Roving Periscope: Why did the US Navy intrude India’s EEZ?

Virendra Pandit

 New Delhi: International relations are based more on relentless checks and balances than on open friendship or hostility, or even war or peace. Each country tries to keep tabs on its deemed friends and potential foes alike to extract the best concessions from both. So, diplomacy is like a ‘cold war’ between the spouses living under the same roof!

Once again, it was proved on Wednesday when the US Navy conducted a unilateral exercise, without due permission from New Delhi, in the Indian Ocean near the Lakshadweep region, a Union Territory administered directly from New Delhi as part of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). INS Dweeprakshak is a naval base of the Southern Naval Command of the Indian Navy located on Kavaratti Island in the Lakshadweep Archipelago.

This, at a time when the US is trying to bring New Delhi on the same page along with Australia and Japan, against a resurgent China, via the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) between the four democracies. Washington is apparently trying to cajole as well as arm-twist New Delhi to sign up on dotted lines for the emerging ‘Asian NATO’ which India can ill afford at present, particularly after a modicum of normalcy with China returning.

At the same time, the US is trying to wean India away from Russia which is also engaged in similar tactics vis-à-vis other countries, including Pakistan and China, in its attempts to resurrect the former Soviet Union, minus Communism. Moscow’s recent military forays into the Ukraine region is an indication of this resurgent hegemony.

Each country that has a seacoast has its own EEZ. An EEZ, as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind. But many countries have disputed EEZs wherein they try to fish in another’s troubled waters.

Recently, Turkey and Greece claimed similar rights near Cyprus and other marine borders. China’s forays into the South China Sea are also part of this expansionism. Marine borders, as between India and Pakistan, are rather blurred. It is in this context that America is trying to show India its ‘place’.

Even during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the US Navy had tried to threaten New Delhi by sending its Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal, and thus indirectly support Islamabad.

The same Fleet has hit the headlines again by violating the international waters.

This week, the US Navy conducted a controversial exercise without keeping India in the loop. This at a time when the new US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are planning to meet in person for the first time at the G-7 Summit scheduled to take place in the United Kingdom from June 11 to 13, 2021. The two leaders had already spoken to each other telephonically and also met via a video conference of the Quad leaders recently.

The Pentagon, America’s security headquarters, has defended the US Navy asserting its navigational rights within India’s EEZ without taking New Delhi’s permission, and called the move “consistent with international law”.

In an unusual move, the US Navy announced that on Wednesday it conducted a ‘freedom of navigation operation’ (FONOP) in Indian waters without prior consent to challenge India’s “excessive maritime claims”. It triggered a reaction from New Delhi, which, on Friday, said it has conveyed concerns to Washington through diplomatic channels.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) also contested the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet statement of April 7 that the FONOP by the guided-missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones “upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses” of the sea recognized in international law by challenging India’s “excessive maritime claims”, media reported.

About India’s reaction over the US Navy’s move, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby on Friday said: “I can tell you is that the USS John Paul Jones, a Navy destroyer, asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of the Republic of the Maldives by conducting innocent passage through its territorial sea in normal operations within its exclusive economic zone without requesting prior permission”.

Earlier, a Seventh Fleet statement had said that “On April 7, 2021 (local time) USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) asserted navigational rights and freedoms approximately 130 nautical miles west of the Lakshadweep Islands, inside India’s exclusive economic zone, without requesting India’s prior consent, consistent with international law.”

Incidentally, the distance between the Maldives and Lakshadweep is only 446 miles. Clearly, the Pentagon claimed that the Seventh Fleet passed near the Maldives while the Fleet itself gave the game away by stating that it entered India’s EEZ without requesting prior consent.

Like the Seventh Fleet’s claim, Kirby also said: “That’s consistent with international law. Again, we continue to maintain the right, indeed the responsibility, to fly, sail, and operate in accordance with international law.”

It is the responsibility of the US to uphold the freedom of navigation and the rights and freedom and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law.

The MEA, in its statement, said: “India’s stated position on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is that the Convention does not authorize other states to carry out in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and on the continental shelf, military exercises or manoeuvres, in particular those involving the use of weapons or explosives, without the consent of the coastal state.

“The USS John Paul Jones was continuously monitored transiting from the Persian Gulf towards the Malacca Straits. We have conveyed our concerns regarding this passage through our EEZ to the government of the USA through diplomatic channels,” the MEA added.