The Indian Ocean region is at the centre of China’s effort to build a ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’. The China-led attempt at transforming the Indian Ocean from a maritime transit region into a region that is more deeply integrated in global trade and investment networks leads to greater Chinese influence in Indian Ocean maritime affairs and in countries along its rim. China’s naval presence in the Gulf of Aden and its naval base in Djibouti highlight that this growing influence is not merely of a diplomatic but gradually also of a military nature. This has triggered India’s concerns, and rivalry in the Indian Ocean between India and China is now becoming increasingly intertwined with the more intensive geopolitical competition that exists in East Asia between China on the one hand and Japan and the United States on the other. The growing usage of the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ by China’s rivals in these two regions reflects their ambition of greater strategic coordination with each other.
This development poses the European Union with important challenges, which are discussed in a Brief by EUISS [The Indo-Pacific: A passage to Europe?]. First, there is the risk that great power tensions that exist in East Asia will spill over into the Indian Ocean region. This may further weaken stability in Europe’s immediate neighbourhood: the Middle East and Northern Africa. Moreover, given the prominent position of the Mediterranean Sea in China’s Maritime Silk Road strategy, there is the possibility that eventually great power competition may expand from the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean into the Mediterranean. A second major challenge is the question of whether or not to take sides if Sino-US geopolitical rivalry in the Indian Ocean region intensifies. So far European countries and the EU have largely been bystanders in security issues between Beijing and Washington, but it could become more difficult to maintain this detached stance should the northwestern parts of the Indian Ocean region become more intensively contested between the US and China.
Frans-Paul van der Putten
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