By: Ammar Nainar
This week, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is visiting the Indian Ocean island country of Mauritius where 10 years ago he outlined an expansive vision of India’s approach to the Indian Ocean. This is unlikely to make news in the United States, for whom the Indian Ocean is hardly a major priority. But Washington should take notice. In fact, in a signal of the United States’ burden sharing efforts, the Indian Ocean region was featured eight times in the latest U.S.-India joint statement under Modi and U.S. president Donald Trump. These references extended to the sale of U.S. maritime patrol aircraft, joint connectivity investments, and ambitious undersea cable projects. For both India and the United States, the Indian Ocean remains vital for trade and energy flows, for security competition given China’s growing naval activity, and for connectivity between Asia, Africa, and Europe.
In fact, U.S.-India relations got their start through the Indian Ocean. In 1789, ships from Massachusetts visited India to export textiles and naval stores. During World War II, India joined the U.S. Lend-Lease program to modernize its ports in Mumbai, Vishakhapatnam, and Kolkata. The U.S. also benefitted as India’s geography helped economize allied war efforts in Asia and the Middle East. Priorities changed during the Cold War. In the late 1960s, India disapproved of the presence of Western militaries in Indian Ocean territories like Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands, which was disputed between Mauritius and the United Kingdom. Despite these differences, India and the United States provided logistics support to each other’s military interventions in the Maldives and Kuwait after 1988. In 1990, the Indian Navy inaugurated its first signals transmission facility — constructed by an American company — near Sri Lanka (INS Kattabomman).
After the Cold War, what had previously been sporadic cooperation between the United States and India in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) became more formalized. The U.S.-India bilateral Malabar naval exercises began in 1992. The Indian Navy deployed warships and posted liaison officers to a U.S.-led United Nations force in Somalia. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, India escorted U.S. ships through the Malacca straits. In December 2004, both navies coordinated with Japan and Australia, to provide relief following the disastrous Indian Ocean tsunami. Since 2008, China also began deploying to the Indian Ocean.
These events, coupled with agreements on defense policy, logistics, and information sharing, enabled both countries to cooperate more strategically in the IOR after 2015. India has since acquired MQ-9B drones for long-range surveillance, including near the Malacca straits. India has also deployed U.S.-designed transport aircrafts for disaster relief operations, including for the rescue of U.S. citizens. India has also refueled U.S. patrol aircrafts in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and repaired U.S. navy ships in Chennai. In 2023-24, India worked alongside the United States to secure sea lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, including rescuing U.S.-owned vessels from Houthi attacks. Both countries have cross-posted officers at each other’s combatant commands and maritime information centers. IOR priorities are discussed in the planned Indian Ocean Dialogue and the Military Cooperation Group, which now feature U.S. combatant commanders from the entire IOR, Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.
Military exercises have since expanded with Quad partners and France in the Bay of Bengal, as have joint intelligence exchanges with Sri Lanka and Maldives. Another change is participation in each other’s multilateral naval exercises; India’s MILAN and the United States’ Cutlass Express in Djibouti, SEACAT in Singapore, and Cobra Gold in Thailand. Additionally, security cooperation at the multilateral level has become prominent, most visibly in the Quad, where India, the United States, Japan, and Australia now help provide maritime domain data to Indo-Pacific countries. India has also joined the U.S.-led Combined Maritime Forces in Bahrain where it has interdicted narcotics smuggling in the Arabian Sea. The United States, India, and Indonesia also deployed tropical buoys to analyze monsoons in the Indian Ocean.
Strategic investments and connectivity are equally relevant. This extended to U.S. investments to facilitate cross-border electricity trade. India and the United States have also implemented renewable energy projects in Tanzania. Furthermore, the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) may see further progress this year.
There do, however, remain limits to cooperation, which extend to India’s political sensitivities in its neighborhood. For example, in countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar, India often prioritizes engagement with parties who cater to its security concerns, while the United States’ traditional focus on norms has occasionally undercut Indian interests. India and the United States have also had differences over freedom of navigation — as it applies, for example, to India’s Indian Ocean island territories — while India is concerned about deterring Chinese activism. Despite these important differences, the scope for greater U.S.-India cooperation in the Indian Ocean remains positive given the region’s critical importance and ongoing attempts at burden sharing.
Ammar Nainar is a Program Coordinator and Junior Fellow for the Foreign Policy & Security program at ORF America.