India’s Strategic Intent and Military Partnerships in the Indian Ocean Region

Key points

• Due to the importance India attaches to potential threats to its maritime security, its diplomacy has increasingly focused on the Indian Ocean region (IOR) and it has increased cooperation with Indian Ocean states.
• In the last five years, India has also established security partnerships with major IOR strategic stakeholders such as France and the United States.
• India has increasingly invested in providing military training, weapons support and disaster relief assistance to “like-minded” states in the IOR.
• Due to the potential risks of escalation to nuclear-weapons use should conflict occur with other countries in the region such as China and Pakistan, it would be in India’s interests to promote more confidence and security-building measures such as missile test-launch notifications and agreements to prevent incidents at sea.