Kaush Arha & James Himberger
The United States needs robust and complementary Pacific and Indian Ocean strategies to prevail over China in an attritional economic competition or military conflict. The Indian Ocean, as the bridge between the Pacific and the Mediterranean-Atlantic Oceans, boasts the largest (India) and fastest-growing (Africa) populations, as well as the energy-rich West Asian nations. India, the fastest-growing large economy, is reinvigorating the historically consequential Indo-Mediterranean trade and commerce.
Over 60 percent of the world’s maritime trade transits through the Indian Ocean, including one-third of the world’s container cargo and two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments. Every day, over 50 million barrels of oil pass through the Straits of Malacca, Hormuz, and Bab-el-Mandeb. The Indian Ocean conveys China’s trade to South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, including 80 percent of its oil imports, which accounts for more than half of its total domestic consumption.
A protracted contest between the United States and China exposes the latter’s vulnerabilities on supply lines across the Indian Ocean. It would be prudent for Washington to have a strategy to exercise its leverage on the exposed Chinese flanks if the need ever arose to press the point.
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