But just over the horizon runs one of the world's great trade arteries, the shipping lanes where thousands of vessels carry oil from the Middle East and raw materials to Asia, returning with television sets, toys and sneakers for European consumers.
These tankers provide 80 percent of China's oil and 65 percent of India's — fuel desperately needed for the two countries' rapidly growing economies. Japan, too, is almost totally dependent on energy supplies shipped through the Indian Ocean.
India is the key player here. As long as America remains a friend of India's, India's supply lines are secure with American and Indian forces dominating the region.
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are secure as long as they ally with America to secure the Pacific leg of their sea lines of communication; and as long as America and India pick up the security for the rest of the line to the Middle East.
China remains the odd man out:
China has given massive aid to Indian Ocean nations, signing friendship pacts, building ports in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka, and reportedly setting up a listening post on one of Myanmar's islands near the strategic Strait of Malacca.
Now, India is trying to parry China's moves. It beat out China for a port project in Myanmar. And, flush with cash from its expanding economy, India is beefing up its military, with the expansion seemingly aimed at China. Washington and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo are encouraging India's role as a counterweight to growing Chinese power.
China, with no one to really trust in the region to secure its crucial oil imports sailing through the Indian Ocean, is trying to string together bases to protect this supply line. But the impact of this attempt is to worry the Indians:
"Each pearl in the string is a link in a chain of the Chinese maritime presence," India's navy chief, Adm. Sureesh Mehta, said in a speech in January, expressing concern that naval forces operating out of ports established by the Chinese could "take control over the world energy jugular."
"It is a pincer movement," said Rahul Bedi, a South Asia analyst with London-based Jane's Defense Weekly. "That, together with the slap India got in 1962, keeps them awake at night."
And India is taking steps to oppose the Chinese moves:
India is clearly gearing its military expansion toward China rather than its longtime foe, and India has set up listening stations in Mozambique and Madagascar, in part to monitor Chinese movements, Bedi noted. It also has an air base in Kazakhstan and a space monitoring post in Mongolia — both China's neighbors.
India has announced plans to have a fleet of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines at sea in the next decade and recently tested nuclear-capable missiles that put China's major cities well in range. It is also reopening air force bases near the Chinese border.
Encouraging India's role as a counter to China, the U.S. has stepped up exercises with the Indian navy and last year sold it an American warship for the first time, the 17,000-ton amphibious transport dock USS Trenton. American defense contractors — shut out from the lucrative Indian market during the long Cold War — have been offering India's military everything from advanced fighter jets to anti-ship missiles.
China cannot protect their oil imports. Yet their efforts to extend Chinese military power and influence to protect those imports are just pushing India into the Western alliance structure.
With American, Indian, Australian, Thai, Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean naval and air forces lining the Chinese oil lifeline from the Middle East and Africa all the way to China, China will face defeat if they try to use that military power to protect China's oil imports.
China's strategic position, even as they prepare to celebrate their arrival on the world stage, is incredibly bad and I wouldn't change places with them for anything.
The "Middle Kingdom?" I call it "surrounded."
