- N Sathiya Moorthy 26 September 2019
Colombo has to find ways to permanently ally apprehensions of a section of the Indian strategic community — particularly naval experts.
Illustration: Phil Augustavo/Getty Images
With reports of China deciding to sell its “first and only aircraft-carrier” to Pakistan for augmenting the latter’s naval capabilities, there should be concern among the immediate Indian Ocean neighbourhood nations, especially Sri Lanka. There are media reports that the possible sale of ‘Liaoning’ to Pakistan may have to wait until China commissions locally-built nuclear carrier battle-groups for the nation’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). That also means that Indian Ocean nations in South Asia especially may have that much — or less — time to prepare and strategise for the eventuality.
The ‘Liaoning’ is not a Chinese-built vessel, but the carrier’s hulk found its way to the country from Ukraine, which had purchased it from Russia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to media reports in China and Russia, no price has been fixed for the Pakistani purchase, but given the domestic economic situation, Islamabad may not be in a position to offer a fair price to Beijing for its purchase, as and when it happens.
China’s plans to induct six nuclear-powered carrier-groups into PLAN are not expected to be completed before 2035. Yet, given the ‘special relations’ between the two nations, such a transfer could be treated as a ‘physical extension’ of China’s naval presence in the immediate neighbourhood of India, without actually been there. Better or worse still, given the anticipated precariousness of the Pakistani economy for years and decades to come, it is likely that Beijing will not only underwrite the maintenance expenses but also share the number of men on board, by rotation.
Given the ‘special relations’ between the two nations, such a transfer could be treated as a ‘physical extension’ of China’s naval presence in the immediate neighbourhood of India, without actually been there.
Even without price-negotiations and payments for weapons, if they were to target Sino-Pakistan’s common adversary in India, or to induce other neighbours to side-step India, China has been going easy in South Asia. In the nineties, when Sri Lanka purchased weapons to target China, the latter reportedly cited the island-nation’s economic situation to Colombo’s price-negotiators, and left it at that.
Colombo’s concerns
Should Beijing sell or gift a carrier-group to Islamabad, the options for them both to park it in the not-so-distant vicinity of Sri Lanka’s southern-most Hambantota Port — now in possession, control and management of China — cannot be ruled out entirely. Given that Hambantota was being developed originally as a bunkering facility, the possibility of the support-vessels in the group, protecting the aircraft-carrier getting serviced one after the other in the Sri Lankan port, cannot be ruled out either.
Should China and Pakistan do so together, then China would have a carrier-group in the India-Sri Lanka vicinity, without PLAN actually coming there. Conventional strategic thinking has been that it would take China decades to develop ‘blue water naval capabilities.’ It would not be so, if the current report became true. Of course, Pakistan’s decision to park the new carrier, if and when received, in the Hambantota neighbourhood, could also depend on Islamabad’s prevailing sensitivity to upsetting or offending the US, whose Diego Garcia military-base too is situated thereabouts. If it were still to happen, then the US would not just feel hurt or offended, it could well treat it as a ‘threat to American security, outside of the homeland.’
Should Beijing sell or gift a carrier-group to Islamabad, the options for them both to park it in the not-so-distant vicinity of Sri Lanka’s southern-most Hambantota Port — now in possession, control and management of China — cannot be ruled out entirely.
If that were the case, Pakistan’s Chinese carrier-group could well be parked in the Arabian Sea, not far away from the nation’s seas and not far away from India’s western coastal industrial belt, which includes Mumbai, the country’s business capital. Whatever the case, Colombo cannot escape India’s “I-told-you-so” taunts. A scenario involving Pakistan’s Chinese carrier-group in the Indian Ocean waters would well mean that New Delhi too would have to strategise and re-strategise its naval priorities as early as possible.
