Strongman, Constable, or Free-Rider? India's “Monroe Doctrine” and Indian Naval Strategy

Abstract

Many scholars assume that the European model of realpolitik will prevail in Asia as the dual rise of China and India reorders regional politics. Others predict that Asia's China-centric tradition of hierarchy will reassert itself. But Indians look as much to nineteenth-century U.S. history as to any European or Asian model. Indeed, successive prime ministers explicitly cited the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention in hotspots around the Indian periphery. But the Monroe Doctrine underwent several phases during America's rise to world power. These phases can help South Asia analysts project possible futures for Indian maritime strategy.

The views expressed are the authors' alone.

Notes

1. For a sampling of commentary on India's maritime past, see Mihir K. Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi, India: Lancer, 1995), pp. 2–39; M. P. Awati, “Maritime India, Traditions and Travails,” in K. K. Nayyar (ed.) Maritime India (New Delhi, India: Rupa & Co., 2005), pp. 1–20; and Baldeo Sahai, Indian Navy—A Perspective from the Earliest Period to Modern Times (New Delhi, India: Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, 2006), pp. 1–67. The classic study is K. M. Panikkar, India and the Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History (2d ed., London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1951).

2. Government of India, INBR-8, Indian Maritime Doctrine (New Delhi, India: Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of Defence (Navy), 25 April 2004), p. 64 (hereafter Indian Maritime Doctrine).

3. Sureesh Mehta, in Government of India, Freedom to Use the Seas: India's Maritime Military Strategy (New Delhi, India: Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of Defence (Navy), May 28, 2007), p. iii (hereafter India's Maritime Military Strategy).

4. Mehta, in India's Maritime Military Strategy, p. iii. Another useful exposition of Indian strategic aims is Arun Prakash, “Shaping India's Maritime Strategy—Opportunities & Challenges,” Speech at National Defence College, New Delhi, November 2005, available at Indian Navy Website, http://indiannavy.nic.in/cns_11_add2.htm. At the time, Adm. Prakash was serving as Indian chief of naval staff, superintending the development of the maritime military strategy.

5. Author interview with Indian scholars, University of New Hampshire, Durham, October 6, 2007.

6. Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security, vol. 18, no. 2 (1993): 44–79; and Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). See also Aaron Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry,” International Security, vol. 18, no. 3 (1993/94): 5–33; Richard K. Betts, “Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War,” International Security, vol. 18, no. 3 (1993/94): 34–77; Avery Goldstein, “Great Expectations: Interpreting China's Arrival,” International Security, vol. 22, no. 3 (1997/98): 36–73.

7. David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security, vol. 27, no. 2 (2003): 57–85; David C. Kang, “Hierarchy in Asian International Relations: 1300–1900,” Asian Security, vol. 1, no. 1 (2005): 53–79; Chen Jian, The China Challenge for the Twenty-first Century (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1998), pp. 4–8.

8. James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, “Soft Power at Sea: Zheng He and Chinese Naval Strategy,” Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 10 (2006): 34–38.

9. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, September 1946–April 1961 (Delhi, India: Government of India, 1961), pp. 113–115.

10. Indeed, Indian and foreign commentators use “Indira Doctrine” or “Rajiv Doctrine” interchangeably with “India's Monroe Doctrine,” suggesting that the Monroe Doctrine is now accepted parlance in Indian discourses. Devin T. Hagerty, “India's Regional Security Doctrine,” Asian Survey, vol. 31, no. 4 (1991): 352.

11. Dilip Bobb, “Cautious Optimism,” India Today, August 31, 1987, p. 69. See also Hagerty, “India's Regional Security Doctrine,” pp. 351–363.

12. Hagerty, “India's Regional Security Doctrine,” pp. 351–353. See also Bhabani Sen Gupta, “The Indian Doctrine,” India Today, August 31, 1983, p. 20. Even those who deny the existence of an Indian security doctrine write in these terms. See for instance Raju G. C. Thomas, India's Search for Power: Indira Gandhi's Foreign Policy, 1966–1982 (New Delhi, India: Sage, 1984), especially p. 292.

