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Rigors of Coalition Maintenance in Asia

James R. Holmes* U.S. Naval War College

Quad-Plus Dialogue

Jaipur, India February 14-16, 2016

Cooperation Is Elusive—Even Among the Like-Minded Alliances, coalitions, and partnerships seldom fall into place of their own accord. Still less do they manage themselves in the common interest, boosting their efficacy and longevity. Ententes meant to supply the global public good of maritime security are no exception to this rule. If the “Quad-Plus” powers want to broaden and deepen maritime governance in South and East Asia, diplomats and seafarers must discern the contours of coalition building and upkeep. And they must dispel any illusions they may have about the challenge. Sorting out who will do what promises to be hard, painstaking, never-ending work. This seems counterintuitive. Shouldn’t seafaring states agree on maritime security by default? After all, everyone discerns a compelling interest in unencumbered use of the sea. As senior leaders often point out, the sea lanes comprise the lineaments of the liberal system of trade and commerce whereby trading states thrive. Disorder at sea imperils mercantile shipping, injuring those lineaments while damaging the interests of all. To all appearances, then, preventing non-

* James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010 and Essential Reading on the U.S. Navy Professional Reading List. The views voiced here are his alone.

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state lawbreakers from disrupting good order at sea warrants robust, open-ended cooperation among navies, coast guards, foreign ministries, and law enforcement agencies. And to be sure, collaborative maritime governance has posted some signal successes over the years. Unveiled in 2003, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) has elicited voluntary participation from over 100 governments. PSI participants coordinate among themselves to combat the traffic in makings of mass-destruction weaponry in transit between sellers, middlemen, and buyers. The initiative builds local capacity, helping governments help themselves and, in turn, advancing the common cause of counterproliferation. Arguably the most conspicuous combined endeavor in this field, however, is the counterpiracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden. National and multinational naval contingents came together starting in 2008 to scour the waters off Somalia of brigandage. This fight has fulfilled its purpose by most indices. But although maritime governance is important to all seagoing states, it is not the top priority for all governments at all places at all times. Think about it. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz teaches that the value statesmen (or other protagonists, such as the citizenry) assign the “political object” determines “the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration” (emphasis in original). In algebraic terms, magnitude refers to the rate at which a state expends resources—treasure, military hardware, and so forth—whereas duration is the amount of time across which it expends resources at that rate. Multiplying rate by time yields the price tag for the enterprise. How much a state wants its political aims, in other words, dictates how much it is prepared to spend on them. If the price spirals beyond the value of the object, Clausewitz advises decision makers to cut their losses and get out of the venture. That is how his cost–benefit calculus works. But the value of the political object is not fixed. It fluctuates from society to society, and may wax or wane over time within a single society. Observes Clausewitz, the same goal “can elicit differing reactions from different peoples, and even from the same people at different times” (emphasis in original). A goal may rise, fall, and rise again on a state’s list of priorities as circumstances change. Transposing the cost–benefit calculus to multilateral undertakings multiplies these complexities. Two states may harbor exactly the same goals yet squabble when it comes to working together. Suppose they set the same five political aims, and that one assigns one goal top priority and the other assigns that same goal bottom priority. In Clausewitzian terms, the first partner is prepared to devote substantial resources to that goal for a substantial amount of time, and it wants allied help reaching it. The second is halfhearted about that goal by contrast, pursuing it on a not-to-interfere basis with higher priorities of its own. Cooperation could prove vexing in such cases. Each partner would view the other as fanatical about lesser enterprises yet wishy-washy about the truly important ones. Quarrels over strategy and resources would ensue.

