Today, the Indian Ocean is facing a fresh wave of great-power competition. Under the guise of economic incentives and investment, these powers seek to draw small and medium-sized sovereign littoral states(SMLS) into asymmetric alliances. The continuation of this trend risks reproducing the costly security paradigms witnessed in the Persian Gulf region.
Hence, formulating a novel, indigenous, and proactive framework for port access and maritime interactions—grounded in objective criteria, fixed technical formulas, non-arbitrary standards, and full compliance with international law, including the law of the sea and humanitarian law—has become an urgent necessity. Such a mechanism enables SMLS to safeguard their national sovereignty and strategic autonomy, preventing them from being dragged into emerging geopolitical blocs whose long-term priorities place little value on the prosperity and development.
Lessons of an Incident: The Spillover of Extra-Regional Conflicts
The American submarine attack on the Iranian frigate Dena within Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) serves as a reminder that conflicts anywhere in the world rarely remain confined to their primary theaters of war. A military confrontation that originated thousands of miles away from this island nation suddenly generated major humanitarian, diplomatic, and commercial repercussions near one of the Indian Ocean’s most vital maritime choke points.
While highlighting the extreme vulnerability of the Indian Ocean’s international commercial lines of communication to escalating extra-regional military tensions, this incident underscores what happens when littoral states rely on reactive, ad-hoc decision-making during a crisis and why Indian Ocean SMLS must establish institutionalized protocols, clear review timeframes, and objective data-sharing procedures before the next crisis occurs.
These actions are essential to prevent strategic rivalries from spilling over into the sovereign domains of regional sovereign SMLS.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states hold specific sovereign rights in their EEZ regarding natural resources and marine research, while full territorial sovereignty applies to internal waters and ports (UNCLOS Article 25). This crucial legal distinction defines the precise scope of any viable regional governance mechanism. Rather than attempting to restrict general navigation across the EEZ, a responsible regional framework must focus specifically on:
- Foreign naval port calls and extended berthing requests.
- Access to internal waters, repair yards, and logistical replenishment facilities.
- State-operated scientific research vessels requesting port or territorial research access.
- Dual-use maritime activities conducted in close proximity to critical coastal infrastructure.
One of the most evident manifestations of the spillovers of extra-regional rivalries and conflicts is that decisions previously considered routine now carry heavy political and security overtones. For instance, a research vessel may be engaged in legitimate scientific pursuits yet carry dual-use equipment; a warship’s port call may be purely ceremonial or logistical, yet stir suspicions of expanding the sending nation’s operational footprint; or an infrastructure project might foster employment and regional connectivity while simultaneously raising concerns regarding debt burdens, ownership, data access, or future military exploitation.
To be sure, not every request for berthing, anchorage, port support services, maritime-related activity, or foreign investment in ports should be viewed as a hostile act. Nevertheless, disparities in infrastructure capacities, levels of trust, and economic needs have led these littoral states(SMLS) to adopt divergent behaviors. This fragmentation and multiplicity of approaches leaves them vulnerable to political pressure, deepens mutual distrust, and inflicts strategic damage upon them— further reinforcing the imperative for a common, proactive procedure: a novel, defensible framework grounded in objective data, legally legitimate, transparent, and convincing enough to withstand external critiques and pressures.
Strategic Dilemma: Moving Beyond Two Unpalatable Options
Today, when confronted with sensitive geopolitical requests, the SMLS find themselves trapped in a strategic dilemma. The prevailing paradigm forces them to choose between two costly options: either shoulder the burden of decision-making individually—exposing themselves to severe bilateral pressure, such as sanction threats or accusations of discrimination, and driving them toward ambiguous policies—or join rigid collective arrangements that strip away their freedom of action and restrict their strategic maneuverability.
Neither path guarantees “strategic autonomy.” What the Indian Ocean region requires particularly its SMLS is transcending this enforced dichotomy and pursuing a “middle path” rooted in coordinated procedures; a framework that enhances information transparency and procedural consistency while firmly preserving the ultimate decision-making authority of these littoral states.
I term this strategic framework the “Doctrine of Credible Restraint.” It is a framework whose theoretical foundations I previously outlined in Daily Sabah for rebuilding regional trust, and which I now formalize as a practical model for Indian Ocean maritime governance.
The doctrine balances two complementary imperatives:Credibility, where decisions are anchored in objective data and unified guidelines to remain transparent and defensible; and Restraint, where coastal states uphold shared procedures over arbitrary actions, compelling major powers to restrain competitive overreach. In essence, this framework functions as an indigenous procedural shield for smaller littoral states(SMLS) facing economic vulnerabilities, debt burdens, and asymmetric bilateral pressures.
