The Neglected Ocean

In two of the world’s three great oceans— the Atlantic and the Pacific—the U. S. Navy is the undisputed policeman and protector. In these two, furthermore, American sea power is graphically described as the cement of the free world alliances which binds together the fifteen nations of the North Atlantic area, the twenty-one RIO Pact nations of the western hemisphere, and the five nations of Southeast Asia, as well as the bond which unites us with the Republic of China, Korea, the Philippines, and Japan.

By vivid contrast, in the third great ocean of the world—the neglected Indian Ocean— American sea power is barely visible, weakly represented, and only spasmodically present. Yet it is clear that this historic and strategic ocean, which washes the shores of the volatile, oil-rich Middle East, the shores of awakening Africa, the triangular coastlines of restive India, the threatened shores of Southeast Asia, and the thousands of islands of strife-torn Indonesia, is to become an increasingly important arena in forthcoming decades.

The current “cold war” has been described as a contest between the free world and the Communist world for the allegiance of the uncommitted world. The free world, numbering roughly 800,000,000 people and largely encompassing the area of western Europe and the western hemisphere, is locked in mortal contest with Communist imperialism. This enslaved portion of the world also numbers about 800,000,000 people and occupies the Eurasian land mass from the Baltic Sea to the South China Sea. The remainder of the world, variously called “neutralist,” “uncommitted,” “unaligned,” or “independent,” is that arc of land around the Indian Ocean—Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, containing approximately 1,500,000,000 people. If this latter area willingly sides with or is absorbed by Communism, western civilization is doomed to insignificance, if not extinction. The converse is equally true.

Perhaps this capsule of the current struggle, like most generalizations, is a bit too broad and simple, but it does draw attention to the vital, even critical, strategic importance of the Indian Ocean.

Geography of the Indian Ocean

To better appreciate its importance, consider the geography of this third largest ocean. Despite all that has been written about the Arctic and the Antarctic, which have little connection with the inhabited land, both of these are only seas when compared to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Unlike the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which run 31,000,000 square miles). The sea distances are great—Capetown to Singapore: 5,631 nautical miles; Capetown to Calcutta: 5,480 nautical miles; Aden to Karachi: 1,470 nautical miles; Suez to Jakarta: 5,510 nautical miles; Kuwait to Suez: 3,301 nautical miles.

There are several important geographical features of the Indian Ocean, one of the most important being its six major bays or bights: (1) The Red Sea;¹ (2) The Arabian Sea; (3) The Persian Gulf; (4) The Bay of Bengal; (5) The Gulf of Aden; and, (6) The Gulf of Malacca. Several great rivers, many of them of great strategic as well as historic significance, flow into the Indian Ocean—the ancient Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq (in whose Mesopotamian Valley, the Garden of Eden is traditionally located and man is supposed to have originated); India’s Indus, Irawaddy, Salween, and of course the sacred Ganges; East Africa’s Zambesi, Limpopo, Ruvuma, and Rufiji. In each case these rivers are enfolded in rich and fertile valleys and many of them have hydroelectric power potential of strategic importance.

Of naval importance in the Indian Ocean is the wind and weather. Because the lofty and mountainous, terrain to the north disturbs the normal wind pattern, and because the Indian Ocean lies largely between 20°N and 30°S, the Ocean’s character is largely tropical—normally without ice and icebergs,² with predictable and reliable weather, and relatively free of fog. The “roaring forties” and the “shrieking fifties” lie to the south.

Notwithstanding, the Indian Ocean has its tempests, its gales, its “milk seas,”³ its sandstorms, and its calms. It also has its fables and myths—for example, the ghost ship Flying Dutchman of the Cape of Good Hope (whose tormented captain, condemned for impiety, endlessly sails his ship over the Indian Ocean, bringing bad luck to the sailors who see her) is one such myth. Sinbad the Sailor operated in the Persian Gulf.