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Adding additional partners to the mix only renders the geometry more complex—compounding the problem of achieving unity. Manifest successes in counterproliferation and counterpiracy, then, disguise fissures that could fracture a maritime consortium in stressful times. PSI operations, for instance, take place mostly out of public view. The PSI “statement of interdiction principles,” or founding charter, goes to extravagant lengths not to commit governments to do things they deem contrary to national interests or dignity. Sovereign discretion prevails. A government, that is, can abstain from an operation for any reason without reproach. It simply chooses not to act if some interest outweighs the perceived harm stemming from a particular instance of weapons trafficking. The drawback is that dangerous substances or hardware may find their way into hostile hands if the government demurs. Because the PSI is not compulsory, it remains mostly uncontroversial. Yet gaps in counterproliferation represent the cost of making the initiative politically palatable. Nor should the international community celebrate the counterpiracy expedition too much. Apprehending corsairs off Somalia is an easy case, isolated from geopolitical entanglements. Easy cases make misleading precedents. Think about it. None of the powers policing the Gulf of Aden—the U.S.-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), EU and NATO flotillas, individual national contingents—entertains obvious parochial self-interests beyond safeguarding the transit corridor through the region. No one covets territory, natural resources, or the other things that pit states against one another. The dearth of countervailing interests simplifies the problem of concerted action immensely. Discord could sabotage the effort if competing ambitions outweighed the effort to quash lawbreaking. In short, the international community performs well when everyone agrees. It fares less well when contending geopolitical interests enter the mix. Consider counterproliferation in East Asia. China is apparently sincere about battling this scourge. Yet Beijing quashed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution endorsing the PSI—evidently because it feared ratifying U.S. maritime supremacy in East Asia at a time when China is making its own bid for primacy. Counterproliferation is important to China—but not more important than fulfilling China’s destiny as Asia’s central power. Higher priorities supersede lesser ones. This is no slight against China. It is simply the nature of international politics. As Harvard professor Steve Walt counsels, three types of adhesives can bind together international alignments: common interests, mainly threats; social, cultural, and political affinities among the allies; and recruitment by a hegemonic power, meaning bankrolling alliances or using bare-knuckles coercion to strong-arm weaker powers into an arrangement. A shortfall in these adhesives loosens the bonds connecting a partnership, coalition, or alliance. Or, a savvy antagonist can act as coalition-breaker or coalition-preventer, applying a solvent to disrupt what

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Clausewitz calls the “community of interest”—the “center of gravity” for any consortium of states. For Walt, a consummate international-relations (IR) realist, the first index—furthering realpolitik interests while countering threats—is predominant. Kin ties, a common language, a common heritage, and other ties are factors that allies indulge once they have taken care of business. For instance, an Anglo-American caucus blossomed within the Grand Alliance that waged World War II. Walt places little faith in the durability or longevity of arrangements held together only by material factors. After all, when you rent or point a gun at an ally, that ally’s loyalty lasts only as long as you pay the rent or keep the gun trained on it. Such alignments are perishable at best. Accordingly, it behooves analysts and practitioners of nautical affairs to exercise some foresight. Applying these precepts from strategic and IR theory, they should ask themselves what might transpire should seafaring states try to mount a good-order-at-sea mission in contested waters or skies—a wickedly complex environment for constabulary duty, where passions and jealously guarded interests may clash with maritime governance. Glimpsing likely dynamics and problems may help them fashion workarounds for discord. Mechanisms Differ Between the Two Oceans Maritime-governance mechanisms are more robust in the Indian Ocean than in the Pacific Ocean. This state of affairs should come as little shock. For the time being the Indian Ocean remains a permissive setting for constabulary enterprises, whereas the Pacific Ocean is increasingly embattled. Great-power entanglements are particularly pronounced in the waters enclosed by Asia’s first offshore island chain, which China regards as a special preserve if not its sovereign property. These are seas and skies where Beijing insists it makes the rules through domestic law. To Chinese eyes, consequently, multinational efforts to safeguard maritime security in offshore waters look like outsiders barging onto Chinese land to police it. Reflexive skepticism and opposition seem natural in this light. In South Asia, by contrast, challenges to good order at sea stem mainly from non-state actors—offenders everyone agrees should be suppressed for the good of marine trade and commerce. This makes for two different strategic settings: consensus in the Indian Ocean and relative antagonism in the Pacific Ocean. Ergo, international mechanisms are better developed in South than East Asia. Admittedly, another state challenger, Iran, could conceivably play a spoiler role similar to China’s in the Indian Ocean. Tehran, however, is a long way from fielding a navy comparable to China’s, and to date it has confined its maritime energies mainly to the Persian

