Maritime Security: From the Seabed to the Surface
The contents of this essay are based on conversations during the 7th India-US Forum
Evidence indicates that the PRC is preparing for a military confrontation with the US, and their goal is to eject the Americans from the Western Pacific.
President Xi appears to be politically conditioning the Chinese population for the possibility of war, and has acknowledged the role his dual circulation economic strategy has to play in China’s security calculus. The PLA is developing its capacities—nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, attack submarines, space architecture, a naval base in Cambodia with a pier long enough to accommodate an aircraft carrier, etc.
The US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) assesses that China already has operational control over the South China Sea (SCS), but a victory over the US in the Western Pacific would give it overall control even in a conflict over the SCS. This would have significant ramifications for India because there would be nothing preventing the Chinese from projecting military power through the SCS into the Indian Ocean region (IOR).
SCS is a theater that is always active. The Chinese are aggressive with gray-zone activities vis-a-vis the Philippines and Taiwan to exert coercive influence and drive wedges in relationships. There is a narrative that doubts the possibility of an imminent multi-actor armed conflict in the SCS because of the economic interdependence between China and the US.
However, economic interdependence does not prevent war, nor does it automatically cease in a war. It continues through intermediaries. In the event of a war between the US and China, trade would still continue. Indeed, direct and indirect trade continues between Ukraine and Russia. Semiconductor purchases by Russia from Armenia, and by both Ukraine and Russia from Kazakhstan have skyrocketed over the last couple of years.
There have been murmurs about a Chinese plan to invade Taiwan by 2027. President Xi has denied this to President Biden, but this means very little because of the high incentives for dissimulation in the Chinese system. When Biden brought up Taiwan as the most dangerous issue in Sino-American relations and stressed the need for a peaceful resolution, Xi responded that “peace is well and good but this needs to be resolved”. Beijing dislikes President Lai Ching-te and his Democratic Progressive Party, and the outcome of Taiwan’s election has made the possibility of reconciliation between the island and PRC more remote.
If the US is defeated in a regional conflict on Taiwan, it is plausible that many ASEAN countries will bandwagon with China. The shift towards the US of countries like the Philippines is predicated on betting on the winning horse, and this calculation will be upended if the US becomes the weaker choice. In such a scenario, ASEAN countries will create highways of access in the IOR for Beijing, leaving India without a layered defense against the PLA.
Securing the IOR is important for India, but the US does not perceive a similar urgency to increase its military strength in the region. Similarly, the priority for the US is securing the Western Pacific, which does not raise the same security concerns for India. The PRC has inserted its footprint in both regions.
It could be argued that in the event of a maritime conflict in which the Americans effectively defend the first island chain and India holds ground in the IOR, would be to the mutual benefit of both the US and India. The Americans seem to have this eventuality in mind as they outsource the security of the IOR to India, and hope that this will contribute to deterrence in the Western Pacific.
This outlook that any maritime conflict with China would involve the Western Pacific and IOR simultaneously, while probable, has resulted in a view in Washington and Europe that the entire Indo-Pacific is but one theater. This position is completely incorrect. The security imperatives in Oceania, Central Pacific, the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean are varied. There is need for like-minded countries across these theaters to coordinate and combine their forces.
Three Pacific Islands countries—the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)—underpin the entire defense architecture of the US in the Pacific. These countries have signed Compacts of Free Association (CoFA) with the US, which enable the defense of the first and second island chains, resupply for Japan and South Korea, and allow freedom of operation from Hawaii to Guam. People of these countries can work in the US, join the US military, play in the US baseball team, and have US zip codes. Two out of the three countries recognize Taiwan.
The defense components in these agreements are extensive, second only to the defence arrangements in the US homeland, but they are voluntary, so the signatories can withdraw at any time. Financial and services components are codified in CoFA, and unlike the voluntary defence elements, CoFA is periodically renewed. CoFA expired in September 2023 and was stuck in the US Congress for nearly six months before it was passed in March 2024.
China knows these three countries are the key to cutting off the US’s access across the board in the Pacific. While CoFA was stuck in Congress, the Chinese started pumping money into Palau’s tourism sector, until they accounted for half of the sector’s business—at which point they conditioned infusion of further aid/ business on Palau derecognizing Taiwan. The current President of Palau is up for re-election in November 2024 and if he loses it is likely the replacement will succumb to Chinese pressure and flip on Taiwan.
