Editorial

The selections in this special two-part edition of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region were originally presentations before the very first symposium devoted to exploring the Indian Ocean–South Atlantic nexus of sea lanes of convergence around South Africa. This was the initial motivation behind ‘The blue economy and the challenge of maritime security for South and Southern Africa', held on 17–19 November 2014 in Pretoria, South Africa, and jointly organised by the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) and the Policy Research and Analysis Unit of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). It was assisted by a reference group including the South African Institute of International Affairs, the Institute for Security Studies, and the Southern African Defence and Security Management network. While the symposium coincided with surging interest in a ‘Blue Economy’ among several Indian Ocean Rim and island states, the underlying intellectual and policy impetus was geostrategic: exploring architectural problems and prospects for fashioning a southern hemispheric ‘Gondwanan’ subsystem of global governance for enhanced maritime security cooperation in its broadest sense and for the health of the oceans.

This responded to a request for proposals issued by the former South African Foreign Policy Initiative of Open Society Foundation-South Africa (OSF-SA) emphasising ‘South Africa's Place and Role in the Changing Global Architecture.’ Funding from OSF-SA under the overarching ‘global architecture’ theme, was supplemented by additional assistance from the Maputo office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). This enabled IGD to undertake something unique in contemporary maritime security discourse: to approach the challenging oceanic domain as a geostrategically Afrocentric global South arena of engagement. This would allow for the conceptual fleshing out of South Africa's strategic identity defined by its geographic positioning astride a Cape sea route linking the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. This is something that, over decades, has inspired any number of visions of great power gaming for optimum positioning in sweepstakes for dominating the strategic landscape.

The growing connectivity associated with the interdependencies of global economic integration has increasingly foregrounded the ‘global commons’ as a salient strategic dimension to the importance of the oceans. Their strategic geoeconomic significance as resource-rich zones of offshore exploration and exploitation as well as logistical energy and commercial corridors while also serving as avenues facilitating all manner of illicit and criminal transactions and non-traditional threats underlines this importance. Given these pressures, the sustainable health of the oceans takes on ever greater urgency as well (informing agendas of bodies like the World Oceans Council and the Global Oceans Commission).

Moreover, globally, the oceans bring into sharp relief the geostrategic terrain defining the ‘global South’ as distinct from the largely transcontinental landmass defining the northern hemisphere. This distinction becomes especially prominent in contemplating the Afro-Eurasian supercontinent and Africa's central peninsular positioning, encircled as it is by the Mediterranean Sea and the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans. If the trans-Mediterranean continental-maritime domain is imagined as defining global South ‘north', South and Southern Africa form the convergence of a South Atlantic global South ‘west’ and an Indian Ocean/Indo-Pacific global South ‘east’. This interregionalist mapping, in turn, defines the uniqueness of South and Southern Africa within peninsular continental Africa: the bicoastal identity of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the tri-coastal nature of South Africa as ‘Gondwana Junction’: the southern sea lanes pivot between the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans converging at the Cape of Good Hope entry towards the southernmost continent of Antarctica.

This Indian Ocean–South Atlantic convergence at the South African tip of continental Africa coupled with the regional power identities of Brazil (South Atlantic) and India (as Indian Ocean pivot) informed the India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) Trilateral Dialogue Forum subtext of the November symposium. These, and the deliberations they inspired, animated discussions on challenges confronting the multilateral devising of a transoceanic southern hemispheric governing architecture within, and possibly adjoining, these oceans.

By departing from what has been a proliferating focus on African maritime security in isolation from the encircling transoceanic, intercontinental environment impinging on Africa and the external interests accompanying it, the Indian Ocean–South Atlantic framing of the maritime-oceans governance discourse moves this area of increasing focus into unchartered waters. This has to do with the fact of globalisation encompassing both land and sea, integrating landscape and seascape into what requires a reconceptualising of international geopolitical analysis into imagining a continental–maritime nexus or interface as an intellectually improvisational tool for unpacking the complexities of regional and global dynamics. The maritime domain comprising the global commons via sea lanes of communications forms the connectivity of intercourse linking onshore regional and continental venues of resource access and exploitation with infrastructures of coastal and inland transport links essential to reaching overseas markets and vice versa. These realities inevitably inform national geoeconomic strategy, subject to conflicting interpretations regarding great power naval intentions as indicative in the ambivalence of Sino-Indian relations – their Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa Forum membership notwithstanding – in and around the Indian Ocean.