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Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. It is unclear, moreover, why its maritime services would harry shipping in the Gulf of Oman or Arabian Sea, along Iran’s southern coast. The disparity between theaters will persist until Beijing has reordered East Asian affairs to its satisfaction—assuming it can—and can divert maritime resources to establish a standing presence in the Indian Ocean without risking its position in the China seas. At that point the two settings will start to converge—and, in all likelihood, the Indian Ocean will become less and less convivial for maritime-security enterprises. Now look at the Pacific theater as a discrete expanse. China famously prefers to deal with its Asian neighbors on a bilateral basis, forestalling efforts to make common cause against it diplomatically or militarily. When it sees fit to assent to multinational undertakings, it prefers to work through the U.N. Security Council, where it wields a veto—Beijing-backed Security Council resolutions reacting to North Korea’s initial nuclear tests, for instance. Short of U.N. action, its attitude tends to fragment efforts at maritime governance. Counterproliferation, counterpiracy, and similar ventures take on a scattershot, spasmodic character. To be sure, regional governments have made fitful efforts at cooperation. In 2004, for instance, Southeast Asian countries joined together to police the Strait of Malacca under the Regional Maritime Security Initiative. The effort proved abortive. And while the PSI keeps a low profile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines take part in the initiative, as do Japan and South Korea to the north. Presumably PSI operations proceed on a low-key basis as circumstances warrant. Beyond these activities, some Asian states engage in bilateral cooperation with outsiders. U.S.-led capacity-building initiatives are well-established and growing in scope. U.S. mariners help equip and train Southeast Asian navies and coast guards while conducting annual combined exercises. Probably the most systematic U.S. military outreach initiatives toward South China Sea states are the annual Southeast Asian Cooperation Afloat Training (SEACAT) exercises and the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) program. SEACAT provides six Southeast Asian states with a week’s worth apiece of training in specialized tactics, techniques, and procedures for maritime interdiction. Inaugurated by the U.S. Pacific Command in 1995, the yearly CARAT exercises bring together units from the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Military Sealift Command on a predominantly bilateral basis with their counterparts from the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and Indonesia. Cambodia and Vietnam are relatively recent additions to the roster of partners. CARAT empowers these countries to act on their own while at the same time bolstering “interoperability”—disparate services’ ability to operate together smoothly—between regional and U.S. forces on matters of common interest.

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CARAT involves a sizable, standing commitment of U.S. resources to improve Southeast Asian forces’ skills and material capacity. Washington, moreover, is looking to expand CARAT beyond bilateral exercises while introducing more complex training. Gunnery drills and counterpiracy training constitute two avenues to more effective maritime-governance capability. Now look westward of the Malay Peninsula. The U.S.-led Combined Maritime Forces command at Bahrain oversees several combined task forces (CTFs). CTF-150 executes missions throughout the Indian Ocean basin (minus the Persian Gulf) that “promote maritime security in order to counter terrorist acts and related illegal activities, which terrorists use to fund or conceal their movements.” CTF-152 is a workhorse arrangement that responds to maritime-security-related crises that take place in the Gulf. CTF-151 is CMF’s counterpiracy task force. Its activities center principally on the western Indian Ocean, where CTF-151 units patrol an international transit corridor for merchantmen in conjunction with NATO and EUNAVFOR contingents, along with ships and aircraft dispatched by individual countries such as India, China, Japan, and Russia. To coordinate their efforts, counterpiracy stakeholders created Shared Awareness & Deconfliction (SHADE), an informal clearinghouse for information and best practices. SHADE is convened on a rotating basis by NATO, EUNAVFOR, and CMF to help the detachments patrolling off Somalia work together harmoniously. In 2007, naval forces from Australia, India, Japan, Singapore, and the United States operated together in the annual Malabar exercise, held that year off Okinawa. Malabar differs from CMF endeavors in that it merges maritime-security training alongside combat maneuvers. In addition, the roster of participants has not remained stable from year to year—owing largely to worries about affronting China. Enlisting Sri Lanka in future maneuvers would bring all of the Quad-Plus partners within a single operational framework. Apart from these operational initiatives, seafaring states have founded several forums where they can gather to debate matters of mutual interest. In the Pacific Ocean, the Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) has met every other year since 1988. Since 2000 the North Pacific Coast Guard Forum has brought together coast guards from Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States to foster collaboration on maritime security. Working groups explore mutual challenges and responses, while combined exercises hone the sea services’ capacity to work together. In South Asia, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) has convened periodically since 2008, fostering amity among Indian Ocean littoral states while letting them consult about maritime affairs.

