UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – A former Indian ambassador once told an American audience that one of the biggest misconceptions about the Indian Ocean is that it belongs to India. “Not really, but we wish we had,” he said, amid laughs.

But growing great power politics in the region have all but doomed a longstanding proposal for a peace zone, whether in the Indian Ocean or the Indian Ocean.

For an unprecedented 58 years, the United Nations has struggled painstakingly to implement a proposed declaration of an Indian Ocean Peace Zone (IOPZ), first proposed by Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike before the Assembly general in 1964.

The proposal was also endorsed by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which then had 113 members. The main element that formed the basis of a subsequent UN declaration in 1971 was the steadily escalating arms race and competitive military presence in the region.

At the height of the Cold War, the United States, France, Britain and the former Soviet Union had naval bases in the region, including refueling facilities on the island of Socotra in the former South Yemen, Gan Air Base in the Maldives, Asmara in Ethiopia, Port Victoria in the Seychelles, British military bases on Diego Garcia Island and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

A 1971 UN resolution (2832) declared the Indian Ocean a zone of peace calling on the “great powers” to enter into immediate consultations with the states bordering the Indian Ocean with a view to halting the escalation and expanding their military presence. in the Indian Ocean.

But that never happened – and the statement has remained stagnant ever since.

And with the new growing geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific region, the IOPZ will likely be buried on the high seas.

Additionally, the 2017 resurrection of the informal alliance, originally created in 2007 and called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (and known as the Quad), comprising the United States, Australia, India and the Japan, is now seen as an aligned group in their “shared concerns about China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Addressing a meeting in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta last December, US Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken said the Indo-Pacific region is the fastest growing region on the planet. “It accounts for 60% of the global economy, two-thirds of all economic growth over the past five years. It is home to more than half of the world’s population, seven of the 15 largest economies.

And it’s beautifully diverse, Blinken said, with more than 3,000 languages, many religions spanning two oceans and three continents.

“The United States has long been, is, and always will be an Indo-Pacific nation. It is a geographic fact, from our Pacific coastal states to Guam, our territories across the Pacific. And it is a historical reality, demonstrated by our two centuries of trade and other links with the region.

And more members of our military are stationed in the region than anywhere outside the continental United States, providing the peace and security that has been vital to the region’s prosperity, for the benefit of all of us, a- he noted.

Ambassador Kshenuka Senewiratne, a former permanent representative of Sri Lanka to the UN, told IPS “that when it comes to the Indo-Pacific region, the US seems to be more proactive now due to the spread of China in this region on many aspects through their relations with the respective countries.”

But there is no escaping the fact that references to trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) vis-à-vis the United States and the region, she pointed out, are due to their dominance by China. .

“Hence the interest of the first to work with other big economic giants like India, Australia and Japan in the region and its formalization by creating the Quad. That would be the mechanism China is watching,” she said.

Blinken’s statement speaks to the spread of the US military in the Indo-Pacific region, which is a misplaced threat, she argued, considering China has used its economic strategy to maintain power in the region. and did not exercise its military might. This is the case even with regard to the question of southern China.

How China holds countries in the region accountable to them is something the United States and other related major economies in the Indo-Pacific region need to watch and do the same as they seek to help develop economies of these countries, she said.

A senior Sri Lankan diplomat who once chaired the 44-member UN ad hoc committee told IPS: “The IOPZ is a dead horse – and beating it furiously will not revive it.”

“Key players in New York and at the UN Secretariat, who only pay lip service to the idea, continue to whip the dead horse as they do with many such mandates, for lack of methodology for ‘bury permanently,’ he said.

Another former UN ambassador dismissed it with one word: “The IOPZ sank many years ago in the wake of the many nuclear-powered warships.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Sri Lankan diplomat told IPS: “It is clear that the IOPZ was a non-starter given that there are two nuclear powers (India and Pakistan) in the immediate vicinity”.

“Some think it was India that started it, partly to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, but then Sri Lanka took the ball and tried to run at the UN,” he said. she pointed out.

IOPZ attracted the support of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) at the UN during the years of the Cold War and anti-Western imperialism also because of Diego Garcia where the original inhabitants were expelled by the British colonial power and a military base dug there by the US.

Subsequently, the rationale for the IOPZ waned, for example, during the tenure of Sri Lankan President JR Jayewardene when the West was seen as a protective shield against India which had by then experienced a rise in power. major military in the region and called the Indian Ocean. to be “India’s ocean” and Sri Lanka was considered part of India’s safe zone.

With the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific region to the United States, a peace zone in the Indian Ocean might not be a political reality, she added.

Seychelles is a nation made up of approximately 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Photo credit: UN News, Manahas Farquhar/ Matthew Morgan