By the same token onshore and inland political instabilities spill over into the maritime security environment. The Somali piracy crisis was emblematic. Here, the interplay between illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the politico-economic crisis of state collapse amid inter-clan rivalries along coastal Somalia exacerbated security challenges to international shipping in and around the Red Sea–Babel Mandeb–Suez complex linking the eastern Mediterranean to the northwest Indian Ocean. This challenge inspired the international flotilla of maritime security cooperation mobilised to combat piracy as ongoing efforts continue at shoring up an al-Shabaab threatened government in Mogadishu.

The fact that Islamic State-linked al-Shabaab terrorism threatens Kenya and the stability of the fledgling Tripartite Free Trade Area joining the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa, SADC and the East African Community reinforces a continental–maritime security equation that threatened extending into the Mozambique Channel. This anticipation inspired SADC's maritime security strategy and a tripartite arrangement between Tanzania and Mozambique with South Africa, the latter finally being drawn into the Indian Ocean anti-piracy fray having spurned involvement in the flotilla off coastal Somalia.

On the South Atlantic side, there are similar continental–maritime equations within the Gulf of Guinea overlapping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), including SADC members Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While this continental–maritime domain came in for discussion during the November 2014 symposium, the Mediterranean, by dint of its falling outside the interregional scope of this event, was not covered. Yet, from the continental perspective of African Integrated Maritime Strategy 2050, the global South geostrategic transoceanic encirclement of Africa begs major questions concerning the overall integrity of Africa's continental sovereignty linked to the governance and security vacuum in the northwest African Maghreb and the flood of African (and Arab) refugees crossing the Mediterranean into southern Europe (impacting the political stability of the EU).

There has been a failure to address the trans-Mediterranean refugee crisis as an integrated ‘Eurafrican’ phenomenon linked to the unresolved Western Sahara stalemate (along with Morocco's outlier status vis-à-vis the rest of Africa in spite of major financial and economic underwriting commitments). This is at the root of a non-functioning regional economic – and security – pillar of the African Union in the Arab Maghreb Union. This, alongside civil war in post-Qaddafi Libya, is indicative of the magnitude of the overall maritime security challenge confronting Africa – and Africa's geopolitical identity.

But what about architecture and its bearing on the southern hemispheric Indian Ocean–South Atlantic nexus? Here, as Probal K. Ghosh points out in his article on the Indian Ocean, ‘the current maritime security architecture in the region and the various forums that uphold the same are mostly listless, in dire need of impetus’. This observation can be extrapolated into a generality within the global South as a whole, compared to the North. In the global South's western ‘Atlantic Hemisphere’, the Zone of Peace and Cooperation in the South Atlantic (ZPCSA) forms the makings of an Afro-Latin American multilateral framework for intercontinental maritime security cooperation and oceans governance with Brazil elevating its regional power identity into a more concerted commitment complemented by major African actors, Angola and Nigeria as well as South Africa. Indeed, ‘on paper’, the ZPCSA could serve as a potential model for the Indian Ocean as well and possibly even an inter-oceanic platform. But, as the rotational chairmanship of the ZPCSA passes from Uruguay (formerly held by Angola) to Cape Verde, it is instructive that bilateral engagement between Brasilia and Praia on maritime matters have reportedly been slow to take effect given the multi-year length of time it takes for such initiatives to travel through the Brazilian Congress. Brazilian contributors Alcides Costa Vaz and Erico Duarte critically assess ‘ends and means’ contradictions confronting Brazil's aspirational role and intentions as a South Atlantic power in relation to ZPCSA. South Africa, for its part, has been more riveted on an Indian Ocean agenda.

The prominence of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and the much newer Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) alongside proliferating entities and arrangements spawned by Somali anti-piracy engagement represent different aspects of an architecture in the making that is far from achieving coherence. Currently under Australia's chairmanship, rotating to Indonesia and eventually to South Africa, establishment of a joint IORA–IONS safety and security committee could be a harbinger of future developments. Perhaps consideration of the still fledgling South Atlantic ZPCSA as a possible model for knitting together a more coherent Indian Ocean framework could serve as an architectural way forward. Such a prospect may hinge, however, on India following up on recent suggestions of revisiting a ‘zone of peace’ in the Indian Ocean. This was first mooted by Sri Lanka as far back as 1971 (which, like the ZPCSA, came about as a result of a UN resolution) along with the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality emerging from an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers meeting in the same year.