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And lastly, spanning the two oceans, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is an informal diplomatic exchange inaugurated in 2007 among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. This consortium occupies an “arc of freedom” sweeping around the South and East Asian rimlands and helps member governments coordinate strategy not just toward maritime security and other largely apolitical matters but also toward state challengers confronting them. One conspicuous fact stands out about these institutions: none brings together all of the Quad-Plus countries. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and WPNS come closest, including everyone except Sri Lanka. Japan holds observer status in IONS, while the United States remains on the outside altogether. The North Pacific Coast Guard Forum excludes Australia, India, and Sri Lanka. Australia has taken part in CTF-150 and CTF-152, while Australia and Japan have taken part in CTF-151. Suffice it to say, then, that there exists no ready-made forum for Quad-Plus cooperation on maritime governance. Varying Geospatial Views, Varying Agendas, Varying Strategies Nor should anyone be baffled by this. Despite their mutual fealty to maritime governance, the Quad-Plus nations have strikingly different diplomatic agendas, geostrategic outlooks, and resources to dedicate to constabulary duty. Indeed, even as coalition managers search out common ground, it is just as crucial to ask what interests the Quad-plus do not have in common in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Averting their eyes from unpleasant realities would leave the entente susceptible to drift, or to mischief-making on the part of coalition-wreckers. To start with the United States, Washington does not partition its interests or strategy between the East and South Asian theaters. (The Pentagon does, however, divide responsibility for U.S. activities in the Indian Ocean among three regional combatant commands, while the State Department parcels out responsibility somewhat differently. Disharmony of effort can result.) U.S. policy, in other words, considers maritime Asia a single theater. Nor does Washington differentiate sharply between peacetime and wartime challenges. Indeed, protagonists debate ceaselessly about what to call the combined Indian Ocean/East Asian theater. Should it be dubbed the “Asia–Pacific,” the “Indo–Pacific,” the “Indo–Asia–Pacific,” or something else? The common denominator among such commentators is that they are grasping for a catchy label indicating that Washington considers the two oceans and the East and South Asian rimlands an integrated whole. What does it intend to do in these expanses and along the rimlands? The Pentagon’s 2015 Asia-Pacific Maritime Strategy makes freedom of the seas the nexus of its endeavors in the Indo–Pacific. The United States, says the strategy, intends to continue championing nautical freedom “for economic and security reasons,” as it has since 1945. Maritime Asia remains the thoroughfare for global commerce it has always been. It merits policy energy and nautical resources from Washington, the steward of the global commons.

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But as the strategy’s framers point out, seaborne freedom “includes more than the mere freedom of commercial vessels to transit through international waterways.” Freedom of navigation, the liberty to transit from point A to point B through the seaways, is only a subset of freedom of the seas. Consequently, the Defense Department intends to protect “all of the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace, including for military ships and aircraft, recognized under international law” while guaranteeing “access in the event of a crisis.” The document’s framers outline four major “lines of effort” meant to safeguard freedom of the seas:

First, we are strengthening our military capacity to ensure the United States can successfully deter conflict and coercion and respond decisively when needed. Second, we are working together with our allies and partners from Northeast Asia to the Indian Ocean to build their capacity to address potential challenges in their waters and across the region. Third, we are leveraging military diplomacy to build greater transparency, reduce the risk of miscalculation or conflict, and promote shared maritime rules of the road. Finally, we are working to strengthen regional security institutions and encourage the development of an open and effective regional security architecture. Together with our inter-agency colleagues and regional allies and partners, the Department is focused on ensuring that maritime Asia remains open, free, and secure in the decades ahead.

