More on Kaplan's Elegant Decline

Robert Kaplan's Foreign Affairs piece on the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean and the United States' involvement there is, as Galrahn has said, a well-supported bit of reasoning. He emphasizes a return to 'classic balancer' status for the U.S. in Indian Ocean strategic terms - playing not a dominant role, but a decisive one. In such a play, the U.S. would use its declining but still preponderant naval power in the region in order to form coalitions and act in common security interests without the 'baggage' of a local land-based strategic interest. As a remote player, the U.S. would have the ability (Kaplan tells us) to act as a neutral arbiter or honest broker of strategic interests, and more importantly would be able to lead in matters of the security commons with less regional strategic baggage.

While I agree that this is a compelling picture, I have (for the nonce) one cautionary note and one analytic note. The cautionary note is this: although from the United States' point of view the Indian Ocean's maritime security environment is for the moment relatively stable, it must be kept clearly in mind that the large players in that pond are not insulated (at all, really) from their less stable land neighbors. Although the 'big names' of India and China are buffered from each other by the Himalayas, and their competition in the region can be viewed easily through a maritime lens, there are more than enough opportunities for regional instability which have the potential to dramatically change the alignment of the large player navies.

Kaplan himself reminds us that Pakistan and Myanmar are two of, in his words, the worlds' least stable countries. The problem he doesn't really dwell on is that they are to either side of India, and the fall of either could result in a severe security vacuum where India feels the need to utilize its naval power to protect its own interests.

While this is not itself a danger to the United States, such sudden shifts in the security balance of a region tend to make all players in the region extremely alert to both threats and opportunities. The U.S. may not have land-based strategic interests in the region, and that may make it an attractive arbiter; but the U.S. must also remember that forming attachments with military forces in the region is not cost-free. Each linkage with the Indian Navy or PLA Navy (or even with Myanmar or Pakistan's smaller forces) will resonate in the threat evaluations of those players' opponents in the event of a security crisis. While this shouldn't prevent the U.S. from pursuing the sort of course Kaplan lays down, it should cause the U.S. to keep a sense of detachment firmly in mind as it makes these plays. Joint military exercises, even, while necessary for performing joint security missions and commons enforcement, also psychologically bond the players in their opponents' (or even allies') threat evaluation. In the world of the scenario planner, if the U.S. has stated that it would not support nation X in a conflict against Y, but the U.S. Navy has exercise with X's navy, then a conservative planner will form a scenario where the U.S. Navy does, indeed, support X. We can trust national leaders to weight the probability of such a scenario with attention to diplomatic history, but nevertheless, that scenario will sit in the planning process and its presence alone will affect it. And to be fair, it's very unlikely that the U.S. will flatly (in advance) state things that it won't do for a nation it is working with, if history is any judge - making that scenario even more important in nation Y's planning.

From the analytical standpoint, Kaplan's argument does offer a relatively clear means-ends chain in the manner I was discussing (too long ago) in my strategy posts - which means it's past time to get off the stick and write the next one so that we can start looking at and evaluating arguments such as this using that framework.