On 1 August 2024, Dr. Michael Malley, Senior Lecturer, Department of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, visited MP-IDSA to deliver his remarks on multilateral maritime security cooperation. Ambassador Sujan R. Chinoy, Director-General MP-IDSA, chaired the meeting, which was attended by scholars from various centres.

Amb. Chinoy commenced the proceedings with a brief introduction of Dr. Malley and the circumstances of their acquaintance at the recently-concluded Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference in Perth, Australia. He then turned the floor over to the Speaker. The Speaker also gave a brief introduction of the Naval Postgraduate School and his own educational background. He cited particularly the NPS’ role in training and capacity-building of the militaries of other countries as germane to his remarks.

The Speaker informed the audience that his remarks would primarily revolve around the challenges of maritime cooperation in the region and how they create opportunities for allies and partners of the US to work together. He held maritime security cooperation to be the product of the immediate post-Cold War era, when the threat of global nuclear conflict as an expression of superpower confrontation receded.  At the same time, he argued, maritime trade boomed as a result of the economic modernisation and integration of China and India, which in turn led to the growing convergence of trade and security agendas on the high seas. These trends led the spotlight to fall on navies, which were now tasked not to manage superpower conflict, but to prevent non-traditional security threats such as pirates, traffickers, terrorists and fishers engaged in Illegal, Unregulated and Unrecognised (IUU) fishing.

Dr. Malley noted that the world was now experiencing the ‘rapid proliferation of maritime security cooperation initiatives’ in which the US was involved to varying degrees. He pointed to some concrete examples in the form of initiatives mounted in the Caribbean against drug trafficking, the Indian Ocean against piracy, and the Southeast Asian region. All these initiatives, he pointed out, have been designed to be flexible in terms of membership and interoperability in light of the desires of several states in the region to preserve their sovereignty and strategic autonomy.

Grey zone conflict challenges this model of maritime security cooperation seriously, the Speaker noted. This is because grey zone activities may be present as classical non-traditional security threats, but in actuality are likely to have a state actor pulling the strings in the background. An example offered by him in this regard was the Chinese Coast Guard’s recent violent clashes with Philippine law enforcement personnel, where water cannons were used to disperse the latter, vis-à-vis the protection offered by it to the so-called ‘maritime militia’ which often forms the spearhead of China’s intrusions into disputed waters.

Broadly speaking, Dr. Malley noted, maritime security cooperation can be divided into three forms. The first form is interdiction or kinetic action cooperation, where the US along with its allies and partners uses its ships to actually interdict vessels conducting illegal actions. The second form is that of information-sharing, where states agree to collect, analyse and disseminate relevant intelligence to improve maritime domain awareness. Finally, the third type of cooperation involves capacity-building, where states such as the US (and increasingly Japan) help smaller countries which are presently incapable of monitoring their vast maritime domains to be able to do so. He concluded his remarks by expressing an interest in understanding how India approaches these forms of security cooperation and the concerns it has relating to them.

Amb. Chinoy thanked Dr. Malley for sharing his remarks and presented his view of India’s stance on these issues. He noted that while major power contestation is well underway in the modern era, there is a space for like-minded countries to band together. This may involve strengthening the traditional alliance structure in some cases, but goes beyond these to the creation of an ‘era of quasi-alliances’, which are not predicated on close synchronicity of thought on every count to achieve cooperation. Nevertheless, issues of sovereignty have the potential to create friction and present limits to cooperation.

In light of his previous remarks, Amb. Chinoy posed a few questions to the Speaker. Firstly, he invited the Speaker to clarify whether the US commitment to international legal instruments such as the UNCLOS could be relied upon in light of the US’ non-ratification of UNCLOS. Secondly, on the issue of Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS), he invited the Speaker to remark on whether friendly nations are expected to condone, or at least tolerate, US FONOPS conducted against them in the same manner as when they are conducted against countries such as China. Finally, he urged the Speaker to comment on the reasons behind the US’ absence from the International Seabed Authority.