On the ground, the tide seems to be turning. The Senate in Palau has passed a resolution against the deployment of US Patriot missiles to protect the site of an over-the-horizon radar installation—a direct outcome of the Chinese indicating to Palau that a radar installation is redundant since all it means is that they would have to bomb Palau half a minute before they strike Taiwan.
There are similar stories in FSM and RMI.
In RMI, two Chinese agents attempted to set up a country within a country, and came within one vote of bringing down the government. The agents were eventually charged in the US, where they pleaded guilty, but one of them was deported back to RMI just before the elections of 2023, where she continued operations.
The former President of FSM, David Panuelo, wrote three letters between March 2022 and March 2023 to senior leaders of his country and to the leaders of the Solomon Islands and Pacific Island countries, detailing threats emanating from Beijing, including money flows from China to bribe political leaders as part of a strategy to build contingencies for Taiwan.
If current patterns continue, the US is at risk of losing the Pacific either due to a lack of understanding of the paramount strategic importance of these locations, or through sheer ineptitude. If these three countries cease to be a safe zone for the US, the entire defense architecture of INDOPACOM will be compromised.
The key is to not look at these islands merely as pieces in a larger maritime security architecture. There needs to be a more comprehensive approach to development and building domestic capacity in the region. The effort to block Chinese access points has to come from building an economic strategic backbone in these countries.
The Chinese have geopolitical intentions but they speak the language of development. India and other Asian powers tend to speak the language of contestation which does not resonate with these smaller countries.
India does not generally prioritize security in the South and Central Pacific, but it is the only country that can position itself as an alternative to China in development and economic schemes. For instance, an Indian film production crew shooting in Palau itself would create an economic boost that would disincentivize Palau’s reliance on China for their tourism sector.
Collective maritime competence needs to be built in both the IOR and the Pacific. India, Australia, Japan, and France are all making substantive efforts in the IOR, but they need to coordinate especially in assistance and training efforts for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the group of 39 states and 18 associate members of UN regional commissions scattered across the world’s oceans, including the Caribbean and the Atlantic.
Coordinated efforts and timely delivery of assistance, customized to the requirements of the country in question, is the only way to build lasting credibility. The bigger players cannot just dump platforms and capabilities on the SIDS without making an assessment of their short-term and long-term concerns. More often than not, the primary concern of a SID is outside the realm of security. Rising sea levels due to climate change threaten the very existence of these islands, and top the list of their concerns.
Maritime frontiers have not just spread horizontally across the oceans or within the IOR, they have spread vertically too, making the seabed the next frontier.
The Nord Stream pipeline supplying Russian gas to Germany, which was destroyed in a series of explosions in September 2022, was a piece of critical infrastructure that was easily accessible at a depth of only 80 to 110 meters. The Baltic connector incident of October 2023, in which a Finland-Estonia gas pipeline was damaged, occurred at a depth of just 60 to 70 meters. It would take only eight attack points to take Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia off the Internet. The communications infrastructure is highly concentrated and very easy to attack, because the locations are known.
If the PRC invades Taiwan, one of its first actions would be to cut off the Internet. Only 14 cables connect Taiwan to the rest of the world. There are secondary systems that Taiwan could activate but it would be a substantial downgrade. Key energy infrastructure across the SCS and the Gulf of Thailand, and connecting the Japanese archipelago sit at depths that can be accessed easily with commercial systems.
The responsibility for securing undersea infrastructure currently lies with the companies that install them. Governments have not taken up the mantle yet; at the same time, companies are not prepared to secure all their assets. The space is nascent, expensive, complicated, yet expanding. Companies are beginning to talk about the fusion of unmanned systems and AI for developing effective protection capabilities. Any surveillance mission will occur in a disparate sensing field, and data from several fields of information will have to be pieced together. Data from the deep seabed will appear unlike any other raw input received by geospatial surveillance assets. AI and ML will have to synthesize this data to generate real intelligence.
Historically, undersea infrastructure has not been an area of warfare because it was viewed as a common good. In the last 15 or so years, it has become an attack vector. There are competing interests from the PRC and the US when either side tries to install new cables. The two sides are also competing to own the installation of a major cable that connects three continents. The protection of undersea assets has not so far been baked into the companies’ costs of operations and maintenance, and governments need to step in soon.
The scale of the challenge is daunting. Thousands of miles of assets need protection at all times. India, US, and other partners need to start thinking of the subsea in the same way as they think of space.