Several things are noteworthy in this passage. One, rather than divide East from South Asia, U.S. strategists pledge to remain engaged all along the arc from the Korean Peninsula and northern Japan around to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Two, “building partner capacity,” a common buzz phrase in the defense community, is central to this enterprise. America helps itself—and relieves some of the burden on its diplomatic and military resources—by helping others help themselves. And three, preserving the status quo, including free seas, is the prime mover impelling the strategy. Such an outlook befits a globe-straddling maritime power accustomed to acting as custodian of the commons. For Japan, as for any other nation-state, political independence and territorial integrity come first. Tokyo surveys the strategic surroundings in the most recent revision of its National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), issued in 2013. North Korea features prominently in the document. Pyongyang “has repeatedly acted to heighten regional tension and it constitutes a grave destabilizing factor for the security of the region.” Its mercurial behavior combined with “nuclear and missile development…poses a serious and imminent threat to Japan’s security.” Great powers also figure prominently in the NDPG. Just across the Yellow Sea, “China has been rapidly advancing its military capabilities in a wide range of areas without sufficient transparency” while “showing its attempts to change the status quo by coercion.” For its part, “Russia is proceeding with reform and modernization of its military forces” while “accelerating

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their activities”—including along Japan’s northern ramparts. On the positive side of the ledger, say the NDPG’s writers, the United States “has clearly communicated its strategy to put greater emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region.” Tokyo thus relates a good news/bad news story through the NDPG. But despite genuflecting to “enhancing ‘Open and Stable Seas’” for sea and air traffic, its strategic focus clearly remains on its near abroad. This is natural. Primal motives—self-help chief among them—will concentrate Japanese resources and policy energy on Northeast Asia unless Tokyo opts to burst through its self-imposed cap on defense spending. Pegged at 1 percent of gross domestic product, the defense budget arguably provides enough funding for Japan’s security, provided the Self-Defense Forces remain part of a combined force alongside the U.S. military. That sum is too meager to fund a stand-alone defense force plus a serious expeditionary force for distant, secondary theaters like the Indian Ocean. Look at Japan’s problem from a theoretical standpoint. Per the Clausewitzian calculus governing secondary theaters or efforts, Japan lacks the “decisive superiority” close to home that could justify a major push for maritime governance in South Asia. The Prussian scribe warns statesmen and commanders to keep their priorities straight. A secondary endeavor, writes Clausewitz, must be “exceptionally rewarding” without hazarding too much in the primary theater. He thus reduces the problem of risk to giving the primary theater first claim on lives, treasure, and military resources. So long as the Japanese home islands, outlying island chains, and surrounding seas and skies remain under threat, Tokyo will properly keep its strategic gaze close to home. There is a wrinkle to Japan’s view of its interests and strategy. Amended in April 2015, the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation furnish a reminder that a U.S.–Japanese caucus will exist within multilateral efforts on behalf of maritime governance (as indeed there will be a U.S.–Australia caucus), and that this caucus exists primarily to safeguard Japan against external attack and natural disasters. Quad-Plus initiatives must take account of this dynamic. With its exterior geographic position straddling the seam between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australia, like the United States, does not distinguish sharply among theaters. Canberra looks outward along at least three axes, surveying the Indian Ocean, Western Pacific, and South Pacific. It has the world’s third-largest exclusive economic zone to police. It must also balance the U.S.–Australia alliance—a “pillar” of Australian national security according to its most recent National Security Strategy document (2013)—with the imperative to maintain amicable relations with China, a key trading partner. Canberra’s National Security Strategy lays great weight on counterterrorism and the fight against organized crime, and it describes shaping the strategic environment in Australia’s favor as another pillar of Australian national security. Besides such general statements of purpose, the

