THE FUTURE OF SEA POWER

The Great Game Goes to Sea | 27
countries of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and Europe. This initiative, coupled
with an equally ambitious trans-Eurasian one belt one road trade route, is part of China’s
desire to begin shaping the global order on its own terms. It is also a way of promoting
China’s hard and soft power agendas, securing key point d’appui in the various corners
of the ocean, and ensuring the integrity of the critically important energy supply lines
that run from Africa and southwest Asia across the Indian Ocean. 18
What has alarmed India is the program that China is pursuing to develop port
infrastructure at critical locations throughout the Indian Ocean. For the moment, ports
like Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan appear to be, first and foremost,
commercial installations, but there is an abiding fear in some quarters in India that these
ports will become forward operating bases for the PLAN in the event of hostilities. 19 The
fact that the PLAN organised a port visit to Karachi by one of its submarines further
reinforced Indian anxieties. 20 Similarly, Xi Jinping’s visit to Islamabad in April 2015
resulted in the allocation of US$46 billion to Pakistan by way of aid and infrastructural
development. The lion’s share of this money, more than $30 billion, is earmarked for the
further development of Gwadar and the construction of a pipeline that would run from
Gwadar along the Baluchi coast and northeast across Pakistan to Kashgar in western
China. 21
This project, if it is ever realised, is part of a decades-old Chinese policy of global energy
diversification. China has been seized for some time by a Malacca syndrome; namely,
that it is courting real danger by relying on the steady and uninterrupted flow of oil and
gas shipments through the narrow and heavily-trafficked Malacca Strait in Southeast
Asia. What, they ask themselves, would happen to these vital energy imports in the
event of a war at sea? 22 Accordingly, they have sought to diversify the sources of their
energy as well as the routes by which that energy is delivered. The Gwadar-Kashgar
pipeline would mean that tankers exiting the Persian Gulf would only have to steam
a few hundred kilometres along the coast to reach Gwadar. Similarly, the pipeline that
runs across Myanmar to southern Yunnan obviates the need for Malacca transits. Still
further, China has brokered deals with the Central Asian republics and with Russia for
energy. Of course, one could argue that pipelines are even more vulnerable than tankers
(and this is a source of concern when it comes to the integrity of a pipeline transiting
violence-wracked Baluchistan), 23 but from the Chinese perspective, the emerging
network (enhanced by the trans-Eurasian one belt one road infrastructure proposal)
gives China a modest degree of redundancy should a naval war take place. 24 Modest
is, in fact, all it will be. If anything, China’s dependence on tanker traffic is likely to
increase as it struggles to meet pollution targets by reducing coal consumption.
This leaves one more player, Russia. The Russians have always been the victims of
geography. Where does Russia’s future lie, in Europe, in the Arctic, or in Asia? The
Russians are primarily Europeans, but they are acutely aware of the enormous shift in
power that is taking place beyond the vast reaches of Siberia. 25 Putin’s hybrid warfare
activities in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine are of a piece with China’s activities in