Hurricanes are prevalent from November to March in the area of Mauritius and have been known to become almost stationary. One particularly violent hurricane hung over the islands of Mauritius and Reunion for five days, dumping forty inches of rain on the land.

Finally, the Indian Ocean is famous for its two monsoons—the northeast and the southwest. (The word “monsoon” means “season”.) Each lasts approximately five or six months. The northeast monsoon of cold, dry air off the Asiatic mainland is the Ocean’s trade wind—gentle, gracious, and dependable. Indeed, it is the wind which gave birth to open-ocean seafaring. The southwest monsoon of moisture-laden ocean air brings periods of heavy rains, clouds, rough seas, and poor visibility from June through October.

Another key geopolitical feature of the Indian Ocean is its islands—huge ones like Madagascar and Ceylon, smaller but highly strategic ones like Socotra at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden; Zanzibar and Seychelles off East Africa (where Yankee whalers hunted), Mauritius, Rodriguez and Reunion near the Tropic of Capricorn, Bahrein in the Persian Gulf, the Andamans and Nicobar islands off Burma.

The riches of Ceylon are the historical backdrop for western civilization. With its garnets, moonstones, amethysts, sapphires, and rubies, its ebony and satinwoods, its legendary spices, and in modern times, its rice, rubber, and tea,⁴ Ceylon’s riches have been eagerly sought for centuries. Highly important too are its fine harbors of Trincomalee (with its naval base) and Colombo (an artificial harbor) which the British Navy and Royal Air Force evacuated only in 1957. (However, the British are now constructing a base in the Maldives to replace Trincomalee.)

Madagascar, with its fine natural harbor and naval base of Diego Suarez, is one of the world’s largest islands—almost 1,000 miles long and 250 miles wide—but, even today, still a relatively backward land. The island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf floats in an ocean of salt water, beneath which is another ocean of oil. (Not so well remembered since the discovery of oil are the Persian Gulfs fabulous pearls.)

Still another physical feature of this Afro- Asian area is its lack of road and rail transportation—which places a premium on sea transportation. Distances by land are great and the terrain is unusually rugged. Conquest and trade, therefore, have traditionally moved by sea.

Another geographic feature of the Indian Ocean is its scarcity of natural harbors. There are fewer good harbors in this ocean than in any comparable length of coastline in the world.

But the prime geopolitical feature of the Indian Ocean is its almost land-locked condition and its vulnerability to control from only five key points: The Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Bab el Mandeb Strait (the “Gate of Affliction”) at the south end of the Red Sea, the Strait of Ormuz at the south end of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Malacca between Malaya and Indonesia, and Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. The first of these sits athwart the shipping routes around Africa;⁵ the second guards the southern end of the Suez Canal (and the Suez crisis of 1956 highlighted again the great importance of these routes); Ormuz Strait guards the shipping routes from the oil-rich lands of Persia and Arabia; the fourth and fifth control seaborne traffic from the Western Pacific.

With such riches and such strategical importance, it is surprising why the Indian Ocean has received such little consideration in modern American naval strategy. But even Mackinder, the founder of the “world island” concept, regarded the Indian Ocean only as a bridge between the Atlantic and Pacific. Haushofer’s Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean became a virtual text for Japanese naval strategy and Haushofer’s amplifications of Mackinder’s ideas for Eurasia are well known, but he gave scant attention to the Indian Ocean. Even Admiral Mahan considered the Indian Ocean only as part of his doctrine of “the indivisible sea.” The attention of all three was largely focused on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Indian Ocean Naval History

The story of the lands adjoining the Indian Ocean is a catalog of sea power. Centuries ago, the ocean was a highway of migration. The Camoro Islands, for example, are peopled by natives who bear Jewish features and characteristics and have such names as Moses, Lot, Abraham, and Gideon. Madagascar was populated by pre-Malayan groups two thousand years ago. One of the greatest sea migrations in history was the voyage in A.D. 603 of more than 5,000 Indians to Java in a fleet of more than 100 ships. The Prince of Gujarat, with his tribal followers, reached Java in four months. A second expedition, with 2,000 additional Indians, followed as the second wave and in a few years a flourishing trade was begun between India, Java, and Ceylon.