This procedural shield enables SMLS to evaluate sensitive port calls through objective, technical criteria rather than political alignments. By harmonizing procedures and sharing transparent data, it preserves national sovereignty while shielding these sovereign coastal states from great-power pressures. Its core premise is straightforward yet transformative.
Under this approach, participating member states agree in advance on transparent criteria—independent of political inclinations, biases, and bloc alignments, and grounded in objective, technical indicators—to evaluate sensitive port calls and related maritime activities. Member states share technical and legal data, consult during crises, and execute harmonized procedural guidelines.
Designing this shared mechanism allows these littoral states to make objective, criteria-based port decisions through transparent data exchange and uniform steps. Consequently, the proposed mechanism functions strictly as a “supportive and clarifying framework” in service of regional stability, without compromising these littoral state’s discretion, final evaluation, or exercise of national sovereignty.
Core Pillars of Credible Restraint
In this context, adherence to three fundamental principles is essential:
Objective Criteria: Vessel assessments must be conducted based on its mission, capabilities, requested services, operational history, legal status, and proximity to sensitive facilities and not merely on its flag or nationality. To bypass endless debates over dual-use intent, objective evaluations rely on observable operational parameters—such as vessel dwell time near vital choke points, proximity to underwater infrastructure, and the mandatory placement of host-nation technical observers onboard foreign research vessels, as anchored in UNCLOS Articles 240, 248, and 249.
The “Credible Restraint” model is not designed against or in favor of any specific power or political bloc. The moment standards shift based on the identity of the requesting state, the mechanism forfeits its neutrality, legitimacy, and political standing.
Primacy of Sovereign Will Over Automated Processes: Raw data or algorithmic outputs must not be blindly or mechanically accepted as definitive grounds for decision-making or legal judgments. This avoidance of automated reliance stems from a technical and operational reality: commercial satellite imagery, Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, port documentation, and other lawful sources enhance Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), yet each source possesses inherent limitations. AIS signals can be disabled or spoofed, satellite imagery interpretations carry inherent degrees of uncertainty, and technical assessments may reflect the underlying assumptions of the producing entity. Therefore, the regional data and coordination desk within this mechanism serves strictly as a “technical data fusion clearinghouse” to define confidence levels and identify technical gaps, while leaving legal evaluation, final evidence validation, and decision-making entirely to independent national authorities.
By verifying data through harmonized procedures, this mechanism facilitates objective decision-making at ports while treating technical evidence merely as advisory guidance. Eschewing binding or unilateral directives, the proposed model retains the final right of discretion exclusively with the host sovereign SMLS. Retaining this final discretion does not render the mechanism ineffective in cases of non-compliance.
If a state relies on its national sovereignty to disregard objective findings and technical alerts- acting against regional stability- it forfeits its procedural shieldand directly assumes explicit responsibility for the consequences. Crucially, this procedural shield does not claim to physically impede major-power coercion; rather, by stripping away administrative pretexts, it exposes coercive demands to international scrutiny—thereby converting covert bilateral pressure into a high-cost public violation of established regional norms.
Transparency, Proportionality, and Defined Timeframes: The decision-making process must be transparent, proportional, and bound by predictable, non-arbitrary processing windows to prevent administrative stalling. Crucially, routine security reviews must be strictly separated from emergency, search-and-rescue, medical, and humanitarian obligations, which operate on an immediate, accelerated track. Small and mid-sized sovereign littoral states must not hide behind indefinite inspections or artificial administrative hurdles in response to external political pressure.
While such tactics may offer temporary, short-term tactical ambiguity and procedural pretext, they erode the rule of law and invite accusations of “discriminatory behavior.” Instead, states should publish clear criteria, provide reasoned justifications for their decisions, offer avenues for clarification, and strictly distinguish security restrictions from emergency, search-and-rescue, medical, and humanitarian obligations.
Ultimately, adopting these core pillars allows the Indian Ocean littoral states to replace diplomatic ambiguity with predictable, data-backed statecraft. By grounding port access decisions in objective criteria and transparent state policies, these littoral nations can insulate themselves from great-power pressure without surrendering their strategic maneuverability. However, translating this theoretical framework into ground-level reality presents hard operational challenges—from managing state divergence to mitigating foreign leverage tied to extra-regional investments.
Part 2 examines the two-tier operational mechanism of Credible Restraint, detailing how sovereign littoral states can decouple raw data from decision-making logic, and what it takes to convert modern non-alignment into an active, operational shield for Indian Ocean maritime governance.
(The views expressed are the author’s own)
(To be continued…)
