Washington’s failure to find international support for its arms embargo on Iran followed its seizure of four product tankers headed to Venezuela, which violated the US’ embargo on the transport of Iranian oil and product exports. Iran’s raid on a Liberian-flagged tanker – in search of the seized petroleum – has upped the ante even […]
The Indonesian city of Sabang that overlooks the Andaman Sea and global maritime traffic passing through Strait of Malacca became a matter of much Indian interest in May 2018[1] when Indonesia’s then Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs, Luhut Pandjaitan, invited New Delhi to develop the city’s port infrastructure.[2] Within a fortnight, during the visit of […]
A massive oil spill off the coast of Mauritius has threatened not only its fragile marine ecology but also its COVID-19-hit tourism sector. While Japan dispatched a team to assist the island nation’s clean-up effort, India sent 30 tonnes of technical equipment and material. This can be viewed as an example of addressing disasters by […]
China’s opposition to any economic activities within its claim lines in the South China Sea cost Vietnam US$ 1 billion in compensation for cancelled oil and gas exploration contracts. An economic loss of such magnitude could strengthen the resolve of the other claimants to counter Chinese aggression through multilateral initiatives involving the major navies of the Indo-Pacific.
China’s ongoing posture on the LAC with India and aggressive actions in the waters and airspace of the South and East China Seas has evinced a myriad of maritime responses in the IOR, SCS and ECS from India, USA, Japan and Taiwan. Further, the recent exercises between ships of the US Navy and the navies of […]
The phenomenon of climate change has several significant and serious socio-economic implications for all nations around the world, largely because most of our activities have historically evolved around a relatively stable climate over nearly the past 20,000 years. Since the climate is now changing at an accelerating pace, it is threatening the very foundation of […]
The ocean is and always has been essential to life on planet Earth. In fact, the ocean is where the very first life forms emerged on the planet. Even today, the world’s oceans support nearly all life on Earth either directly or indirectly. In the current world order, every coastal nation’s economy relies heavily on […]
While the ongoing LAC standoff with China is presently poised at some level of de-escalation, the maritime domain saw the Indian Naval ships exercising with a US Carrier Strike Group, this week, in the Bay of Bengal, off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Further East, Japan’s 2020 Defence White Paper Digest highlighted the security environment as viewed from Tokyo. […]
For quite some time now, China has been arming itself — both with new hardware and new maritime operational concepts, typified by what the Americans (and increasingly, others, too) call ‘Anti-Access and Area Denial’ (A2/AD) — to challenge any adversarial dominance of the maritime areas of its interest. The US and its allies believe that […]
Since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-Independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) acceded to the presidency in Taiwan in 2016, the country has been under severe diplomatic pressure from China that claims the island as a ‘renegade province’. Beijing’s “chequebook diplomacy” has seen Taiwan continually lose diplomatic allies across wide geographies — Panama in 2017 and São […]
This is the third tranche (Part 3) of an ongoing advocacy of the need for India to secure its future energy-security by effecting a transition away from fossil fuels. The various parts, taken in aggregate, seek to provide Indian policy-makers with a compelling set of arguments, to not only support ocean-based renewable energy as an […]