There is much evidence to indicate that the Indian Ocean was the first highway of trade. The early discovery of the northeast monsoon produced the world’s first open ocean navigation, and the Arabs and Hindus were soon conducting a brisk trade. Oddly enough, in the second century A.D., Hindu sailors could haul a rich cargo to Italy by sea in sixteen weeks, taking advantage of the monsoon trade winds and transloading their cargo from the Red Sea to the Nile River. Strange as it may seem, India was thus closer to Europe in 200 A.D. than it was until the Suez Canal was dug in 1869!

In addition to being the highway of migration and trade, the Indian Ocean was also the highway of conquest. In 323 B.C., Nearchus, the Greek Admiral, transported parts of Alexander’s army from the Indus River to the Persian Gulf. The Turk, Bir Kissim, invaded India by the sea in the eighth century A.D. The Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British all used the Indian Ocean for establishing their colonial empires in the area. Most recently, Japan employed sea power for expanding her “Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Only such defeat as the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway prevented the eventual invasion of Ceylon and India.

The fabulous wealth of the Indies also made the Indian Ocean an area of piracy, as well as being the ocean of conquest, migration, and trade. Both Pliny and Marco Polo recorded the piracy of by-gone centuries. The Indian Ocean’s spices, jewels, ivory, gold, and slaves have always been coveted by pirates. (Today, the lure is just as strong, but oil must be added to the above list.) In American naval history, we are prone to think of our own West Indies, or the Barbary Coasts, as the original pirates’ nests, but, in fact, the Indian Ocean was the original and most famous ocean of piracy. Captains Kidd, Avery, Roberts, and Tew all operated in Indian waters.

Modern sea power in the Indian Ocean began with the Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama, who accomplished in 1489 what Columbus failed to do: he found a sea route to India. Later, the farsighted Portuguese strategist, Affonso de Albuquerque, was first to realize that there were three main doorways into the Indian Ocean—Ormuz Strait, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, and Malacca Strait. Building a small colony at Goa, on India’s West Coast, the Portuguese erected a commercial empire by controlling these three points.

Portuguese control was supplanted successively by Dutch, then French, and finally, in 1784, British naval power. From that time until the fall of Singapore in 1942, the Royal British Navy controlled the Indian Ocean completely and unobtrusively, making it a veritable British Lake. It is the Royal Navy’s diminishing sea power which is creating the present vacuum.

Communism’s Interest

Communist interest in the Indian Ocean area (both Russian and Red Chinese) is ancient and well-documented. For example, Red China’s ambitions to extend her control over Southeast Asia can be traced through many centuries. Nepal and Tibet, the Indo- Chinese and Malayan peninsula are plainly future areas for Red Chinese conquest. Burma, South Viet-Nam, Thailand, and Laos are areas which can help feed China’s exploding population. While Mr. K. M. Pannikar⁶ was thinking of Nationalist China when he wrote in 1945, “There is every reason to believe that a victorious China will embark on a naval career,” the warning is certainly even more applicable to the Red Chinese.

As far as Russian ambitions are concerned, these can be documented as far back as the early days of the Tsars who dreamed of a warm water port on the Persian Gulf. But considering only recent evidence, the November, 1940, diplomatic exchanges of the unholy alliance between Hitler and Stalin are illuminating. When the Nazis asked the Communists to submit their “spoils list” for free world territory in exchange for their cooperation with the Nazis, Foreign Minister Molotov made a revealing reply: “The area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf should be recognized as the center of aspirations of the Soviet Union,” he wrote.

In 1945, in fact, the Soviets moved southward to snare Iran behind the Iron Curtain. Success in this venture would have placed the Soviets astride the Persian Gulf. Turkey was also threatened and intimidated. Only a firm stand by Iran in the UN and strong backing of the United States drove the Reds behind their own borders.

