Barely a month after India and the US agreed to ramp up military cooperation, the US Navy waded into India’s maritime zone without permission. New Delhi conveyed its concerns over the passage of a 9,000-tonne guided missile destroyer through India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The US 7th Fleet said in a statement that the USS John Paul Jones had “asserted navigational rights and freedoms approximately 130 nautical miles west of the Lakshadweep Islands, inside India’s exclusive economic zone, without requesting India’s prior consent, consistent with international law.”
Delhi should convey its displeasure to the US in no uncertain terms, especially with reference to the skewed definition of‘innocent passage’ by the US Department of Defense (DoD), assuming blanket power for “all ships, including warships, regardless of cargo, armament, or means of propulsion enjoying the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea in accordance with international law, for which neither prior notification nor authorization is required.”
The passage of a foreign ship is considered ‘innocent’ “so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order, or security of the coastal State’, in this case, India. The Biden administration, and more so the Pentagon, should rememberthat India is a key member of the Quad, which shares common interests and concerns as far as the challenge to the emerging global order is concerned.
In fact, the ground reality is that India is the only dependable partner for the US on its Quad agenda and for a practical solution to ensure a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The Pentagon does not make public how many ‘Freedom of Navigation Operations’ (FONOPs) it undertakes in a year, but most are conducted by US Navy ships to challenge claims on waters that are international by law and assert its right to navigate and facilitate “the global mobility of US forces.”
Some three months before the FONOP off Lakshadweep, the USS John S McCain conducted one in December 2020 near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. It was a show of strength and a signal to Beijing that the US Navy can intervene in the contested maritime waters anytime to establish the rule of law and freedom of navigation, thus rubbishing China’s claims in the area. In all, between October 2019 and September 2020, US forces operationally challenged 28 different “excessive maritime claims” made by 19 countries.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/us-should-learn-to-treat-india-as-a-security-partner-not-a-sidekick-975637.html
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