U.S. Strategy in the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) matters a great deal to the United States. Robert D. Kaplan said as much a decade ago with his book “Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.” Spanning from East Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia, the IOR is the connective fabric, via sea lines of communication and telecommunications fiber optic submarine cables, linking the economies of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia, and Australia. It is also a priority route and theater for U.S. military global power projection capability and capacity. Absent an articulate strategy ruthlessly executed, the United States risks becoming an afterthought in the Indian Ocean, seceding half of the Indo-Pacific to China, which seeks to exert more economic and military presence in the IOR.

This is an excerpt from an article run in The Diplomat.  Click below to read the full article.

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