Stake-holder options
One option for India in such a scenario could be to apply reverse pressure on China, by extending even more naval support to Vietnam, for instance. A lot will depend on the Vietnamese mood to accept Indian proposals, and more so in ‘pressuring China’ from that end, if India were to feel the naval heat from Pakistan at its end — without any direct provocation by Beijing, especially on Vietnam.
The second option for India could be to consider the option of taking the battle to ‘enemy territory’ by moving closer to the open seas in the coming years, in the neighbourhood than is known and strategised for. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has repeatedly reiterated over the past four years in office, that the US is the ‘elephant in the room’ as far as the neighbourhood Indian Ocean is concerned, and cannot be wished away.
The appreciation for China’s resourceful thinking on this score, should not be gainsaid if the ‘carrier-sale’ report were to come true, or even considered by the parties involved.
Though some officials have stayed clear of such presentations and protestations since, the fact remains that any Chinese naval presence in Sri Lanka, even by proxy, could very well trigger a ‘third cold war.’ In the past, both the US and the collapsed Soviet Union had fought the ‘Cold War’ mainly through proxies. Yet, the appreciation for China’s resourceful thinking on this score, should not be gainsaid if the ‘carrier-sale’ report were to come true, or even considered by the parties involved.
Sri Lanka would not want Chinese military or naval presence of any kind in or near its territory, including territorial waters. While Colombo might not have been able to stop a China-Pakistan carrier-deal even otherwise, such a turn could put Colombo on the defensive — viz the larger Indian neighbour in particular, the US and the rest of the world — otherwise.
Too much to handle?
With China already having its presence in Hambantota, supposedly for non-military use alone, and India and Japan jointly funding the development of the eastern port-town of Trincomalee, and the US offering funds for a new highway connecting Colombo and Trinco, there may be too much for Sri Lanka’s to handle. In such a scenario, to have Pakistan as a ‘maritime neighbour’, floating out in the open seas in the form of a ‘carrier-group’, Colombo’s concerns and complicated situations will only multiply.
Trincomalee is a natural harbour, which served as the alternate headquarters of the Allies in the Second World War. Considering that India and Sri Lanka are still bound by the Rajiv-Jayawardene Accord of 1987, and the Annexure to the same contains Colombo’s commitment not to involve anti-India nations militarily in these parts, it remains to be seen as to how Sri Lanka can balance the act, as and when other players play them out.
In context, Sri Lanka may also have to take a closer look at the ‘Kachchativu issue’ with regards to India. Here, New Delhi had in any case reiterated Colombo’s ownership of the islet, acknowledged under the bilateral IMBL accord of 1974, formalised further through UNCLOS-I notification. Colombo has to find ways to permanently ally apprehensions of a section of the Indian strategic community, particularly naval experts.
To have Pakistan as a ‘maritime neighbour’, floating out in the open seas in the form of a ‘carrier-group’, Colombo’s concerns and complicated situations will only multiply.
It may not be a one-way street, wholly. At the time India went about the Sethu Samudram Project in the Kachchativu neighbourhood, for finding an internal sea-linkage, to avoid circumnavigating Hambantota, especially after talks of imminent Chinese involvement began doing the rounds. However, the Hambantota accord would not happen immediately and the subsequent debt-equity swap on Hambantota would have to wait for years more.
The ‘Sethu Project’ is now pending before the Supreme Court of India. At the time when India announced the project and launched civil works in the sea, the US, for instance, was reported to have declared its intention for seeking access, declaring the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar as ‘international waters’, with the creation of navigational waterways. Today, not just the US, but other nations could seek such a facility, or even rights, possibly under UNCLOS.
Worse still, in times of war, even for a merchant man flying a third-nation flag, to develop major technical snags in the narrow, shallow Sethu waters would be enough to render additional concerns to India, and possibly Sri Lanka too. The other possibility could be for the ship’s crew to suspend work and leave the ship there, charging the owners with non-payment of salaries or other such imaginative but effective complaints, acceptable to international maritime laws and frustrating legal recourse available to affected nations and India as well, possibly in this case.