of the Indian Ocean.
China is not the only challenge India now faces. While India looks east, threats grow in the west. In 2022, I interviewed Islamic State prisoners in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province and inspected the material they had on them when the Rwandan Defense Forces captured them in the bush.
Many had computers and literature shipped from Karachi to Mombasa or Dar-es-Salaam. The gold, copper, and uranium the Pakistan-sponsored Islamic State activists develop in eastern and central Africa can give the Islamic State offshoots along Africa’s Indian Ocean coast far greater reach than its predecessor in Iraq and Syria had.
Church leaders in Kinshasa told me Pakistan peacekeepers sought to radicalize Muslims in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. If they succeed, it could be a strategic disaster for the entire Indian Ocean basin.
After all, it is a lot easier to sell gold and uranium than oil, and, should the Rwandans ever withdraw, access to the coast could pose a threat throughout the region. With Al Shabaab resurgent in Somalia and expanding its reach down to Kenya, and then with the Islamic State threatening the coastal regions of Tanzania and Mozambique, India has a strategic challenge on its hands.
That threat might be theoretical for now, but the Turkish threat is real. Turkey has moved into Somalia as a colonial power in all but name. India should be very wary of Turkey’s Somalia naval base.
Turkey might say it seeks to help Somalia stabilize and defeat the al-Shabaab terror challenge, but its true goal is likely the opposite as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks the expansion of al-Shabaab’s religious extremism.
If Turkey is willing to provide drones to Pakistan and treat Kashmir as an Islamist cause second only to Palestine, then a Turkish base in Somalia or naval deployment off the Horn of Africa gives Turkey-supported Islamists potentially greater influence over the western Indian Ocean than India has.
India has been correct to work with the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar, but if India is truly to protect its influences in the Indian Ocean basin, it has to stop ceding mainland Africa to the Chinese and now the Turks. India could work with Rwanda and Mozambique to acquire a base in Cabo Delgado, perhaps in Palma or Pemba, to deny that sector permanently to the Chinese or Pakistan-backed terror groups.
The Indian Navy could likewise move into the Somaliland port of Berbera to check both China’s interests in Djibouti to the north or Turkey’s in Mogadishu. As for Kenya and Tanzania, they should be targets for business not only because both countries have great potential, but because of the strategic implication of outperforming Beijing.
Conceptually, if India is to protect its national and strategic interests, it is time to conceive of the African coast from Somalia down to Mozambique as an Indian sphere of influence. That need not be imperial or exploitative; if anything, India’s experience at the hands of the British and to lesser extent Dutch and Portuguese gives New Delhi a sensitivity the United States and China lack.
Rather, creating a Pax Indica along Africa’s eastern coast could be symbiotic, as African states could expand trade and preserve their sovereignty in the face of Chinese exploitation. India, meanwhile, could ensure that it enjoys a maritime buffer similar to that of the United States, which allowed it to propel itself to superpower status.
About Michael Rubin
Senior Fellow
Research Areas
Arab politics, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Horn of Africa
Bio & Experience
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East.
A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre-and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units.
Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005).
Dr. Rubin has a Ph.D. and an MA in history from Yale University, where he also obtained a BS in biology.
Experience
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- Foreign Military Studies Office: Contract Analyst, 2012–present
- Naval Postgraduate School: Senior Lecturer, 2007–21
- Middle East Quarterly: Editor, 2004–09
- Coalition Provisional Authority (Baghdad): Political Adviser, 2003–04
- Office of the Secretary of Defense: Staff Adviser, Iran and Iraq, 2002–04
- Council on Foreign Relations: International Affairs Fellow, 2002–03
- Hebrew University (Jerusalem): Fellow, The Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, 2001–02
- Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs: Fellow, 2000–01
- Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok (Iraqi Kurdistan): Visiting Lecturer, 2000–01
- Yale University: Lecturer, Department of History, 1999–2000
- Iranian Studies: Assistant Editor, 1994–97
Education
Ph.D. and MA in history; BS in biology, Yale University
Contact
Send Email: mrubin@aei.org
Twitter: @mrubin1971
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