India faces one of the crucial difficult safety environments on the planet, confronting not one however two adversarial neighbors: Pakistan and China. Whereas New Delhi retains the traditional navy higher hand over Islamabad, in Beijing it confronts a militarily and economically superior energy that has repeatedly used drive to change the established order alongside their disputed border.
For the reason that 1962 border warfare, India and China have confronted a collection of navy confrontations, together with the 2017 Doklam standoff and the lethal Galwan Valley clashes in 2020. Extra lately, Beijing reportedly supplied Islamabad with vital intelligence assist in the course of the 2025 India-Pakistan battle, elevating the chance that any future Indo-Pak disaster will unfold in opposition to the backdrop of Chinese language assist for Islamabad.
Given this geopolitical actuality, India should put together to discourage and, if wanted, confront future Chinese language aggression. Though formidable, India’s navy stays conventionally weaker than China’s. At $92 billion, New Delhi’s protection spending is simply over 1 / 4 of Beijing’s. Regardless of India’s efforts to obtain superior Western fighter jets and develop its personal indigenous capabilities, China nonetheless enjoys a 3:1 benefit in airpower, and its naval modernization far outpaces India’s personal efforts.
Happily for India, it doesn’t have to match China’s navy capabilities one-to-one to ascertain credible deterrence. The continuing battle within the Gulf presents one more lesson in the way it can use uneven warfare to its benefit. Over the previous six months, Iran has demonstrated its potential to threaten industrial transport by way of the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting international power markets and imposing disproportionate prices on conventionally superior navy powers.
China, too, has a significant maritime vulnerability. Practically 80 p.c of its whole power imports, price $312 billion, move by way of the Strait of Malacca – the shortest sea route between the Center East and East Asia – making a vital maritime chokepoint. Recognizing this, China has invested closely in mitigating the so-called “Malacca Dilemma,” however regardless of these efforts Beijing stays deeply uncovered. Different waterways like Sunda and Lombok improve journey time, gas prices, and logistical complexity, whereas land-based routes linked to the Belt and Street Initiative (BRI) are costly and susceptible to political instability. It’s nonetheless vital for China that this very important sea lane stays open.
If it invests in the best maritime denial capabilities, New Delhi may exploit Beijing’s dependence on the Strait of Malacca to offset its standard drawback, whether or not in a significant battle involving Chinese language navy aggression in opposition to India, or in a scenario with extra direct navy involvement from Beijing in an Indo-Pak disaster. If it finds itself pulled right into a broader Indo-Pacific contingency, New Delhi may even work in coordination with Western naval forces.
Disrupting site visitors by way of the Malacca Strait would carry appreciable navy and political dangers. Nevertheless, India needn’t shut the strait to strengthen deterrence. The flexibility to credibly threaten such disruption may drive Beijing to account for extreme financial prices, underscoring the necessity for India to put money into maritime-denial capabilities now. To handle regional considerations, India would want to border these capabilities as a part of a broader effort to strengthen deterrence within the Indo-Pacific, ideally in coordination with regional companions somewhat than over their heads.
Such a method would hinge on a layered maritime-denial structure. India’s management of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands means it doesn’t have to rely on costly plane carriers to threaten transport by way of the Malacca Strait. As an alternative, it may use low-cost unmanned methods of the sort Iran has employed to discourage Chinese language vessels and alter the cost-benefit calculus for China.
Equally, India may make the most of cheap naval mines to complicate maritime entry; the psychological influence of a mined waterway alone could be adequate to discourage vessels carrying costly cargoes.
The Indian Navy’s submarines working from the Bay of Bengal can be one other priceless asset in such a state of affairs, not just because they might put vessels in danger, but in addition as a result of their presence would drive Beijing to commit scarce assets to advanced anti-submarine warfare operations.
New Delhi’s rising anti-ship cruise missile arsenal would add to the efficacy of such a layered area-denial structure. India’s BrahMos and new long-range hypersonic anti-ship missile may threaten Chinese language ships from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with out placing costly naval destroyers in hurt’s manner.
To make the technique credible, nonetheless, India would want extra than simply these particular person property. It will want persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance throughout the jap Indian Ocean; resilient command-and-control networks; and common navy workout routines that show a capability to combine drones, submarines, mines, and missiles right into a coherent maritime denial technique.
Whereas New Delhi has invested in increasing its arsenal of those particular person property, it nonetheless lacks a coherent maritime denial technique for the Strait of Malacca. Such an goal can be higher served, for one, by fortifying the Andaman and Nicobar Command with credible navy capabilities – an enterprise that shouldn’t be conflated with the Nice Nicobar Island Undertaking. The challenge has evident dual-use dimensions, but it surely stays primarily a industrial infrastructure initiative and shouldn’t be handled as an alternative choice to arduous navy energy.
China has spent a long time attempting to resolve the Malacca Dilemma as a result of Beijing understands its vulnerability. India ought to acknowledge that very same actuality. It needn’t match China ship for ship or plane for plane. By investing in credible maritime denial capabilities across the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, New Delhi can be sure that any Chinese language aggression carries prices Beijing can’t ignore.