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strategy document offers few specifics relating to maritime governance. Nevertheless, Canberra clearly sees constabulary work as part of its mandate, judging from its active participation in CMF undertakings in the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. At the same time, its participation in the U.S.–Japan–Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue gives its endeavors an East Asian hue. Indian maritime strategy is noteworthy in several respects. Like Tokyo, New Delhi keeps its gaze squarely on its near seas and skies, designating the Indian Ocean as the top priority for Indian Navy and Coast Guard endeavors. Unlike Japan, with its cramped maritime geography and nearby peer antagonist, India has far greater sea areas to manage as well as the freedom to do so: it faces no peer competitor in regional waters as of yet. The China seas and Western Pacific, by contrast, remain a secondary theater for New Delhi with the partial exception of the South China Sea, where successive prime ministers have exhorted Indians to “look east” or “act east.” India’s 2007 Maritime Military Strategy proclaimed that the sea services would defend the nation’s freedom to use the sea “under all circumstances” while buffering against external intervention. This represented a largely traditional, state-centric strategic vision. Yet events since the document’s release in 2007 have modified New Delhi’s outlook on marine matters, as did a change of prime ministers and governing parties. Its strategy has taken on a different complexion as the times have changed. In recent months, for instance, the Indian navy updated the Maritime Military Strategy with a 2015 Maritime Security Strategy (my emphasis) subtitled Ensuring Secure Seas. As the name change implies, the sea services have broadened their purposes beyond naval competition—Pakistan and China being the chief preoccupations—to enfold nontraditional menaces such as seaborne terrorism. Why they placed new emphasis on non-state challenges is easy to divine. The November 2008 maritime terrorist attacks on Mumbai wrought a revolution in Indian thinking about hazards of the sea, much as the 9/11 attacks imprinted themselves on American thinking about counterterrorism. In short, New Delhi has broadened its view of nautical challenges beyond hostile naval and military powers. It now vows to make itself a “net security provider,” helping police the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea—along with the Red Sea, which the strategy designates as part of the navy’s “primary area”—across the spectrum of conflict. The strategy’s framers point to a “blurring of traditional and non-traditional threats” that demands “a seamless and holistic approach towards maritime security.” Judging from the Maritime Security Strategy, then, India is poised to take an increasingly forceful hand in maritime governance, not just in the Indian Ocean basin but in adjacent seas—the anterooms to the Indian Ocean. Activism in the relatively permissive Red Sea is one thing.

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Whether New Delhi is prepared to carry the fight against nontraditional threats into the China seas—and potentially embroil itself in geostrategic competition with China—remains to be seen. Lastly, while English-language publications about Sri Lankan foreign policy and strategy are scanty, the island’s leadership evidently catalogs maritime security and border control among its foremost security worries, alongside such perennial concerns such as internal war and foreign intervention. Gunrunning to internal opponents, human trafficking, unlawful fishing in Sri Lankan waters, and piracy that menaces merchantmen bound to or from the seaports at Hambantota and Colombo fall among the threats Sri Lanka sees emanating from the sea. With the exception of counterpiracy, these are all threats concentrated in the island’s immediate vicinity. Sri Lanka’s strategic gaze, then, rests mainly on the subset of the Indian Ocean adjoining its coasts. Its modest resources and recent emergence from internal war mandate a prudent concentration of strategy and resources. It has little to spare for wider pursuits. Now add this all up. The Quad-Plus is composed of:

• A world power that views the Indo–Pacific as a single theater. It has designated the two oceans and the adjoining rimlands as its primary theater of nautical endeavor, forward-deploys sizable forces to bases at each end of the theater, and yet finds a multitude of other claims beckoning its finite policy energy and marine resources. It is conflicted.

• A great Northeast Asian power that focuses mainly on its own surroundings. It must

grapple with conventional threats from an ambitious great power that opposes combined ventures at sea, and from a small, reckless, nuclear-armed state a scant few hundred miles across the sea. And it has fettered its military capacity because of past misdeeds.

