Zheng He’s travels six hundred years ago stand as a reminder of the economic potential of the vast waters of the Indian Ocean, which wash the shores of dozens of countries large and small that straddle half the globe, account for half of the planet’s container traffic and carry two-thirds of its petroleum. But far more interesting, perhaps, are the strategic implications of the Indian Ocean region. The American writer Robert Kaplan’s premise, in his 2010 book Monsoon, is that the ‘Greater Indian Ocean’, from the Horn of Africa to Indonesia, ‘may comprise a map as iconic to the new century as Europe was to the last one’ and ‘demographically and strategically be a hub of the twenty-first century world’. As an American analyst, he argues that this makes the Indian Ocean ‘the essential place to contemplate the future of U.S. power’. Perhaps that is what President Obama was doing in early November 2010, as he flew from India to Indonesia and contemplated the vastness of the Indian Ocean beneath. But surely it is even more vital for India to see its eponymous ocean as the locus of its own strategic power calculations.
From an Indian point of view, though, the strategic importance of an ocean, at whose central point our subcontinent stands, is easy enough to grasp. The Indian Ocean is vital to us as the place through which most of our trade is conducted; keeping it safe from the depredations of pirates or the dominance of hostile foreign navies is indispensable for our national security. Our coastlines represent both points of engagement with the world and places of vulnerability to attack from abroad (as we saw most recently on 26/11). What should we be doing about it?
One way of dealing with the Indian Ocean is to see it through a security prism, and that, I am sure, our defence ministry and our navy, in particular, are already doing. The creation of an ‘Indian Ocean Naval Symposium’ that brought together over fifty countries to talk about the ocean is testimony to that. Another way, though, is to see the Indian Ocean’s potential for constructive diplomatic action. I am a believer in doing this through a subregional organization that India did a great deal to start, and needs to do a lot more to sustain.
What international association brings together eighteen countries straddling three continents thousands of miles apart, united solely by their sharing of a common body of water? That’s a quiz question likely to stump the most devoted aficionado of global politics. It’s the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Co-operation, blessed with the unwieldy acronym IOR-ARC, which bids fair to be the most extraordinary international grouping you’ve never heard of.
The association manages to unite Australia and Iran, Singapore and India, Madagascar and the UAE, and a dozen other states large and small — unlikely partners brought together by the fact that the Indian Ocean washes their shores. As India’s minister of state for external affairs in 2009, I have attended their ministerial meeting in Sana’a, Yemen, and despite being used to my eyes glazing over at the alphabet soup of international organizations I’ve encountered during a three-decade UN career, I find myself excited by the potential of this one.
Regional associations have been created on a variety of premises: geographical, as with the African Union; geopolitical, as with the Organization of American States; economic and commercial, as with ASEAN or Mercosur; security driven, as with NATO. There are multi-continental ones too, like IBSA, which brings together India, Brazil and South Africa, or the better-known G20. And even Goldman Sachs can claim to have invented an intergovernmental body, since the ‘BRIC’ concept coined by that Wall Street firm was reified by a meeting of the heads of government of Brazil, Russia, India and China in Yekaterinburg in 2009, and has continued since, with South Africa joining the grouping in 2011. But it’s fair to say there’s nothing quite like the IOR-ARC in the annals of global diplomacy.
For one thing, there isn’t another ocean on the planet that takes in Asia, Africa and Oceania (and could embrace Europe, too, since the French department of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, gives Paris observer status in IOR-ARC, and the Quai d’Orsay is considering seeking full membership). For another, every one of Huntington’s famously clashing civilizations finds a representative among the members, giving a common roof to the widest possible array of worldviews in their smallest imaginable combination (just eighteen countries). When the IOR-ARC meets, new windows are opened between countries separated by distance as well as politics. Malaysians talk with Mauritians, Arabs with Australians, South Africans with Sri Lankans, Iranians with Indonesians. The Indian Ocean serves as both a sea separating them and a bridge linking them together.
Regional associations have a wide variety of uses, and it’s fair to say they have not all been successful. Many would argue we haven’t fully exploited the potential of IBSA (India — Brazil — South Africa), or that BRIC, despite annual meetings of the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and the 2011 admission to it of South Africa, remains little more than a clever idea of an analyst at Goldman Sachs. So why try and make much of the IOR-ARC?
Well, I can’t think of many other groupings in which Madagascar can exchange experiences in such a small forum with the UAE, and both with India. For another, the potential of the organization — as a forum to learn from each other, to share experiences and to pool resources on a variety of issues — is real. There are opportunities to learn from each other, to share experiences and to pool resources on such waterborne issues as blue-water fishing, maritime transport and piracy (in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia, as well as in the straits of Malacca). But the IOR-ARC doesn’t have to confine itself to the water: it’s the member countries that are members, not just their coastlines. So everything from the development of tourism in the eighteen countries to the transfer of science and technology is on the table. The poorer developing countries have new partners to offer educational scholarships to their young and training courses for their government officers. There’s already talk of new projects in capacity building, agriculture and the promotion of cultural cooperation.
The IOR-ARC was, in many ways, India’s brainchild. To let it languish is not just to write off another bureaucratic institution; it is to give up on our leadership of a region that, whether we like it or not, is indispensable to us. To engage with it and seek to revive it will take time, effort, energy and some resources — not more than twenty-first-century India can afford. The IOR-ARC could be the diplomatic arm of a two-pronged strategy to make Indian Ocean security and political, economic and cultural cooperation two sides of the same glittering coin.
This is why we should not write off its immense possibilities. India, its chair as of 2012 (for a two-year term), must pledge itself to energizing and reviving this semi-dormant organization. As vice-chair I persuaded Australia to agree to be next in line, thus giving two active democracies a combined four-year stretch leading the IOR-ARC.
We haven’t made much of it so far. The IOR-ARC has been treading water, not having done enough to get beyond the declaratory phase that marks most new initiatives. The organization itself is lean to the point of emaciation, with just half a dozen staff in its Mauritius secretariat (including the gardener). I visited the rather forlorn-looking headquarters in Port Louis and was concerned at the staff’s perception that the member states had not yet accorded adequate priority to the association.
It is clear that the IOR-ARC has not yet fulfilled its potential in the decade that it has been in existence. As often happens with brilliant ideas, the creative spark consumes itself in the act of creation, and the IOR-ARC has been neglected by its own creators. Indian policy-makers have remained focused on the immediate challenge of Pakistan and the headline-grabbing relationships with the United States and China rather than spend time on an area they see as complex, inchoate and anything but urgent. The IOR-ARC’s formula of pursuing work in an academic group, a business forum and a working group on trade and investment has not yet brought either focus or drive to the parent body.