Security Challenges in Nuclearized IOR: Implications of AUKUS, QUAD and Emerging Alliances

Abstract

The Indian Ocean region (IOR), stretching from north Arabian sea to Australia, is becoming dangerous for its 42 littoral states due to emerging conflict zones viz, global chaos. More nuclear actors, both declared and undeclared such as Iran, Israel and Pakistan are moving in, hence increasing the complexity of the recognized maritime picture. IOR is home to global trade and essential energy supplies around the world; hence, any conflict here, shall impact global trade and energy security in more than one way. More so, nuclear neighbours with pending disputes, simmering flash points and potential hot spots inter alia, murkiness of undersea activities by regional and extra-regional actors, present a clear danger. This needs to be evaluated in the backdrop of obtaining environment and suggest a collaborative mechanism to pool up resources, modulate mutual expertise, synchronise actions, and synergise efforts to minimize threats, especially to non-nuclear states of IOR due to any “intentional incident or unforeseen accident”. This paper argues that the growing nuclearization of the IOR, driven by alliances such as AUKUS and QUAD, increases the risk of escalation and endangers littoral states. A collaborative regional framework is proposed to mitigate the threats.