The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : New moves in the Malacca Straits

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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

New moves in the Malacca Straits

P.S. Suryanarayana

New ideas have been floated on protecting shipping along the Malacca Straits — a vital lifeline of global trade in oil and energy.

IT IS almost a year since the United States, self-appointed "guarantor" of peace and stability across the Asia Pacific region since the end of the Second Word War, proposed the Regional Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI) for the protection of global shipping from potential terrorist attacks along the busy Straits of Malacca. While the RMSI has not taken off owing to reasons of political opposition from two key states along the Straits, some new ideas have been floated by countries bordering this vital lifeline of global trade in oil and energy supplies.

A significant proposal came up during the International Maritime Defence Exhibition [IMDEX Asia-2005] held in Singapore in mid-May. Singapore Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean suggested that the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF) "could consider moving beyond discussions on maritime security to work towards a maritime security exercise in the near future."

For the first time, an anti-terror "maritime security exercise" was held as an event directly related to IMDEX. India, Australia and Japan, besides Singapore, were among the regional powers that participated in the naval exercise, deploying some of their state-of-the-art warships that had come for the main exhibition.

While ASEAN is the prime mover within the ARF, the Forum has much relevance to the international community as a whole. ASEAN, comprising 10 South-East Asian states, includes those bordering the Straits — Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It is the composition of the ARF that lends it a stature independent of ASEAN's.

The Forum includes three of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, barring the United Kingdom and France. The three are the U.S., Russia and China. The European Union, as an `ARF participant' (the official nomenclature for membership of the Forum), represents the U.K. and France, too.

Not to be discounted on the power-plank of the ARF are India, Japan and Australia. The navies of these three countries and the U.S. had formed a short-lived "core group" for relief works after the December 26, 2004 tsunami strike.

The ARF officials and diplomats tend to downplay or even dismiss the possibility that the post-tsunami "core group" can or will evolve into an informal naval alliance for Asia-Pacific stability. Japan and Australia, independently, are of course military allies of the U.S., while India's "independent mind" in foreign policy, especially in regard to China, is increasingly being recognised by some key East Asian leaders, in Japan and Singapore, for example.

The ARF's agenda of "cooperative security", without a powerful "leader" at its helm, is one of the reasons for Washington's failure until now to have its way over security along the Malacca Straits. Michael Leifer, an acknowledged expert on East Asia, had emphasised that "ASEAN's insistence on retaining the central diplomatic role in the ARF" was a factor for the "frustrations among northeast Asian and Pacific participants."

This view is variously echoed by the protagonists of China or Japan, at one end, and importantly, the U.S., at another. The counterpoint, first articulated by Yuen Foong Khong to contest Leifer's view, was that the "cooperative security aspects of the ARF are not adjuncts to the workings of the balance of power" considerations.

Given such cross-currents of views, a relevant question is why has the U.S. failed so far to have its way on the RMSI. Indonesia and Malaysia have taken the general line that no such pan-regional initiative, involving external powers such as the U.S., should be allowed to wash away the sovereignty of the littoral states in regard to the safety of shipping along the Malacca Straits. This accounts for the "coordinated patrolling" of the Straits by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. For the moment, this is an alternative to the RMSI.

The Singapore and Indonesian navies launched on May 27 a project called SURPIC — a sea-surveillance system based on a real-time picture of the Singapore Strait that lies close to the Malacca Straits.

Given these new realities, the proponents of an "ARF maritime security exercise" believe that an anti-terror drill or a sequence of such drills involving a number of major users of the Straits, can lead, over time, to an in situ system based on cooperative endeavours. The questions to be addressed, as in the case of the RMSI, are: Where does the national jurisdiction of each of the littoral states end along the Straits of Malacca? What is the `international space' along this waterway? The U.S. tends to argue that the entire stretch of the narrow Straits of Malacca is `international space'.

Some Western diplomats within the ARF domain say that the members of the Forum could perhaps conduct exercises together, now and then, but act independently to maintain day-to-day security within their respective maritime zones. The example of the Five-Power Defence Arrangements is cited. The FPDA consists of the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Another view within the ARF diplomatic circuit is that there could be a "coalition of the willing" among the members of the Forum to ensure real-time maritime security.

This issue, as in the case of the qualitatively different Proliferation Security Initiative of the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing", raises unresolved questions under international law about the permissibility of maritime interdictions, especially those on the high seas.

It is in these circumstances that naval professionals of India have taken the line that New Delhi should help the littoral states patrol the Malacca Straits only if it is requested to do so. The international debate on real-time ways to maintain security along this waterway has just begun, though.

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