Malabar 2017, which began on July 10, is being held in the Bay of Bengal.
What is Malabar?
Malabar is an annual military exercise between the navies of India, Japan and the U.S. held alternately in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
It is a platform to improve interoperability between the navies.
It began in 1992 as a bilateral exercise between India and the U.S.
Then it got permanently expanded into a trilateral format with the inclusion of Japan in 2015.
The 10-day games will have two phases, an initial harbour phase in Chennai and a sea phase later which will be held across the Bay of Bengal and the northern Indian Ocean.
In a first this year, all three countries fielded carriers (India - INS Vikramaditya) for the exercises.
This year is also witnessing the largest participation to date with 16 ships, 2 submarines and over 95 aircraft taking part from the three countries.
Why it is important?
These naval interactions have provided the Indian Navy invaluable insights into the tactics, doctrines, warfare techniques and best practices of the US Navy.
In the realm of maritime warfare, the three navies could derive mutual benefit from their diverse operational expertise.
With China’s growing military strength and its increasing presence in the Indian Ocean, the Malabar has assumed greater importance.
Given China’s intent in acquiring bases in the Indian Ocean, and frequent transit of PLA naval units through our waters, cooperation in maritime domain awareness deserve top priority.
Equally, amphibious operations, trade-warfare, maritime interception operations, anti-access concepts and, of course, disaster relief, must receive due importance.
There is special focus on anti-submarine warfare operations in the backdrop of increasing submarine forays by the Chinese Navy.
Why is China concerned?
China always viewed Malabar with paranoid suspicion that India is colluding with the US in an attempt at “containment”.
Its fears have been aggravated with Japan being included and Australia keen to join as well.
China had issued a statement to New Delhi questioning the intent behind the war games, which forced India to abandon the expansion.
Australia has been keen to join the games on a permanent basis, which has so far not fructified due to India’s reluctance.
What could be done?
For 25 years, Indo-US naval cooperation has formed the sheet-anchor of bilateral relations, ignoring all the political and diplomatic tensions.
With the invaluable accession of Japan to this partnership, the India-Japan-US triad must be elevated to strategic status.
A “maritime-infrastructure and economic initiative” must be created that reaches out to smaller Indian Ocean nations in an initiative to sway them away from the Chinese.
