China’s investment in strategically located Gwadar could impact economic and maritime security interests in the Asia-Pacific region.
Alamay
Pakistan’s long dream for a deep-water port at Gwadar has come true. The port is strategically located at the western edge of Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coastline in restive Balochistan province, near the Strait of Hormuz. China Overseas Ports Holding Company Ltd. has completed the initial phases of construction of the port and plans to grow its capacity to more than 400 million tons of cargo annually.1 Gwadar is where international power politics, economics, and maritime security interests in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region converge.
Dreaming of Gwadar
In a September 1973 meeting at the White House with President Richard Nixon, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto “sought U.S. aid to construct the port at Gwadar and offered its use to the U.S. Navy.”2 While President Nixon politely entertained the proposal, the United States took no great interest in having a naval facility in Balochistan; it would stir up the Soviets, Indians, and Afghans without greatly advancing U.S. interests. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, on the other hand, strongly endorsed the idea when he met Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in China later that year. The U.S. Navy instead decided to build a base for its Indian Ocean operations on British-owned Diego Garcia Atoll.3 In China, the idea of a deep-water port at Gwadar was never forgotten.4
Far from the Indian border, Gwadar had long been in the gaze of the Pakistan Navy. Its strategic location and geography make Gwadar attractive. Located on a natural hammerhead-shaped peninsula protruding into the Arabian Sea, the port once was a small, sleepy coastal town with a population of about 43,850 in 1998.5 Until the end of the last century, the only visitors to the port from seaward were ships, submarines, and other vessels of the Pakistan Navy. The country has long understood that the port could be used as a strategic outpost to monitor maritime traffic along international shipping lanes, particularly Indian shipping (much as India now intends to monitor Chinese maritime movements by establishing an elaborate surveillance base in the Seychelles). As a military base to the west, Gwadar was also considered a useful alternative to the port of Karachi. It offered operational flexibility to the Pakistan Navy and was relatively secure from India.
At the turn of the century, when plans first surfaced to convert Gwadar into a pure commercial enterprise, the Pakistan Navy quickly offered up to the government the vast tracts of local land it owned. Only a small portion was retained for possible subsequent use. In return for its acceptance of commercial interests at Gwadar, the navy managed to develop four bases along the coast at Pasni, Ormara, Gwadar, and Jiwani. These facilities have led to the expansion of Pakistan’s maritime operations and strategic outreach, which has been magnified by China’s investment in Gwadar.
A Belt, A Road, and A Port
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—a $46 billion string of projects—is the flagship for China’s spectacular One Belt, One Road initiative. Unveiled at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in 2014, One Belt, One Road is expected to disperse more than $100 billion through China’s newly instituted Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.6 The “belt” reflects the continental component, comprising networks of railroads, overland highways, oil and gas pipelines, and ancillary development projects.7 China’s Maritime Silk Road initiative complements One Belt, One Road by linking the sea lines through a network of ports and other coastal infrastructure originating from China’s eastern seaboard and traversing an arc across Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf, East Africa, the Mediterranean, and terminating at Piraeus, Greece, Venice, Italy, and Rotterdam, Netherlands in Europe, and Mombasa, Kenya in Africa.8
Gwadar forms a perfect intersection in the middle of the belt and the road. CPEC will link Kashgar in China’s western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region with the port of Gwadar. On land, a 3,000-kilometer-long corridor will feature three different, independent paths. The western, central, and eastern axes will include a network of roads, railways, and fiber optic links. Each track will be dappled with special economic zones and power projects. Stretching from Kashgar to Gwadar, the network will extend from Xi’an in central China, through Central Asia and Russia, with one artery crossing Kazakhstan and the other through Mongolia, both linking with the Trans-Siberian Railway and reaching out to Moscow, Rotterdam, and Venice.
The Maritime Silk Road will not only advance China’s maritime commercial interests, but it will allow the Chinese Navy to establish a robust foothold in the Indian Ocean. Pakistan’s coastline is becoming a crucial staging post for China’s takeoff as a naval power, extending its reach from the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.9 Pakistan’s ports, which overlook some of the world’s busiest oil shipping lanes, are key building blocks in a “string of pearls.” Pakistan plays a central role in China’s transition from regional power to global power.
The security implications for Pakistan—given Gwadar’s role as the crown jewel in the string of pearls—are significant. In July 2016, the Pakistan Navy kick-started its biennial exercise Shamsheer-e-Bahr (Sword of the Sea). A conceptual undertaking lasting between seven and eight weeks, the exercise is based on contemporary and future war settings. It enables the Pakistan Navy to develop possible response options against the entire range of threats. The final responses are later tested at sea during the Pakistan Navy’s biennial Seaspark exercise. All of this culminates in a security reappraisal and development of strategy by the service. Shamsheer-e-Bahr looked forward to the 2019–2022 time frame and explored the possible threat continuum from nuclear to conventional challenges at one end, to sub-conventional and hybrid threats at the other. The latter gained significant currency in Pakistan’s maritime security construct, with mounting evidence pointing to the possibility that hostile forces may converge against CPEC and launch commercial and military operations at Gwadar.