Dr. Malley answered the last question first by noting that the US’ stance on the ISA and global efforts to codify common norms on seabed mining are rooted in the peculiar worldview of 1980s US politics, as is its stance on UNCLOS. He confessed that there should not be any expectation of a sudden change in the US position on this issue given the vagaries of US domestic politics, though there is ample support within the US armed forces as well as sections of its defence bureaucracy for ratification. He encouraged the audience to think of statements regarding the ‘rules-based international order’ made by US officials as forms of signalling support of UNCLOS as an element of that order.

Similarly, Dr. Malley characterised FONOPS as another ‘oddity’ of US foreign policy, devised as a legalistic effort to deny any other country in the international system the right to any exclusive national claim to the maritime commons under the belief that silence on such claims-making would be construed as assent. He also argued that there were significant doubts on the deterrence potential of FONOPS in the South China Sea region, where it acts a ‘tool with various impacts’ on the concerned countries.

The Chair then invited questions from the floor. Scholars from the Indian side obliged by asking the visitor a host of questions on topics ranging from particular policy stances adopted by the US government to the modalities of the India-US relationship. He answered most of them fully and frankly, engaging the audience for their views on the issue.

On a question from the Indian side regarding backlash to the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) programme from certain countries in Southeast Asia, the Speaker answered that behind such attitudes may lie a perception that existing information-sharing structures operating in Southeast Asia, which these countries happen to host presently, may be supplanted by a broader structure that could cause them to lose their primacy in the information supply chain.

To a question on the perception in many Asian countries that the US is steadily losing focus on the Indo-Pacific as it invests gargantuan amounts of aid in Ukraine and Israel, the Speaker answered that this only seemed to be the case. He noted the coming together of the naval chiefs of the United Kingdom, US, Australia and Japan at Perth to set up a mechanism to host a nuclear submarine maintenance base in the region as a promising development. He also offered the analysis that the differing policy preferences of various incumbent Presidents may also be a factor in creating this impression.

In response to a question concerning the US Armed Forces’ preparation for combatting climate change, the Speaker stated that the US Armed Forces, especially the Navy, are extremely cognisant of the dangers of climate change and have set up varying mechanisms to account for it in their strategic plans, such as appointing an Assistant Secretary on Climate Change at the Pentagon and conducting apolitical studies on the likely impacts of climate change.

Another question posed to Dr. Malley concerned the US military’s assessment of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)’s exercises around Taiwan Strait. He replied to the question by agreeing that the US was closely monitoring such exercises, and that its conclusion is that the PLAN’s capacity to blockade Taiwan is increasing. This is true not only of its maritime interdiction capacity, but also the capacity to mount shore-based attacks. This has ensured that US forces concentrated in Japan and the Republic of Korea are also within range of land-based missiles. As a result, the US military is now preparing to enact a strategy of ‘distributed lethality’, by which these US forces are being broken up into smaller detachments and distributed across the First Island Chain so as to ensure their survivability.

In a second round of questions, the Chair Amb. Chinoy inquired of the Speaker as to what he would consider as a ‘red line’ for the US military that would trigger intervention by it against China in the SCS. He noted that the lack of a red line is cause for concern on the part of several actors across the region, as it does not encourage confidence in the US’ commitments.

The Speaker in his response first flagged the criticality of the question posed, but could not reassure the audience that any such ‘red line’ could be clearly defined at present. He argued that while an attack on the Senkaku Islands would trigger Article 5 of the US-Japan Security Treaty, making US intervention inevitable, it is not at all clear whether an attack on Taiwan’s offshore islands (such as Jinmen and Matsu) would constitute grounds for intervention. He hypothesised that the trigger for intervention in Taiwan would most likely be legal-political.

After Amb. Chinoy delivered his closing remarks, the meeting came to an end.

Report was prepared by Dr. Arnab Dasgupta, Research Analyst, East Asia Centre, MP-IDSA.