The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has, throughout history, been a theatre of intense endeavour, enterprise, competition and friction. The IOR has long been a pivot in global power equations, whose domination, or control, has guaranteed prosperity, and even mastery, of the greater global commons. With the two fastest growing economies namely India and China with their global hunt for energy and the ever growing importance of sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) via the volatile Strait of Hormuz and narrow Malacca Strait has made this ocean as the global cockpit of great power rivalries vying for their pie in this resource rich ocean. The sheer imperative of geo-economics over the erstwhile geo-politics and the shift of balance of power from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific ( earlier referred to as Asia-Pacific by the western world) and the strategic location of the Indian Ocean has made, as the noted US strategic thinker Robert D Kaplan opined in his work “Monsoon” as the “centre stage for the 21st century” revisiting the Mahanian terminology of the importance of sea power in the coming future in which the “new great power game” in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) is slowly but steadily being unfolding.
The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has, throughout history, been a theatre of intense endeavour, enterprise, competition and friction. The IOR has long been a pivot in global power equations, whose domination, or control, has guaranteed prosperity, and even mastery, of the greater global commons. With the two fastest growing economies namely India and China with their global hunt for energy and the ever growing importance of sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) via the volatile Strait of Hormuz and narrow Malacca Strait has made this ocean as the global cockpit of great power rivalries vying for their pie in this resource rich ocean. The sheer imperative of geo-economics over the erstwhile geo-politics and the shift of balance of power from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific ( earlier referred to as Asia-Pacific by the western world) and the strategic location of the Indian Ocean has made, as the noted US strategic thinker Robert D Kaplan opined in his work “Monsoon” as the “centre stage for the 21st century” revisiting the Mahanian terminology of the importance of sea power in the coming future in which the “new great power game” in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) is slowly but steadily being unfolding.