The United States Pacific Command (PaCom) recently changed its designation to United States Indo-Pacific Command (IndoPaCom) as a way of acknowledging the importance of India and the Indian Ocean to the theater and to United States strategy in general. The re-designation may have formalized the reality that IndoPaCom habitually operates in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but it does not go far enough in acknowledging that the United States’ principal competitor is a rising China whose influence and presence has expanded beyond the East and South China Seas. Given China’s maritime expansion and development of commercial ports and naval bases from East Asia through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Africa, the U.S. military must reorganize to ensure unity of command against China in any future conflict. As currently structured, IndoPaCom, U.S. Central Command (CentCom), and potentially U.S. Africa Command (AfriCom), would share responsibility for fighting China in a maritime domain extending from the East China Sea to the Arabian Sea.
To deal with this reality, this essay makes two specific recommendations. The first is to expand IndoPaCom’s area of responsibility (AOR) to encompass the Arabian Sea and decisive points along the coasts of East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and South Asia. The second is to formally assign Fifth Fleet to IndoPaCom under the operational control of U.S. Pacific Fleet, redesignated as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Fleet. These changes would posture the United States to ensure unity of command under one combatant commander and one fleet commander over the principal forces that would be used to counter China throughout the expansive maritime region where it currently operates.
The inspiration for this essay came from one sentence buried in Robert D. Kaplan’s new book, The Return of Marco Polo’s World. Recommending an extension of the “Asia pivot” to encompass the waters bounding Eurasia, Kaplan proposes “conceptually merging our presence in the Persian Gulf region with that in the South and East China seas.”[i] Kaplan argues that the United States must employ sea power to shape geopolitics on land in Eurasia; he sees the seas as a continuum that must be controlled in order to contain China’s expansion in Eurasia.
But why stop at conceptually merging the U.S. presence? Merging its presence in these regions by shifting IndoPaCom’s boundary west to encompass the Arabian Sea and coastal decisive points such as Djibouti, al-Duqm, and Gwadar would ensure one combatant command—and therefore one maritime component command—would have responsibility for the principal theater of war in a potential future conflict with China. China, unconstrained by artificial lines on a map and the need to coordinate between combatant commands with divergent responsibilities can exploit the current seam between CentCom and IndoPaCom. This seam will only be exacerbated in the communications challenged/denied environment the United States will encounter in any conflict with China. To be sure, a seam will still exist between CentCom and IndoPaCom, but the new arrangement would remove most of the friction points the current boundary creates in the event of conflict with China.
This shift in geographic combatant command boundaries, forces, and responsibilities is consistent with the direction provided in the new National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. The National Security Strategy “designates geopolitical competitors such as Russia and China [as] greater threats than terrorists or failed states.”[ii] Indeed, as then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis wrote, “[l]ong-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the [Defense] Department.”[iii] Given the focus on resource-intensive great-power competition, particularly vis-à-vis China, the Trump administration is seeking to maintain a favorable balance of power in the Middle East while preserving the capability to counter terrorist attacks, albeit through “a more resource-sustainable approach.”[iv] Providing IndoPaCom with the AOR, structure, and resources necessary to compete with China, while employing economy of force measures in CentCom, will serve to more fully implement the National Security and National Defense Strategies.
Implementing these recommendations, however, will not be free from challenges. First and foremost, where to draw the new boundary? As evidenced by tradeoffs made in past and current AOR boundary arrangements, such as the inclusion of Israel in U.S. European Command, no solution will be wholly satisfactory. In general terms, both the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf would remain in the CentCom AOR while the Arabian Sea would shift to IndoPaCom. The boundary shift would not necessarily move any countries between combatant commands, but specific decisive points on land in the East African, Arabian, and South Asian littorals would need to be considered part of IndoPaCom to account for China’s presence. These decisive points include the ports of Djibouti and Gwadar, where China is developing naval and commercial port facilities.[v] They would also include the port of al-Duqm in Oman, which is being developed by Oman, Great Britain, and the United States and could serve as a naval base and headquarters for Fifth Fleet, removing it from the constraints of the Arabian Gulf and reducing the threat posed by Iranian naval and ballistic-missile attack.[vi] Such a move would nest well with the recommendations put forth in this essay.
A bolder move would be to shift the countries of Djibouti, Oman, and Pakistan to the IndoPaCom AOR. This would acknowledge the role these countries’ maritime infrastructure would play in a conflict with China but would neglect political, cultural, and religious considerations that naturally place these countries in the AfriCom and CentCom AORs. Again, there is no elegant solution. Even if these countries and maritime decisive points remained within AfriCom’s and CentCom’s boundaries, IndoPaCom would still be interested in them as they represent friction points and coordination requirements along this new seam.
CentCom will of course still require naval forces to deter Iran, provide maritime security, and conduct freedom of navigation operations throughout the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf. NavCent would remain the U.S. Navy’s service component command in the theater and would provide the nucleus of a combined force maritime component command, as required. Since the preponderance of Fifth Fleet’s forces and activities would be focused on China rather than Iran, however, a well-defined support relationship between CentCom and IndoPaCom will be required. This relationship would contain elements not dissimilar to the role Sixth Fleet plays vis-à-vis AfriCom and EuCom, where one fleet has responsibilities across two geographic combatant commands’ AORs. Additionally, specific naval forces, such as mine countermeasures capabilities, patrol and riverine craft, and ballistic missile defense-capable surface assets, would remain tied to CentCom. However, the bulk of Fifth Fleet’s capabilities and responsibilities would shift to IndoPaCom under the operational control of U.S. Indo-Pac Fleet.
An old adage in marksmanship is that you must make bold sight adjustments when zeroing your weapon. The same principal applies now that the United States is once again wrestling with great-power competition. Per the National Security Strategy and Defense Strategy, the United States must make bold sight adjustments regarding its military posture toward China. It must organize for future conflict rather than sustain old paradigms. The Unified Command Plan is always evolving to acknowledge new realities. It is time to do so again. As Kaplan recommends, the focus must be on seamlessly exercising sea power from the Arabian Sea to the East China Sea to contain China in Eurasia, while reassuring U.S. regional allies and partners. To do this, the United States must expand IndoPaCom’s AOR to encompass all of the relevant decisive points and sea lines of communication and reorganize the Pacific Fleet into an Indo-Pacific Fleet that encompasses Third, Fifth, and Seventh Fleets.
Endnotes
[i]. Robert D. Kaplan, The Return of Marco Polo’s World (New York: Random House, 2018), 40.
[ii]. Gordon Lubold and JessicaDonati, “Next Troop Drawdown: Afghanistan,” The Wall Street Journal, 21 December 2018.
[iii]. Jim Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America(Washington, DC: The Pentagon, 2018), 4.
[iv]. Ibid.
[v]. Gurmeet Kanwal,“Pakistan’s Gwadar Port: A New Naval Base in China’s String of Pearls in the Indo-Pacific,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2 April 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/pakistans-gwadar-port-new-naval-base-chinas-string-pearls-indo-pacific.
[vi].Theodore Karasik and Jeremy Vaughan, “Middle East Maritime Security,” 2017, 8, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/PolicyNote41-KarasikVaughan.pdf.