13. Manish Dabhade and Harsh V. Pant, “Coping with Challenges to Sovereignty: Sino-Indian Rivalry and Nepal's Foreign Policy,” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 13, no. 2 (2004):160.

14. Mohan, a leading Indian commentator on international affairs, continues to discern such a doctrine behind Indian foreign and security policy. C. Raja Mohan, “Beyond India's Monroe Doctrine,” The Hindu, January 2, 2003, available at http://mea.gov.in/opinion/2003/01/02o02.htm. See also C. Raja Mohan, “SAARC Reality Check: China Just Tore Up India's Monroe Doctrine,” Indian Express, November 13, 2005, LexisNexis Database.

15. C. Raja Mohan, “What If Pakistan Fails? India Isn't Worried… Yet,” Washington Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 1 (Winter 2004–2005): 127.

16. Stephen F. Cohen analyzes several schools of foreign-policy thought among Indian elites before concluding that a certain “core” of principles unites Indian thinkers. Among these, the conviction that India should be preeminent in the Indian Ocean region, its rightful domain, is foremost. Stephen Philip Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), especially pp. 63–65.

17. Cohen, India: Emerging Power, pp. 63–65.

18. Mohan, “Beyond India's Monroe Doctrine”; Hagerty, “India's Regional Security Doctrine,” pp. 351–363.

19. Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine (rev. ed., Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963), p. 29.

20. J. D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917), vol. 2, p. 287.

21. Richardson, Compilation, vol. 2, p. 287.

22. William Fiddian Reddaway, The Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1898), p. 97.

23. Perkins, History, pp. 168–169.

24. Richard Olney to Thomas F. Bayard, July 20, 1895, in Ruhl J. Bartlett, ed., The Record of American Diplomacy: Documents and Readings in the History of American Foreign Relations (4th ed., New York: Knopf, 1964), pp. 341–345.

25. Perkins, History, esp. pp. 266–275.

26. Perkins, History, p. 186; Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1890; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1987), p. 346.

27. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1897), pp. 59–106, 271–314.

28. Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt, 30 March, 1901, in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles F. Redmond, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 486–487; James R. Holmes, “Mahan, a ‘Place in the Sun,’ and Germany's Quest for Sea Power,” Comparative Strategy, vol. 23 (2004): 27–61.

29. Mahan, Interest of America, p. 198.

30. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Strategy, Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911), p. 111.

31. Theodore Roosevelt, “Message of the President to the Senate and the House of Representatives,” December 6, 1904, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1904 (Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 1905), xli; Perkins, History, pp. 228–275.

32. Theodore Roosevelt to Elihu Root, June 7, 1904, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting Morison and others (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951–54), vol. 4, pp. 821–23.

33. Panikkar, India and the Indian Ocean, pp. 12–16; K. M. Panikkar, Geographical Factors in Indian History (Chaupatty, India: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1955), pp. 11, 53, 70.

34. For references to India's oceanic past by an eminent Indian statesman, see Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Calcutta, India: Signet Press, 1947), pp. 160–168.

35. Mohan, “What If Pakistan Fails?” p. 127.

36. Tested in 2004, in Operation “Summer Pulse,” the U.S. Navy's “Fleet Response Plan” would allow it to surge two-thirds of its vessels for overseas deployments, rather than the customary one-third. Summer Pulse represented an important modification of longstanding assumptions. Christopher P. Cavas, “U.S. Navy Heads to Port As Exercises Wind Down,” Defense News, 28 July 2004, available at http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3108048&C=asiapac.

37. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 92.

38. On the thinking behind offshore active defense, see State Council, People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2004, and State Council, People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2006. Also see Liu Huaqing, The Memoir of Liu Huaqing [Liu Huaqing Huiyilu] (Beijing, China: Liberation Army Publications, 2004); Ai Hongren, An Inside Look into the Chinese Communist Navy—Advancing toward the Blue-water Challenge, trans. Joint Publications Research Service, Washington, DC (Hong Kong, 1988), pp. 31–32, JPRS-CAR-90-052, 16 July 1990; and James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century: The Turn to Mahan (London: Routledge, 2007), especially chapter 2.