Certain Indians have recognized Russia’s historical interest and yearning for access to the warm Mediterranean to their west and the Indian Ocean to the south. Remembering the World War II flow of lend-lease aid to southern Russia via the Persian Gulf, Mr. Pannikar wrote in 1945: “It was the uninterrupted supply of material into Basra and its transport across Persia that rendered the heroic defense of Russia possible. The lesson is not likely to be forgotten. The possibility of the presence of a naval power of the magnitude, resources, and persistence of Russia on the Persian Gulf is in itself sufficient to revolutionize the strategy in respect of the Indian Ocean.”

It should also be noted that today, 1958, the Soviets enjoy a transit agreement with Iran which permits the rail shipment of sealed and bonded cargo across Iran from the USSR border at Julfa through Tabriz and Teheran to the Persian Gulf port of Khorramshahr—the aforementioned Lend-Lease route.⁷ This arrangement is pleasing to Iran since it promises them potential overland access to European markets.

If the Soviets succeed in reaching the Persian Gulf, not only will they have brought Middle East oil under their control, but NATO and Turkey will be outflanked, the bridge to Africa will be opened, and the Indian Ocean will wash their back doorstep. It is not too much to say that when the Soviets reach the Indian Ocean they have taken a giant step toward ultimate victory in the world struggle.

U. S. Objectives in the Indian Ocean

What is the objective of the United States in the Indian Ocean area which the creation of a U. S. South Asian Fleet would serve? Simply stated, our objective is to assist the peaceful growth and development of the rising nations of that area, enabling them to remain free and become strong while protecting them from the imperialism and slavery of Communism. American sea power in the Indian Ocean can provide the same climate of independence, freedom, and free enterprise which has long guarded western Europe, Greece, and Turkey in the Mediterranean, the new nations of North Africa, and the island nations of the Pacific.

If sea power is to protect the Indian Ocean and prevent it from eventually becoming by- default a Communist Lake, it follows that this sea power must be American sea power. No other nation can supply it. While the British still maintain Singapore, a small Eastern Fleet, and an even smaller East Indies Naval Command at Aden,⁸ an examination of recent British White Papers and Brassey’s Annual reveals that the Royal Navy will number approximately 65 operational ships (frigates, destroyers, Darings, cruisers, and carriers, and 99,000 men), enough to place only a token fleet in the area.⁹

In 1945 Mr. Pannikar acknowledged India’s dependence on British sea power (then considerable) and expressed his hopes for the future in these words: “ . . an oceanic policy for India is possible only in closest collaboration and association with Britain. An independent India cannot for at least half a century or even more undertake so great a responsibility—it will be nothing short of suicide for [Britain] to withdraw from [the Indian Ocean] area.”

What can American sea power contribute to the United States objective in the Indian Ocean?

First, it can provide the same stabilizing influence which made the ocean a peaceful lake for 165 years during Pax Britannica. By making periodic visits to the major ports of the Indian Ocean, a tremendous impression would be made. Such a force may, as the Sixth Fleet has done often in the Mediterranean, prevent trouble before it starts, merely by being present.

In the case of an emergency, American sea power can control the major points that control the Indian Ocean, providing the ASW coverage,¹⁰ the mine warfare control, shipping surveillance, and convoying that supports freedom of the seas.¹¹

What sort of forces would the U. S. need for a South Asian fleet? Such a fleet should be equal in mission and importance (but not in size) to the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. Such a fleet might consist of a single attack carrier, two cruisers, a command and communication ship (especially necessary in this distant and isolated ocean) two squadrons of destroyers, one or two submarines, plus amphibious lift for a reduced Battalion Landing Team, or preferably a helicopter carrier (CVHA) with embarked helicopters and approximately 1,000 Marines. One ASW patrol squadron, plus an occasional visit from a HUK group would also be needed. CINCNELM’s responsibilities for the Middle East would pass to the Commander South Asian Fleet.

