Observing PLA Navy Indian Ocean Operations

The Chinese Navy now has two deployments in the Indian Ocean. The deployment of the destroyer "Guangzhou" now sailing in the Indian Ocean on the way to Pakistan for the Peace 09 exercise is a quiet addition to the force mix the PLA Navy currently has operating in the Indian Ocean.

March 2008 Proceedings has a public article available titled Welcome China to the Fight Against Pirates by Andrew S. Erickson, Naval War College; and Lieutenant Justin D. Mikolay, U.S. Navy. As I have said many times on the blog, everything written by Andrew Erickson about China is solid gold, and this piece is an excellent read. One of the early points made in the article is an important point when discussing the PLA Navy deployment to Somalia:

The Chinese effort does not represent, for instance, an immediate power shift in the Indian Ocean, or a Chinese power grab in Africa. To those who remain wary of Chinese ambitions, one important distinction should remain clear: China joined the international community to challenge piracy. It did not join the counter-piracy effort to challenge the international community.

The entire article beginning to end is worth the read, but this is a key point that goes to the heart of so many things I have discussed regarding the US Navy policy regarding Somali piracy.

Beijing appears ready to acknowledge publicly that its increasingly global interests will require a global presence-at least in the commercial and humanitarian dimensions. According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao, a fifth of the 1,265 Chinese-owned, -cargoed, or -crewed ships transiting Somali waters in 2008 "faced piracy," and seven were attacked. "Piracy has become a serious threat to shipping, trade and safety on the seas," he explained. "That's why we decided to send naval ships to crack down."

For China, the timing is sublime: at the moment when it feels compelled to venture beyond its shores, the international community gives it ample space to do so. This allows China to move from its position as the only permanent member of the UNSC not to have contributed to international maritime security operations, toward becoming a responsible power that makes all types of contributions.

China undoubtedly senses a strategic opportunity in the relatively limited U.S. response to piracy in the Horn of Africa. "Apart from fighting pirates, another key goal is to register the presence of the Chinese navy," states Professor Li Jie, a prominent expert at the Navy Research Institute in Beijing. In this regard, the deployment should remind the Obama administration of an important reality: To the extent that we are not perceived to provide public benefits, such as reliable security for sea lines of communication, other nations will take matters into their own hands. The United States may increasingly find itself working with partners that joined the effort of their own accord.

I have taken a very unpopular position regarding Somali piracy, but I still maintain that the US Navy has handled this situation brilliantly to date. The strategy became apparent sometime around the August time frame that the US Navy was intentionally avoiding directly addressing the Somali piracy issue, and I still believe it was an intentional decision not to tackle the piracy problem that ran rampant off the Horn of Africa last year. Even as I outlined this on the blog, many called me a fool.

The intent to create an international coalition of warships to manage this problem, and the commitment by nations worldwide to contribute to this coalition, is one of the biggest yet least understood or recognized strategic successes of the US Navy in the 21st century. Nations continue to commit naval ships to the problem, the United States has been successful in getting Europe to take action, the strategy has been successful bringing the PLA Navy into position to participate with other nations towards a common good, and we have seen the worlds largest military powers cooperating towards a shared threat to the common good.

And the strategy has been so successful that within three weeks of inauguration, the Obama administration was perfectly positioned to change the RoE for dealing with Somali piracy. In the history of our nation, no president has ever committed military forces to action within three weeks of being inaugurated, but the Obama administration was able to do it in a time when the nation was already fighting two wars, and not only did nobody even noticed the historical significance, he was praised for taking action.

Now that the US Navy has cooperation from the international community, what happens from here sets the stage for future cooperation. If you haven't seen it, China has a fairly robust media relations campaign going for domestic consumption regarding their pirate fighting activities. Images of PLA Navy Indian Ocean operations can be found here, here, and here.