A Study On The Indo-US Naval Cooperation After The Cold War

With the development of economic globalization, maritime security increasingly attracts attentions of international community; naval cooperation has become an important form of safeguarding maritime security. At the end of the Cold War, Indo-US naval cooperation starts has made remarkable achievements.The paper is based on the perspective of the expected benefits to evaluate the outcome of the Indo-US naval cooperation and to predict its future fate. Of course their cooperation experience will be helpful for navy cooperation between China and other countries.Indo-US naval cooperation is based on the expected gains of security, economy and political aspect. In terms of security, the United States and India expect to be able to maintain the non-traditional maritime security and balance China’s growing influence; in economic terms, India wants to get advanced equipment and technology through the defense trade; while the United States hopes to expand its share in the Indian defense market; in political aspect, India is eager to expand its influence in the Indian Ocean sphere even the whole world, and the United States wants to maintain its global maritime hegemony or dominance. The cooperation between India and USA was very limited in the Cold War. Since the end of the Cold War, Indo-US naval cooperation has experienced four stages:the beginning stage, interrupted one, recovery and overall development stage, and got important achievements in joint military exercises, defense trade, maritime security, personnel exchanges and so on.After more than 20 years, although there are some differences and deficiencies, the results of the Indo-US naval cooperation are in line with their expected benefits in security, economic and political aspects. Therefore, the Indo-US naval cooperation is successful. In the short term, as the non-traditional security threats still remain and China’s influence is growing, the Indo-US naval cooperation will be further enhanced. In the long term, because of the potential conflicts in terms of dominance in the Indian Ocean, and the factors of national power and foreign policy, the Indo-US naval cooperation will face uncertainty.Indo-US naval cooperation has two-side influences on China:on the one hand, it will help to reduce the pressure on China in the field of maritime security to some extent; on the other hand, China’s maritime strategy space will be compressed and China’s conflicts with its neighboring countries will be exacerbated. According to the experience and achievements of the Indo-US naval cooperation, we think that the Sino-US-Indo naval cooperation should focus on non-traditional maritime security and establish naval cooperation mechanisms.Through the above analysis, we can conclude that the motives and content of the Indo-US naval cooperation contain a strong "China factor", China should be vigilant and take actions to the adverse effects of the Indo-US naval cooperation. Meanwhile, the Indo-US naval cooperation has made significant achievements that China can learn from. There are two points that China should pay attention to when she cooperate with other countries:deepen cooperation in non-traditional areas of maritime security; actively promote the construction of naval cooperation mechanism.