Chabahar: India’s New Move in the Great Indian Ocean Port Race

David Brewster

Security, South Asia

The Chabahar project could be a big step in India's regional role and alter the strategic dynamics of West and Central Asia

Over the last decade or so we have seen a race to build ports in the Indian Ocean as China, India and others compete to secure their influence in the region. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Tehran last week included signing a deal for India to build a new port in the Iranian city of Chabahar as part of a major new transport corridor to Central Asia.

This project could have major strategic consequences for the region.

Navalists often like to remind us that the Indian Ocean carries a large proportion of the world's trade, and much of its trade in energy, but that it has only a handful of narrow entry and exit points (such as the Strait of Hormuz) through which trade must pass. This geography drives competition for control over those choke points and the sea lanes between. But there is also another geographic oddity driving strategic competition in the region: the virtual absence of major transport connections between the ocean and the continental hinterland. China, Russia and other hinterland states are virtually cut off from the Indian Ocean by mountain ranges, jungles and deserts.

But this is now changing. Since the turn of this century, China has moved to develop a string of new ports across southern Asia. Some of these are intended to facilitate Chinese maritime trade across the Indian Ocean, but others are oceanic terminals for big new north-south transport links between central Eurasia and the ocean. These links include new road and rail corridors being built from China to the sea across Myanmar (to the port of Kyaukpyu) and Pakistan (to ports at Karachi and Gwadar). Other countries such as Japan and India have also stepped up their own plans to develop ports and transport links.