Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific

346 Pages·2012·16.639 MB·\346

by  C. Raja Mohan

Rising China and emerging India are becoming major maritime powers. As they build
large navies to secure their growing interests, both nations are roiling the waters of the
Indo-Pacific, the vast littoral stretching from Africa to Australasia.
Invoking a tale from Hindu mythology—Samudra Manthan or “to churn the ocean”—C. Raja
Mohan tells the story of a Sino-Indian rivalry spilling over from the Great Himalayas into
the Indian and Pacific Oceans. He examines the prospects of mitigating the tensions
and constructing a stable Indo-Pacific order.
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America, the dominant power in the area, is being drawn into the unfolding Sino-Indian
competition. Despite the huge differences in the current naval capabilities of China, India,
and the United States, Mohan argues that the three countries are locked in a triangular
struggle destined to mold the future Indo-Pacific.
C. Raja Mohan heads the strategic studies program at the Observer Research Foundation
in Delhi and is a nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. He is a columnist on foreign affairs for Indian Express and is a visiting research
professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.
He has published widely on South Asian security issues.
“Samudra Manthan offers deep insights into the emerging Indo-Pacific theater as the rising
maritime profiles of India and China begin to intersect. It is a valuable contribution to the
debate on changing great-power relations in Asia and its waters.”
–Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary and special envoy of the prime minister of India
“Mohan’s penetrating strategic analysis underlines the importance of the two Asian powers
dispelling mutual suspicion and stabilizing the oceans in our rapidly changing world.”
–Shen Dingli, professor of American studies, Fudan University, Shanghai

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large navies to secure their growing interests, both nations are roiling the waters of the
Indo-Pacific, the vast littoral stretching from Africa to Australasia.
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© 2012 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means without written permission from the Carnegie Endowment.

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Cover design by Jocelyn Soly
Composition by Oakland Street Publishing
Printed by United Book Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mohan, C. Raja
Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian rivalry in the Indo-Pacific / C. Raja Mohan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87003-271-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-87003-272-1 (cloth : alk.
paper) 1. China--Foreign relations--India. 2. India--Foreign relations--China. 3. Indo-
Pacific Region--Foreign relations. 4. Strategic rivalries (World politics) I. Title.
JZ1734.A57I4 2012a
359’.03091823--dc23
2012024786
17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5 1st Printing 2012
In the Hindu fable of Samudra Manthan, angels and demons
churn the ocean in search of an elixir that will give them
immortality. Lord Vishnu intervenes at every stage to tilt the long
quest in favor of the angels and ensure they emerge victorious in the
end. The legend of Samudra Manthan lives again as the United
States shapes and is shaped by the rivalry between China and India
in the waters of Asia.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword xi
Chapter One 1
INTRODUCTION
Chapter Two 13
THE STRUCTURE OF THE RIVALRY
Chapter Three 35
IN SEARCH OF SEA POWER
Chapter Four 49
TACkINg TO THE bLUE WATERS
Chapter Five 69
MARITIME NUCLEAR POWER
Chapter Six 89
INDIA’S PACIFIC AMbITIONS
Chapter Seven 109
CHINA EYES THE INDIAN OCEAN
Chapter Eight 133
CIRCLINg THE STRATEgIC ISLANDS
vii
Chapter Nine 157
CONTESTING THE LITTORAL
Chapter Ten 189
MITIGATING THE SECURITY DILEMMA
Chapter Eleven 211
ORDERING THE INDO-PACIFIC
Chapter Twelve 235
SAMUDRA MANTHAN
Notes 259
Index 319
About the Author 329
Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace 330
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Ambassador Gopinath Pillai, chairman of the In-
stitute of South Asian Studies, Singapore, for encouraging me to take up
this project on Sino-Indian relations. The director of ISAS, Professor Tan
Tai Yong, and his colleagues were very generous in their support. Special
thanks are due to Dean Barry Desker of the S. Rajaratnam School of In-
ternational Studies at Nanyang Technological University, where I did the
initial research for this volume. Chong Yee Ming, the librarian at the RSIS,
was of great help. Ajaya Das at the RSIS South Asia program gave me en-
thusiastic research assistance.
This volume could not have been completed without the access I en-
joyed to the extraordinary wealth of the U.S. Library of Congress in Wash-
ington, D.C., as the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and In-
ternational Relations at the John W. Kluge Center during 2009–2010. My
two-month stint at the Center for Strategic Studies, as the Kippenberger
Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand during
February‒March 2011, provided a very congenial setting to revise the vol-
ume. It was only fitting that I finalized the manuscript at the ISAS in
Singapore in January‒February 2012.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Michael Green, Gurpreet Khurana,
Shyam Saran, Ashley J. Tellis, and others who would like to remain anony-
mous who went through the initial drafts of the manuscript and offered
thoughtful comments. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers at the
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, and the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, D.C., for their valuable suggestions for
the revision of the manuscript. I alone, however, am responsible for any
shortcomings of the work.
ix