New Delhi: Calling out China without naming the country, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Tripathi said that to India’s east, challenges to the rules-based order in the South China Sea are undermining the sovereignty and independence of smaller nations.
Dinesh K. Tripathi made this point while delivering an overview of the Indo-Pacific region with India as the reference point at the ninth edition of media company Bharat Shakti’s India Defence Conclave in New Delhi.
“The recent spate of belligerent bullying in the South China Sea has amply demonstrated how economic weight and military might may be leveraged to pursue vested interests and expansionist designs,” Tripathi said.
That the contemporary global order is in flux, undergoing rapid and drastic changes, stands established, the Navy chief said. “The Indo-Pacific, in particular, is increasingly characterised by the turbulent tides of competition, contestation, and conflict coexisting with cooperation, collaboration, and convergence. I would argue that the flux is more prominent and poignant in the maritime domain.”
Referring to the Russia-Ukraine war in the north, he said the “spectre of unending conflict in Europe” is well into its third year. “This conflict has reinforced the ubiquity of conventional warfare, broken the myth of short and swift conflicts as well as exemplified the global impact of such events in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world,” the Navy chief said.
Referring to Israel’s war in Gaza in the west, Tripathi said the ongoing conflict could potentially destabilise the wider region, with attendant threats to maritime commerce and traffic. “This conflict has highlighted the strategic alignment of asymmetric forces against nation states and usage of the maritime domain as a leverage to influence events ashore as well as the availability and employment of low-cost lethal, unmanned, and kinetic technologies to create disproportionate impact,” the Navy chief said.
Speaking about what’s happening in the area to India’s south, he said, “…the Indian Ocean Region fortunately remains largely peaceful due to our collective and collaborative efforts with our friends and partners”.
Apart from enunciating the global situation across the four cardinals, he listed other challenges in the maritime domain. “…a spectrum of nontraditional and transnational challenges ranging from piracy, terrorism, drugs and arms trafficking to illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing continue to challenge us,” the Navy chief said. “…climate change, extreme weather events, and natural disasters have now added to human security challenges in the region and beyond. These challenges are further exacerbated with an increasing number of countries witnessing internal strife and political instability.”
Tripathi said rapid advances in niche and disruptive technologies are currently aiding the evolution of warfare and changing the character of warfare from its classic sense of military activity to a multidomain construct, blurring the lines between peace and war as well as civil and military domains, providing unscrupulous states ability to achieve strategic effects while enjoying plausible deniability.
The Navy chief said that amid permanent low-level conflicts, which often go “unnoticed” and “undeclared”, taking place across the world, “the Indo-Pacific will continue to simmer without necessarily boiling over.”
Tripathi said to ensure maritime security, Indian naval units displaying “poise, presence, and positive intent to ensure safe, stable, and secure seas” were deployed on missions over expanded geographies for extended periods.
He further said that the Navy, in the past six months, had ensured the safe transit of over 60 lakh metric tonnes of cargo valued at approximately 3.2 billion USD onboard 180 merchant vessels.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)