However, as this author suggested in a presentation at the February 2015 17th Annual Asian Security Conference in New Delhi (hosted by the Institute of Defence and Security Analyses), reviving and consolidating such initiatives into a ZPCSA-like platform might enjoy greater impetus were a closer strategic partnership contemplated between India and Indonesia as dominant actors in their respective regions. This potential is reinforced by David Brewster in, India's Ocean (Routledge, 2014) when he opined:

Indonesia's size and its geographical position as gatekeeper between the Indian and Pacific oceans may make it an indispensable regional partner for an (sic) India. A broad-based strategic partnership between India and Indonesia could transform India's role in Southeast Asia. But, while bilateral trade is growing very quickly, both India and Indonesia are subject to significant internal constraints which make any political or security engagement slow and hesitant. The development of a broad-based relationship with Indonesia would require a major political, economic and security commitment by New Delhi that has so far not been forthcoming.

This observation is indicative of the architectural challenge facing an Indian Ocean Rim that will require considerable proactive politico-diplomatic will on New Delhi's part given its central positioning between the eastern and western oceans and in light of its constantly reactive defensiveness over China's regional intentions. Yet, it might be ventured that if Delhi is to counter-balance Beijing's primarily resource access-influenced continental–maritime ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative into a complementary calculus of its own, something along the lines of a jointly elaborated ‘zone of peace and cooperation in the Indian and Pacific Oceans’ with Indonesia and South Africa may fit the bill; it would have to be inclusive of all stakeholders, the IORA ‘dialogue partners’ included. Formalising an IORA ‘dialogue partners’ forum’ might also be considered as a means by which rim countries manage external powers. For good measure, India's induction into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and US–Japan–Australian trilateral security cooperation might round out establishing an updated interregional security order in the Indo-Pacific.

In the final analysis, such a scenario might be viewed as in synergy with a trans-Eurasian east-west security subsystem that, ideally, should eventually gain traction between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Sino-Russian led but Beijing-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Futuristic perhaps, but Indian Ocean peace and security may require imagining as part and parcel of an integrated Eurasian sustainable security order. In global South terms, such a system would have the potential to frame an Afro-Asian geoeconomic convergence between the ‘Cape to Cairo’ free trade subsystem (of an eventual Continental African Free Trade Area) emerging along the Eastern and Southern African littoral and the end-of-2015 anticipated ASEAN economic community.

That said, the November 2014 symposium arrived at no consensus on an architectural way forward for the oceanic southern hemisphere apart from problematising the possibility of the IBSA's maritime (IBSAMAR) framework as a possible departure point for a southern oceans maritime governing system along with that of the already existing Antarctic Treaty System with its Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings. In whatever direction the search for architecture evolves, the November 2014 IGD/DIRCO-led symposium attempted to begin broadening the maritime security-ocean governance discourse into a comprehensive global South conversation with South and Southern Africa at the centre. Here, South African contributions by Nick Sendall of the Defence Secretariat and of Professor Jo-Ansie Van-Wyk of the University of South Africa's Political Science Department serve to anchor the papers in this special edition.

Sendall's contribution was critical for what was a fundamental objective of the symposium: anchoring the dialogue in the findings of the South African 2012–2013 Defence Review as a means of attempting synergy between South African defence and foreign affairs agendas within the context of DIRCO's priority on fashioning a ‘Blue Economy’ diplomacy. This presented a rare opportunity for DIRCO-Defence collaboration within the framework of a civil society think-tank initiative in the ‘international relations, trade, peace and security cluster'. The maritime security and naval capacity-building implications of Defence Review findings outlined by Sendall form a strategic national security basis for Professor Van-Wyk's critical examining of the expansive continental shelf claims that, depending on how these are settled within the UN process, may influence maritime regional cooperation prospects. These involve claims by Mozambique and Namibia along the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic littorals, respectively. This settling of continental shelf claims within SADC are critical to South Africa's Operation Phakisa ‘Blue Economy’ developmental plans for offshore marine economic development and, in turn, could shape South and Southern African maritime diplomacy within a wider southern oceans context.

