Malabar 2020: The return of the Quad
Malabar 2020: The return of the Quad
WRITTEN BY BLAKE HERZINGER
22 December 2020
The Malabar exercise, long a mainstay of US-India (and, more recently, Japan) maritime cooperation, is quadrilateral once more. Despite restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, November’s exercise brought together the Indian, US, Japanese, and Australian navies in high-end naval warfare activities in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
While Australia’s return to the exercise drew headlines, they were somewhat overshadowed by furore over a series of public remarks from the US Secretary of the Navy regarding the future of US presence in the Indian Ocean region. Far from being solely a simple maritime exercise, Malabar is one of the only tangible outputs of the Quad and may be viewed as a bellwether for the relations between the four Quad members. Thus, Malabar takes on a special significance this year and must be considered in the context of the Quad as well as its members' relationships with China and the future of Indo-Pacific security cooperation.
The importance of Malabar in the Indo-Pacific
Since 1992, the Malabar exercise has been a key milestone in the US-India defence relationship and, in many ways, reflects the evolution in that bilateral relationship over the past three decades. It is also an exemplar for the flexibility of naval diplomacy. In its infancy, Malabar was a day-long exercise consisting of little more than simple gunnery and passing exercises (PASSEXs) which, in non-naval parlance, means ships sail around near one another without colliding. There was a short hiatus imposed after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, but ties were renewed after the 11 September terrorist attacks and have steadily deepened over the ensuing two decades. Fast forward to today and Malabar features carrier strike groups operating together, nuclear submarines, anti-submarine warfare drills, underway replenishment, and joint operations with multiple aircraft. This trajectory, taking a partnership from simple drills to intricate and technical coordinated operations, is a significant achievement for both sides.
The convergence of interests that birthed the loosely-organised Quad has solidified enough for India to invite Australia back into the fold, smoothing over the breach in trust caused by Australia's hasty exit from the exercise 13 years ago.
Over time, the exercise also took on a more multilateral guise as it expanded to include new partners. Singapore made an appearance in 2007 and Japan was made a permanent partner in 2015 after several years of participating. Australia joined in 2007 but then withdrew, only returning to participation this year. Malabar 2020 may be trumpeted as a triumph of the Quad, but defining it as a ‘Quad exercise’ is unnecessarily narrow, and would likely preclude participation from other countries in the future, should the organisers wish to include them. It might also be somewhat presumptive. In 2007 (the last year all four Quad states attended Malabar) the public backlash from China toward what it interpreted as a gathering anti-China coalition caused Canberra to back away from participation. That it has taken 13 years to overcome that break in trust, and that Australia has seen it as worth overcoming, both point to the high geopolitical stakes on the Indo-Pacific table today. That Australia made a concerted effort to rejoin is a clear signal of its commitment to participating in future iterations and, presumably, preparedness to face new rounds of Chinese pressure.
In terms of its operational value, one area of convergence between all four Malabar participants is the centrality of aircraft carriers and/or large-deck amphibious vessels in their naval strategies. To date, India and the United States have dedicated aircraft carriers to the exercise while the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) has previously tasked its helicopter destroyer (carriers in all but name) to participate.
While the United States, Japan, and Australia commonly work together in combined operations, tactical operations with India are less developed. To some degree, that is a function of the nature of the bilateral relationships. As allies with very defined strategic objectives, the US maintains defined standard operating procedures and doctrine with Japan and Australia. India, as a non-aligned state, lacks that level of integration with any of the other three participants but exercises like Malabar help to build a stronger foundation of understanding and capability to work together. This is manifested in things like incorporating ‘cross-decking’ into the exercise, which involves landing aircraft on one another's ships. This is most commonly practised with rotary-wing aircraft due to significant differences in launch and recovery systems but still offers significant value when viewed from an operational perspective.