Balancing India and the United States
With the anticipated spike in maritime commercial activity, the Chinese and Pakistani navies are certain to seek a balance of power in the Indian Ocean. CPEC, at least partially, is in response to the United States’ “Pivot to the Pacific.” It aims to counterbalance the expanding strategic nuclear, defense, and economic ties between Washington and New Delhi that Beijing perceives as an effort to contain China.10 Recent overtures to India have reinforced China’s concerns.
Former President Barack Obama paid two visits to New Delhi, unprecedented for any sitting U.S. president. Since the U.S. publication of a Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific was issued in January 2016, there has been an upswing in nuclear and defense ties between the United States and India. Earlier, in June 2015, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signed the New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship.11 The secretary’s shuttle diplomacy with India (four trips since 2009) culminated in April 2016 with an agreement for establishing a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement.12 Under the agreement, the two sides can access supplies, spare parts, and services from each other’s land facilities, air bases, and ports, which can then be reimbursed.13 The agreement will further cement the perception that India is a front-line state in U.S. efforts to neutralize China’s assertiveness in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.14
China’s military strategy white paper published in 2015 clearly states, “the traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned and great importance has to be attached to managing the seas and oceans and protecting maritime rights and interests.”15 While Chinese military strategy documents identify the “near seas”—the area inside the first and second island chains extending off China’s coast—as a primary interest, the “far seas” also strongly bear on China’s national security. The far seas are believed to be the Indian Ocean region. China’s “Blue Book” for the Indian Ocean—while not an official policy document—seems to mirror Beijing’s actual Indian Ocean strategy.16 While the book suggests that China’s Indian Ocean policy is guided by its commercial and economic interests, it clearly highlights two military imperatives.
• China would not permit any single power to dominate the Indian Ocean region. It is prepared for jostling with such powers to establish a fragile balance of power.
• If India and/or the United States impede the attainment of its objectives, China would not desist from resorting to confrontation.17
China’s ability to accomplish these imperatives clearly requires access to bases and logistics support in the Indian Ocean. With China’s massive investment in CPEC, Pakistan’s ports have become pivotal to China’s security interests. Given the rapidly unfolding new alignments and realignments in the region epitomized by Beijing dropping anchor at Gwadar, the U.S. Navy may need to rethink its priorities and its strategy.
1. “‘Today marks dawn of new era’: CPEC dreams come true as Gwadar port goes operational,” 13 November 2016, www.dawn.com/news/1296098.
2. CDR Muhammad Azam Khan, Pakistan Navy (Ret.), “The United States, the North Arabian Sea, and Pakistan,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 133, no. 5 (May 2007), 39.
3. Dennis Kux, Disenchanted Allies (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2001), 209.
4. Khan, “The United States, the North Arabian Sea, and Pakistan,” 39.
5. Air Commodore Jamal Hussain, Pakistan Air Force (Ret.), “China Pakistan Economic Corridor,” CAPS Paper 105, November 2015, 5.
6. Aiysha Safdar, “The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor—Its Maritime Dimension and Pakistan Navy,” Strategic Studies Quarterly Journal of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, vol. 35, no. 3 (Autumn 2015), 4.
7. VADM Taj M. Khattak, Pakistan Navy, (Ret.), “Effective Seaward Defence-Prerequisite for CPEC’s Success,”Defence Journal (April 2016), 32–33.
8. Lucy Hornby, “‘China’s One Belt One Road’ plan greeted with caution,” Financial Times, 20 November 2015, www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5c022b50-78b7-11e5-933d-.
9. Andrew Small, The China-Pakistan Axis—Asia’s New Geopolitics, (London: Hurst and Company Publishers, 2015), 1.
10. Safdar, “The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” 5.
11. PTI, “India-US defence ties closest ever: US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter,” The Economic Times, 4 December 2016, economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/india-us-defence-ties-closest-ever-us-defence-secretary-ashton-carter/articleshow/55788988.cms.
12. Susan Singh, “India, US sign key defence pact to use each other’s bases for repair, supplies,” The Indian Express, 31 August 2016, indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/manohar-parrikar-signs-key-logistics-defence-pact-with-us-3004581/.
13. Ibid.
14. Muhammad Waqas, “Asia’s strategic imbalance,”Daily Times, 19 April 2016.
15. Document, “China’s Military Strategy,” USNI News, 26 May 2015, news.usni.org/2015/05/26/document-chinas-military-strategy.
16. Abhijit Singh, “China’s ‘Blue Book’ for the Indian Ocean,”Daily Mirror, 26 June 2013, www.dailymirror.lk/business/ features/31520-chinas-new-blue-book-for-the-indian-ocean.html.
17. Kamlesh K. Agnihotri, Gurpeet S. Khurana, Maritime Power Building—New ‘Mantra’ for China’s Rise (New Delhi: National Maritime Foundation , 2015), 71.