With India a reluctant partner, the US South China Sea strategy is more about muddying the waters than concrete action by Quad allies

Prateek Joshi says the unwillingness of Indo-Pacific allies to increase naval deployments in the South China Sea means the US is restricted to creating controversy where it can

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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugs US President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington in June 2017. As part of its Indo-Pacific strategy, the US has renamed its Pacific Naval Command the Indo-Pacific Command. Photo: Reuters

Published: 11:32am, 8 Jun 2018Updated: 6:53pm, 8 Jun 2018

After the revival of much hyped Quad alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the US last year, Washington has moved towards institutionalising its vision for the Indo-Pacific with the renaming of the US Navy’s Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command. Lately, hostilities have been on the rise between the United States and China against the backdrop of the latter’s deployment of missiles and advanced military equipment in the Spratly Islands.

The Pentagon’s plans to confront China with longer patrols, involving more ships and close surveillance of Chinese facilities in the South China Sea – and Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis’ speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue warning China of “much larger consequences” in the future – are the latest signs of Washington’s intent to escalate tensions with Beijing.

Apart from the impact on bilateral ties, the intensification of rivalry should be analysed in terms of the existing regional balance, at a time when Washington – with its Indo-Pacific discourse – expects India and other allies to play a greater role in confronting China in the South China Sea. However, the reality is that India and its maritime neighbours may have little to gain from this.

To begin with, the new nomenclature has not changed the command’s area of operations, which follows cold-war-era dimensions – the area between the west coast of the US and the western border of India.

In contrast, India seems to define the Indo-Pacific as the land and sea area between the west coast of the US and Africa, a disagreement that has been the subject of debate between New Delhi and Washington. For India, America’s Indo-Pacific is still shared among three naval commands (the Indo-Pacific, Central and African) which inhibits seamless connectivity between the two navies.

Watch: Chinese military official dismisses US defence secretary’s remarks on South China Sea

From a deterrence perspective, the renaming is aimed at building pressure on Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea. However, India’s Indo-Pacific strategy does not display any desire to be dragged into the dispute. India’s approach – reiterated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue – points towards soft-balancing, rather than threatening, overtures.