The signals sent from Malabar 2020
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has forced operational changes upon navies around the world, and the participants of Malabar 2020 were no exception. Planning conferences were held via video teleconference and the entirety of the exercise was held in a ‘no contact’ environment, where ships remained at sea and personnel did not intermingle to avoid the potential spread of COVID-19 aboard the participating ships. The speed with which the disease can spread aboard a warship, where sailors are living and working close to one another, was demonstrated earlier this year as the USS Theodore Roosevelt was stricken with hundreds of cases and forced to abort a deployment to seek support in Guam. That this year’s exercise was carried off at scale and across two different areas under pandemic constraints should be viewed as a considerable triumph of planning and as a sign of the event’s importance to all four parties.
Perhaps the largest news associated with this year’s exercise was not actually from the exercise at all. On 17 November, the day that Phase Two of Malabar began, US Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite announced that he was engaged in planning for a US fleet that would be responsible for at least part of the Indian Ocean. Immediate debate sprang forth regarding where this new 1st Fleet might be based, what waters it would be responsible for, and what ships it might involve. While US Indo-Pacific aspirations have driven it to aggressively court India, a dedicated fleet that seeks to expand US deterrence in the Indian Ocean might not be received warmly in New Delhi, which sees itself at the centre of the Indian Ocean’s security network. After several weeks of sporadic statements, Braithwaite seems to have proposed a fleet construct that relies on an afloat staff, or one without a shore-based headquarters.
Ships from multiple nations sail in formation during a live-fire gunnery exercise as part of Malabar 2020. Image credit: Flickr/US Pacific Fleet
Unfortunately, the haphazard roll-out of the announcement caught numerous partners by surprise and the subsequent scramble to clarify the intent behind the idea left many observers confused, or expressing discomfort. In any event, a pronouncement of this magnitude made so late in the Trump administration will ultimately be decided by the Biden administration. There simply is no time left to the current policymakers, nor to the working-level navy staffs, to develop this idea and put it into action before the next administration takes office.
Of course, China’s reaction to this exercise cannot be ignored. After all, the schism caused after its 2007 demarche is only now beginning to heal. Already there are signs that Australia will again be the primary target of Beijing’s ire, with major Australian exports to China being banned by the Chinese Communist Party. India’s border with China, at its highest level of tension in decades, presents another vulnerability where China might successfully apply pressure, although Indian responses to Chinese activity there in 2020 have been relatively robust to date. China’s unexplained absence at its Military Maritime Consultative Agreement Work Group with US Indo-Pacific Command might also be interpreted as a delayed sign of their displeasure. While official government statements have been muted, China’s hyper-nationalist Global Times has lambasted the Quad and Malabar repeatedly throughout 2020 with accusations of Indian 'irrationality' and US 'interference'. China’s muscular pushback could not have come as a surprise to the Quad members, however, and it is accordingly significant that all four Malabar participants elected to push forward with the exercise despite the certain impacts upon their respective relationships with the CCP.
This year’s Malabar exercise was arguably the most consequential iteration since 2007 if considered from a geopolitical standpoint as opposed to an evaluation of the exercise’s tactical composition. The convergence of interests that birthed the loosely-organised Quad has solidified enough for India to invite Australia back into the fold, smoothing over the breach in trust caused by Australia's hasty exit from the exercise 13 years ago. Despite the hysteria from state outlets like the Global Times, Malabar does not necessarily portend some sort of anti-China military alliance in the traditional sense but it is also safe to assume that Chinese bellicosity is, at least in part, to thank for Australia’s reinstatement to Malabar. This exercise is, however, a useful way for these four like-minded Indo-Pacific democracies to signal their alignment in certain areas, such as freedom of the seas.
How long China will choose to sustain its campaign of pressure and punishment against the participants remains to be seen, but in doing so the Chinese Communist Party only highlights the fragility of its regime. If China's government cannot tolerate naval exercises thousands of miles from its shores, how hollow then are its claims of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states?
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Blake Herzinger is a civilian Indo-Pacific defence policy specialist and US Navy Reserve officer. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not represent those of his civilian employer, the US Navy, the Department of Defence, or the US government. Image credit: Flickr/US Pacific Fleet