Furthermore, most Indonesians and the Jakarta government see U.S. support for Israeli military action in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran through the prism of anti-colonialism and Islamic solidarity. Southeast Asia is about 40 percent Muslim. In Indonesia, 87 percent of the population practices Islam. Malaysia is 61 percent Muslim. In all of the first and second Trump administrations and the Biden administration, Washington’s diplomatic priority was to secure the normalization of relations between Israel and Indonesia as an extension of the Abraham Accords. There is little prospect of success at the moment, given Indonesian sympathy for the Palestinians. 

The best substitute for an extraordinarily inexpensive and low-risk blockade conducted from the shores of Indonesia would be for the U.S. Navy to retreat its cordon to the west of the Strait of Malacca and leverage access to bases near the Indian coast. In so doing, it would sacrifice the easy reach of coastal Indonesian airbases to interfere with the inshore shipping of the Gulf of Siam and South China Sea. Furthermore, Indian and U.S. ships operating anywhere in the Bay of Bengal and even the central Indian Ocean would be vulnerable to strikes by China’s DF-21/26 anti-ship ballistic missiles, guided by PLAN submarines operating out of Myanmar, Pakistan, Iran, or possibly even South Africa. 

In the event that China secured the Malacca Strait with the help of Malaysia or obtained a land bridge from Thailand through the Kra Isthmus, shipping could still be interfered with from India’s bases on the Nicobar and Andaman Islands. If China’s naval expansion permitted it to deploy a permanent flotilla of two aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean by 2035–2040, it would still be hard-pressed to shepherd convoys against the littoral threat from Indian ships, aircraft, or submarines. 

Similar attempts to establish a permanent station, as the PLAN has practiced in the South Atlantic for the last decade, are unsustainable in wartime without being replenished in a well-protected allied safe harbor. In the further absence of support from Delhi in the Indian Ocean, the U.S. Navy could operate further west from Oman’s Masirah Island near the Straits of Hormuz, Socotra Island at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, or from the Diego Garcia anchorage in the Chagos Archipelago.

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is an associate professor of international relations at Concordia University and the author of Militarization and War (2007) and Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms control and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy and the then Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO). He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Egypt and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer of the 3rd Field Engineer Regiment from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11. He tweets at @Ju_Sp_Churchill.

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