This new fleet would be commanded by a four-star admiral, flying his flag at sea and under whose command the present COMID- EASTFORCE¹² would serve. The MEF would continue to consist of present forces—one AVP and four destroyers, deducted from the total forces given above. In the eastern Indian Ocean, another subordinate force—Commander Southeast Asian Force—consisting of one of the two cruisers, plus one division of destroyers, under command of a rear admiral would be responsible from the Bay of Bengal eastward to Indonesia.

Such a South Asian Fleet could cruise the Indian Ocean in much the same manner that the Sixth and Seventh Fleets roam the Mediterranean and Pacific, having no permanent base and largely dependent on mobile logistic support but using, among others, the base facilities at Diego Suarez and Singapore, just as the Sixth Fleet occasionally uses Malta and Gibraltar for emergency repairs. The South Asian Fleet would make frequent visits to all ports in the area and exercise with other navies of the area on a request basis.

Conclusion

It is now becoming clear that the present cold war threat posed by the Soviets is a great deal more than thermonuclear ICBMs and intercontinental bombers aimed at the United States. The fact that Russia’s immediate geographical goal may be the area washed by the Indian Ocean has not yet been fully understood by the free world. The effect of the Sputniks has been, unfortunately, to bedazzle and blind us, to divert our attention and energy upon duplicating and surpassing the Soviets in the missile-outer-space race and to obsess us once again with the problem of deterring and preparing for a possible total nuclear war. To be sure, this danger exists and this task must be faced—but other threats also need to be faced and solved with equal vigor, finance, and foresight. The 1958 Soviet threat is not primarily total nuclear war but limited war of a subtle and sophisticated kind. In fact, the Soviet threat is not primarily military but economic, psychological, and political. The ultimate Communist target is certainly the USA, but, immediate target is undoubtedly the fringe areas of Asia which are washed by the Indian Ocean.

Remember what Khrushchev said recently: “We declare war on the United States in the peaceful field of trade,” he told a Hearst newspaper group in a Moscow interview, “The threat to the United States is not the ICBM but in the field of peaceful production.”

We find this bland challenge almost too simple to believe and search instead for something more sinister and subtle. But suppose Mr. K. is speaking the truth, what does this blunt challenge mean for us and where shall the contest be waged? If the Soviets can bring the areas of the Indian Ocean under Communist control, the precarious balance between East and West tilts overwhelmingly in their favor. An encircled India could not resist Soviet domination; neither could the remainder of Southeast Asia nor the restive and race-conscious nations of Africa, nor Japan and Korea in the east continue to resist. Europe in the west would shrink into isolation, and the United States would be forced to retreat to its own hemisphere.

It is therefore plain that the future, like the past, of the lands adjoining the Indian Ocean area depends heavily upon sea power. “Whoever controls the Indian Ocean has India at his mercy,” wrote Pannikar in 1945. “India cannot exist without the Indian Ocean being free—the Indian Ocean will be one of the major problems of the future.” Nehru has stated quite accurately that the period of India’s greatness in history has always coincided with those periods “when she looked outwards on the outer world.” Still another Indian leader looked to sea power as the bedrock of freedom for that area: “Sea power has in the past been an instrument of Imperialism,” said Secretary of the States Ministry C. S. Venkatachar in 1953. “If that power is utilized for the maintenance of democratic ideals, liberty, human freedom and deeper understanding between East and West, it will be the strongest link uniting the free peoples of the world. Sea power based on the unity of the ocean may powerfully aid and promote the unity of humanity. ...”

To protect and insure the type of economic and political efforts we are now making in the Indian Ocean area to such nations as India and Pakistan, as well as many others, it is only prudent that sea power be present to protect this investment.

The time is overdue for the U. S. Navy to take a fresh look at the “neglected Ocean.”