This wider context necessarily required presentations by Australian, Brazilian and Indian experts along with a critical non-Southern African perspective from Nigeria on the Gulf of Guinea domain of the Afro-South Atlantic. From an Indian Ocean perspective, with Australia having chaired IORA and given its middle power prominence in the affairs of the Indo-Pacific alongside the active intellectual and academic engagement of many of its scholars, the essentially IBSA subtext of symposium discourse had to be amended to include some ‘Down Under’ wisdom. This was duly provided by Indian Ocean affairs doyen, Dennis Rumley. His article analyses the interrelated issues of Australia's ‘identity dilemmas and contested regionalisms’ in terms of the extent of Canberra's engagement with regional security regime that leads into a discussion of arguments in favour of establishing an overall Indian Ocean Maritime Security Regime.

From an Indian perspective, these prospects are critically dealt with by Observer Research Foundation senior fellow and naval veteran on the Indian Ocean affairs, P.K. Ghosh. Ghosh compares the relative success of bi/multilateral naval exercises with the limitations of such multilaterals as MILAN (Hindi for ‘unification’) and IBSAMAR in the absence of a formal architecture. His analysis is complemented by that of IDSA fellow Abhijit Singh's honing in on the suitability of IBSA–IBSAMAR as a suitable inter-oceanic model for the southern oceans. In Singh's view, the southern oceans need a ‘workable model of oceans governance that can revive “maritime development” by kick-starting the regional marine economy’ while reinvigorating civilian maritime sectors. This is why a consideration of ZPCSA as a model for the Indian Ocean may be worthy of deliberating on based on Rumley-Ghosh – Singh observations and recommendations on rim multilateral deficiencies. The articles by Brazilian scholars Erico Duarte and Alcides Costa Vaz are thus relevant in terms of how ZPCSA stacks up within the South Atlantic maritime environment interacting with the potentialities and limits of IBSA as a platform of connectivity.

Here, the South Atlantic centrality of Brazil is key. Duarte analyses Brazil's proactive preparedness for what he envisions as a growing contest for energy and resources in this region. These are seen as informing institutional reforms in Brazil's armed forces with an emphasis on coastal defence, a new agenda emphasising West Africa's importance and as well as renewed emphasis on ZPCSA as a more robust South Atlantic multilateral vehicle. Costa Vaz, on the other hand, while critically considering a role that IBSA might perform as an Indian Ocean–South Atlantic linkage platform, concludes that ‘there are no immediate and mid-term incentives strong enough for Brazil to change its primary focus on the South Atlantic to favour the emergence of a bi-ocean governance framework’. This is where the limitations and possibilities of IBSAMAR may require more scrutiny in terms of weaknesses also addressed by Ghosh. From a comparative ZCPSA–IBSA standpoint, Costa Vaz advances such considerations while both he and Duarte provide a reality check on Brazilian defence capabilities.

However, as far as a Brazilian South Atlantic emphasis goes, the Nigerian perspective offered by Charles Ukeje, who played a major role in organising the FES-funded ‘African Approaches to Maritime Security: The West and Central African Perspectives’ in Abuja in May 2014, takes on added importance if the ZPCSA is to assume greater interregional multilateral relevance. Ukeje reviews the challenges and opportunities facing ECOWAS and ECCAS states with implications for governance, security and development. These informed the Abuja Declaration (of which Ukeje was a prime mover) emerging from the Abuja conference and that will have to be incorporated into a potentially updated ZPCSA Afro-Latin American agenda.

All told, the selections in this special edition should be viewed, collectively, as an opening shot in what awaits a lengthy and open-ended discourse on the multilateral future of maritime security and oceans governance in the global South. To the extent that an Africa-centred discourse on how South Africa and SADC might figure within such a context contributes to ensuing debates in this regard, the prospects of interregional peace, security and cooperation architecture-building will, in the final analysis, hinge on the proactive politico-diplomatic will displayed by major middle power regional actors in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. The perspectives offered up in this JIOR special edition hopefully will stimulate much needed thinking and strategic visioning in giving momentum to this process.

Note: the articles in this edition (vol. 11 issue 2) are part one of a two-part special edition of the Journal of the Indian Ocean, entitled “In Search of Architecture: Governance and maritime security in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans”. Part two of this special edition will be published in hard copy of the next edition (vol. 12 issue 1), in June 2016. In the meantime, the remaining papers are available for online access on the journal website, under the “latest articles” tab: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showAxaArticles?journalCode=rior20