Ensuring Secure Seas

The 2015 Maritime Security Strategy of India

Abstract

The new Maritime Security Strategy of India was released on 26th October 2015. This document summarized the goals and concepts of the country’s maritime policy, and confirmed its identity as the dominant maritime power on the Indian Ocean. For the last decades, the Indian elite has acknowledged the strategic importance of the naval power. Since the end of the Cold War, the horizon of New Delhi’s foreign and security policy rapidly widened, and focused on enhanced presence, power projection and deterrence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Today, India have approximately the sixth largest navy in the world, and most of the military experts belive that the country will be one of the first maritime powers in the 21st century. The development of the naval components of the Indian Armed Forces indeed very impressive, but not always convincing. This study aims to explain the most important elements of the new Maritime Security Strategy, and analyze them in the context of the Indian military modernisation.