• A great Indian Ocean power that focuses mainly on its extended surroundings. It adjoins

an ambitious great power and a lesser but still nuclear-armed antagonist on land, yet, for now, enjoys considerable latitude to act against conventional and non-state threats at sea. As problems mount, it contemplates mounting a forward defense outside regional waters.

• A middle power at the junction between the two oceans that tends to regard maritime

Asia as a single theater. It has considerable maritime responsibilities and has demonstrated its capacity and willingness to act against non-state lawbreakers in conjunction with allies and partners.

• A small Indian Ocean island state overshadowed by a giant continental neighbor that also

belongs to the Quad-Plus. It is rebuilding from a protracted internal war and generally confines its marine endeavors to combating non-state ills that have plagued it in the past. Managing its immediate surroundings ranks atop its priorities.

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This is a disparate group. Aligning strategy among the partners may prove trying in light of unlike views and interests, to say nothing of the priorities these interests dictate for scarce national resources. Again, the Indian Ocean remains fairly hospitable for combined ventures. Four of the Quad-Plus powers are resident in the region (counting the permanent U.S. presence at Bahrain and Diego Garcia), they all agree on the need to combat non-state offenders, and the strategic setting remains more tranquil than the Pacific theater. Over time, the character of China’s naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean could render the setting less congenial. (If China’s conduct as a good citizen in the Gulf of Aden is a guide, on the other hand, it is possible Beijing will remain a partner in maritime security. Different rules of maritime interaction do seem to apply beyond the Malay Peninsula.) The upside to more confrontational relations is that a domineering China would cement the community of interest—prompting the Quad-Plus nations to set aside their differences for the common good, and bolstering their chances of counterbalancing a Chinese naval presence in the region. The basic facts of coalition maintenance, then, mean that attaining Quad-Plus interests in maritime security will prove trickier in East than South Asia—and that the more forbidding the strategic environment, the easier it will prove for the Quad-Plus countries to work together. The greats of diplomacy and military affairs testify to the difficulty of working alongside foreign confederates. Two centuries ago, Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich bemoaned the proclivity of international “fraternizations” to fracture absent a “strictly determinate aim.” In June 1943, Winston Churchill told Parliament: “All sorts of divergences, all sorts of differences of outlook and all sorts of awkward little jars necessarily occur”—even when close friends like Britain and America join together amid tumultuous times. Allied supreme commander Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against “divided counsels and diverse political, economic, and military interests” while holding out hope that “concessions voluntarily made” within an alliance of equals give rise to strategic efficacy. Quite so. Naval Resources Are Scarce and Scattered In parting, a few words about sea-service resources for discharging a Quad-Plus strategy, focusing in particular on the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. Navy graphics depicting the disposition of the fleet are worthwhile, but they can deceive when taken out of context. Consider the map below:

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The map depicts the numbers of ships at American seaports and on foreign stations as of 2015, projecting out to 2020. The Navy is rebuilding toward a 308-ship fleet and intends to permanently forward deploy more of that fleet to boost the number of ships available at potential hotspots on a daily basis. The map implies that an imposing reserve, 185 ships, will remain at home and ready to surge overseas in times of strife. Raw numbers mislead in this case. Congressional Research Service analysts point out that it takes a bare minimum of three hulls—far more for certain ship types—to keep one U.S.-based vessel constantly on station. One ship is underway at any given time, another has just returned and is undergoing overhaul, and a third has completed shipyard maintenance and is working up for deployment. Taking the notional 185 U.S.-based ships and dividing by 3, then, provides a more accurate picture of the number of ships available for foreign contingencies—including maritime governance. Admittedly, ships that are permanently forward deployed achieve readiness rates considerably better than 3:1. For them, operating overseas means operating from one’s homeport—subtracting all the wear-and-tear from transiting to distant oceans and back. Indeed, it may take as few as 1.7 ships to keep a fully combat-ready vessel on foreign station at any time, factoring in the rhythm of training, crew rest, maintenance, and other inescapable demands. About five hulls is sufficient to keep three ready for sea. This arithmetic explains why the Navy leadership plans to station more of the fleet overseas in the coming years. Even so, a force of 308 ships—meaning around 72 ships homeported abroad and 61 back home—makes for rather thin coverage when spread across the globe.

