Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Indian Ocean, home to a fifth of the water on earth’s surface, has long been a crossroads for merchants, mariners, and navies. The Indian Ocean is critical to the geopolitical and economic fortunes of its littoral states and outside powers. As they have for centuries, container, passenger, and naval vessels squeeze through its narrow straits and sail into its deep waters, plying busy trade routes that span the globe from Africa to the Middle East, Asia, and Australia.
Today, securing value and supply chains has become a priority for states small and large. As a space where the world’s great powers intersect, the Indian Ocean is one of the most valuable trade and geopolitical regions of the world with over 80% of the world’s oil passes through the Indian Ocean’s waters. It is not only a fulcrum of strategic competition between nations but also of an array of valuable economic and development opportunities. Yet there are few dedicated Indian Ocean programs anywhere in the world. The Carnegie Asia Program’s Indian Ocean Initiative serves as as a hub for research and scholarship related to the Indian Ocean and its island states and territories.
The Indian Ocean Strategic Map displays the economic, political, military, and geographic features of the Indian Ocean and how they interact as one continuous theater. Highlighting the region’s maritime prominence and geopolitical importance, the Indian Ocean Strategic Map displays the unique perspectives, trade relationships, and multilateral bodies that dominate regional geopolitics.
The annual Indo-Pacific Island Dialogue Series convenes governmental and non-governmental actors to exchange experiences and display the strategic, economic, and diplomatic dynamics between island states and outside partners.
Islands have always played critical roles for great powers jostling for influence on the world stage. Small island nations in the Indo-Pacific are no different. Today, China, the United States, and other regional powers have jockeyed for favor from these island states in the Indian Ocean region. Yet often lost in the shuffle of great power politics are the interests of the island nations themselves.
Join Tim Watts, MP, Dr. Corlyn Bull, and Darshana M. Baruah for a conversation about Phase II of the Indian Ocean Interactive Map.
The Indian Ocean region’s importance to global trade, geopolitical competition, and maritime security is growing. Understanding its key players, regional organizations, and challenges is critical to crafting policy toward the region.
A leader in advocating climate change and mitigation, as well as its presence at multilateral institutions, the Maldives provides a unique insight into the role small states play in global developments including on multilateral treaties, agreements and establishing norms and rules.
As conversations and research on Pacific Islands take on a new significance within policy discussions and international collaborations, it is a great privilege to hear from and understand the issues of priorities, perspectives, and urgency within the Pacific Island nations.
To identify Washington’s implementation of its Indo-Pacific strategy in the Indian Ocean, there needs to be first a study examining the region against U.S. interests, priorities, and competition in light of Washington’s problems, challenges, and opportunities in the Indian Ocean.
Island nations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans are important to great power competition, but they are often excluded from policy discussions about the Indo-Pacific. The second annual Islands Dialogue aimed to change that.
In a complex, changing, and increasingly contested world, the Carnegie Endowment generates strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of international scholar-practitioners to help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and safeguard peace. Join our mailing list to become part of our network of more than 150 scholars in 20 countries.
Sign up to receive emails from Carnegie!