Rejoinder to Shekhar Gupta’s National Interest column at The Print, Aug 21.

Bypassing the Malacca Straits

Rejoinder to Shekhar Gupta’s National
Interest column at The Print, Aug 21.


Editor ji believes in spreading positivity amidst the gloom and doom of the pandemic that has brought much misery to the land.  However, the malady of “Mission Creep” has caught up with him.  From lightening the gloom of pandemic, it now encompasses every calamity that dogs this land. In his latest column, he airily proclaims we should forget about Afghanistan, and turn our strategic gaze to the high seas.

India strategic thought has rather ignored the importance of trade and the high seas over the millennia.  Not many know that it was the Arab sea traders, who took the Indus River from us, circa 700 BCE, financed largely by the profits from trade with us, in spices and horses.  This was a good 600 years before the Ghaznis and Ghouris.  In fact the unravelling of the Gupta empire can be traced to the loss of revenue to the Gupta treasury, from trade with Arabs.

Similarly, the 50% protection money, levied by East India Company, on all sea trade, financed its army, that captured India after the Battle of Plassey.  The British ability to raise an army locally from its trading profits from Indian produce, is what helped them to conquer the sub-continent.  And all that was made possible because their power over India was anchored in control of the seas, much like the Arabs along the Indus before them.  In both cases we paid the invaders to invade us! So I am all for paying more attention to sea power.

However, if you do look at the power equations on the High Seas around India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China, with more than just the sheer joy of discovering sea power, you realize that something very significant has happened in Afghanistan.  And beyond that, by abandoning Afghanistan, Biden has signaled a major concession to China, and brought the utility of India in the QUAD open to question.  Lemme explain with a map.

Malacca Strait, is a narrow sea lane marked on the map, close to Malaysia.  During the Cholla Empire era, India actually controlled this vital sea lane, through which all trade from Middle East must pass, to get to China.  Most of the oil destined for Chinese factories and power plants passes through this narrow sea lane.

India’s Andaman Islands are not very far from Malacca Strait, and they, combined with the land mass in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, gives us the capability to dominate this narrow sea lane, and hold up most of the oil traffic to China.  This is one of China’s main vulnerabilities, and India plays a vital role in QUAD because of its proximity to this choke point.

For the limited purpose of this essay, consider that China buys its oil from Iran and Iraq, ships it down to the Arabian sea off Sri Lanka, veers to the Malacca Strait near Andaman Islands, and turns into the South China Sea towards Ghondozu.  This is China’s  main vulnerability, which if threatened, would cause oil insurance premia, and oil, to zoom, and China majorly discomfited with disrupted oil supplies.  It is in many ways India’s conventional “Brahamastra” against China, and one of the key reason why Trump wooed India into the QUAD.

China has spent much treasure in Gwadar port in Pakistan, and Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, to safeguard its oil shipping routes from the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea corridor from Iraq and Iran opening into the Arabian Sea, to Malacca Straits.  It has designs on Andaman Islands as well. The significance of Chinese controlled ports at Gwadar and Hambantota should not be lost on anyone.  It shows how keenly Chinese feel their vulnerability, and the extent to which they are prepared to go to secure their vital shipping routes.

Now look at the map again, but this time at the arrows marked in red.  These depict a possible oil pipeline, running from Iraq and Iran, through Northern Afghanistan, to China.  

Ladakh was the only place where we could have disrupted this potential pipeline, and so the Chinese moved quickly to thwart our road infrastructure being built in that area.  The Chinese incursion in Ladakh betrays what they have in mind - an overland pipeline running from Iran, and later Iraq, through Northern Afghanistan, into China, that completely bypasses the choke point at Malacca Strait.  

If and when this pipeline comes up, and Chinese skills in building infrastructure are legendary, China will have more or less completely neutralized India’s ability to disrupt its critical oil supplies, reducing India’s leverage with China, and the QUAD, considerably.

But that’s not my main point in writing this rejoinder.  

I am wondering why Biden, who was sitting pretty in Afghanistan, abandoned his crucial perch on this critical pipeline route, letting China build such crucial bypass to the Malacca choke point, uncontested?

Think about it.

There is no way China would consider building a pipeline from Iran, across Afghanistan, into Xinjiang, if the US continued its presence, howsoever token, in Afghanistan.  

Since neither Biden nor the CIA, or Pentagon, are fools, why did Biden abandon his critical perch in Afghanistan to open the land corridor for the pipeline, that all but negates the huge advantage in sea power that Malacca Straits gives QUAD?  Is it even thinkable that this vacation of Afghanistan happens without considering the implications of such a move?

Would any serious strategic thinker ignore the possibility of a pipeline running from Iraq/Iran, across Afghanistan, into China?  And if not, why has Biden opened the corridor?  It is not as if he had suddenly run out of options.

Is Biden’s vacation of Afghanistan part of a quiet deal with China?  If so, is it the end of QUAD?  If it is the end of QUAD as we know it, where does that leave India, who has burnt so many bridges, and scorched so many opportunities, to join the QUAD?

These are the questions that Editor ji should be posting in his National Interest Column, instead of copying Modi, and being a “Feel Good Guru of the High Seas” for the laity, me included.

Why do I make a point of this?  When venerable editors become “feel good gurus” of snake-oil salesman, who will ask the Government the questions that need to be asked in a democracy?

Hai koi jawab?  

What is the true implication of Biden abandoning Afghanistan?  Why is my hypothesis of an oil pipeline across Afghanistan into China from Iran to bypass the Malacca Strait wrong?  

And if it is not, where does that leave India in the Asian and South East Asian power game?  What happens to the reconfiguring of our defense forces, the building up of carrier based navy, and what not? These are the questions SG should be asking Doval ji and his God ji.

These very worrying questions that should be exercising our minds.

BMKJ.