Policy Brief | June 2, 2022
With the looming presence of an authoritarian China and its deepening footprint in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. and India are aligning on how they equally value the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific. Challenges in this maritime region come from a variety of sources, and the two democracies have their connects and disconnects while combating them. What are the key traditional and non-traditional maritime security threats facing the Indo-Pacific? How do Indian and American priorities compare, and what are the prospects for working jointly to secure their interests and objectives bilaterally and otherwise?
To address these questions, the Rising Powers Initiative (RPI) at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University and the Department of International Studies, Political Science, and History, Christ University in Bangalore, invited a panel of leading experts, including Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director, Asia Program and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Nilanthi Samaranayake, Director, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)’s Strategy and Policy Analysis Program, with commentator Gurpreet Singh Khurana, missile warfare specialist of the Indian Navy and author, currently a Visiting Professor at Naval War College (NWC), Goa. In addition, there were brief interventions by two other specialists, P.K. Ghosh, a former Senior Fellow at IDSA and Indian Navy veteran, and Subramanyam Raju, Head of the Center for Maritime Studies at Pondicherry University. Deepa Ollapally, Research Professor of International Affairs and Director of RPI, moderated the event. This Roundtable is the fourth segment in the project that commenced last year on U.S.-India relations between Christ University and George Washington University. See event recording on YouTube.
The first session of the Roundtable covers traditional military maritime security concerns and responses. The second session concentrates on non-traditional security, which does not get as much attention despite its direct impact on Indo-Pacific populations. It covers human security issues or soft security such as climate change and ocean pollution. The purpose of the Roundtable was to draw out the top priorities of the U.S. and India and consider how they intersect, according to U.S. and Indian experts, respectively.