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The important point is this: There is no vast reservoir of U.S. naval power back in North America to support enterprises in the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean, or Persian Gulf. The same iron logic governs naval operations for the other Quad-Plus powers. Resident sea powers such as Japan and India, however, are better positioned to provide assets for constabulary ventures, simply because they occupy interior positions in the region and can send ships to potential trouble spots along short lines of communication. For its part, Australia enjoys great liberty of action from its external yet central position in the Indo–Pacific. Yet Canberra boasts only modest military forces to exploit this fortunate location. Which leaves proponents of maritime governance facing stark Clausewitzian logic. For every new commitment a government takes on, the leadership must ponder whether it is sacrificing more important interests for the sake of policing seas and skies. Only if the leadership is comfortable with the risk to primary interests and theaters will it siphon off naval forces for constabulary efforts. And if it does enter into such endeavors, in all likelihood it will treat them as “economy-of-force” undertakings—allocating the absolute minimum of resources possible. What sort of strategic alternatives are available considering this disjuncture among ends, ways, and means? First of all, the partners can negotiate a geographic division of labor. If Japan, India, and Sri Lanka concentrate mainly on security in their home regions, it makes sense for them to take the lead in maritime governance in near seas and skies. If Sri Lanka can manage its environs, for example, it relieves the Indian Navy and Coast Guard of a burden along the subcontinent’s southern tier—letting New Delhi focus attention and naval resources elsewhere. As the exterior, holistically minded partners, the United States and Australia can play a supporting part throughout maritime Asia while furnishing surge forces when contingencies arise in the Pacific or Indian Oceans. They can swing forces from side to side between the oceans. Such a division of labor would conform to the partners’ interests as the partners construe them—helping firm up their commitment to Quad-Plus endeavors. There would be less chance of their sacrificing one priority for another. Second, each partner can contribute commensurate with the assets it possesses. Contributions need not be symmetrical. Ships, aircraft, and crews constitute a necessary and welcome part of the effort. Basing rights and logistical support, however, are equally necessary and welcome—especially for U.S. units operating between the military hubs at Bahrain and Japan, at the extreme edges of the theater. Geography makes India, Sri Lanka, and Australia suitable candidates to host constabulary forces on an intermittent or permanent basis. And third, outreach is crucial to assembling a broad-based seafaring consortium. The Quad-Plus partners should strive to make themselves the nucleus of a bigger entente, drawing external partners like the Philippines, Vietnam, Oman, or the East African countries into the arrangement’s outer—and, perhaps, inner—orbit. Singapore, for instance, is a natural partner. It has opened the seaport of Changi to a detachment of U.S. Navy littoral combat ships—lightly

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armed combatants well-suited to constabulary work in the South China Sea or Bay of Bengal. It has taken part in the Malabar exercises, and partakes of U.S. capacity-building programs in the South China Sea. Nor must the United States initiate new accords. The news broke recently that India and the Seychelles have agreed to battle piracy together in the islands’ environs. Adding more partners renders the diplomatic geometry even more intricate, to be sure, but it also adds resources. An informal consortium under which partners are free to check in and out based on their political, strategic, and operational needs of the moment is a likely prospect. Indeed, the PSI, with its loose, informal commitments, may represent the best of a range of suboptimal models for maritime cooperation. The upshot is this: policy unbacked by like-minded partners furnishing sufficient resources amounts to a wish. The Quad-Plus nations must consider what draws them together and what tends to divide them; identify what each nation has to offer, whether it is naval or coast guard vessels or aircraft, law enforcement personnel, or access to real estate near sea areas being policed; and undertake ongoing, frank conversations about these matters and more. If they do so, they can avoid opening a chasm between coalition policy and the strategy and resources earmarked to fulfill policy aims. The cause of free seas will benefit.