“Thank you, Mr. President.” Admiral Magruder took the offered chair and watched the man behind the desk with a guarded expression. George Hall, who had brought him from his new basement office, had told him nothing about the reason for the summons. The White House Chief of Staff took a seat across the room but said nothing. Something was bothering Hall, but Magruder didn’t know what.
“Things are hotting up over there,” the President said. He looked drawn and tired, as though he’d been up the entire night before. Magruder noticed that a large map of western India had been mounted on an easel set up in front of the Oval Office’s north wall. There were a number of new marks and notations off the coast near Bombay, and a heavy red line threading south through the Red Sea, then turning sharply toward the northeast, bearing on Turban Station. From where he sat, Magruder could not make out the cryptic notations next to the line.
The President cleared his throat. ‘ Tom, as usual, this is all confidential.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Three hours ago, the Jefferson battle group was attacked off Bombay. It seems evident that the Indians were trying to punish us for sinking their sub by launching a strike at Biddle, the frigate involved in that incident. It was also intended as a clear warning. An ultimatum, if you will.” The President swiveled his chair until he was facing the Rose Garden window. He was silent for a long moment. Magruder waited.
“The Indian ambassador was in here again this morning,”
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the President said at last. “They’re pushing their version of the IOZP, and they want us to comply. Now.”
The tangle of international politics that laid conflicting claims to the various oceans, straits, and sea lanes of the world was a basic part of every admiral’s formal education. The Indian Ocean Zone of Peace concept had been presented to the UN by Sri Lanka—at India’s urging—in the early seventies. It called for the exclusion of all extra-regional powers from the Indian Ocean, a measure aimed principally at the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain.
Most of the nations around the Indian Ocean basin supported the IOZP, though the usual interpretation called for a reduction of all naval forces in (he region, including India’s. But of all of the regional maritime powers, India had by far the most powerful navy and was the country best able to project her military power from Bombay to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Gulf of Oman to the west coast of Australia.
India was determined to become a truly global power by the twenty-first century. Her detonation of a nuclear device in 1974, her launch of communications and military satellites, her race to build up her air force, army, and navy had all been carried out with that single goal in mind.
By comparison. Great Britain had largely dismantled her presence in the Indian Ocean during the seventies, leaving her base at Diego Garcia to the Americans. Australia, once a significant naval power in the region, had largely turned her back on the sea. The Labor Party government elected in 1983 had stricken Australia’s one carrier, the Melbourne, canceled the construction of another, and transferred all fixed-wing naval assets to the RAAF. By the early nineties, Australia’s entire navy consisted of six submarines, three U.S.-built guided-missile destroyers launched in the early sixties, and ten frigates, plus a handful of coastal patrol boats, mine-warfare ships, and survey vessels.
If India succeeded in excluding outside forces from the region, she would be the logical nation to fill the power vacuum.
And that brought New Delhi squarely into conflict with the United States.
Freedom of the seas, free access to international waters.
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Those principles had always been high among the missions tasked to the U.S. Navy. More than that, though, defense of the West’s sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world lay almost entirely with the U.S. The tanker routes from the Gulf were vital to the U.S., to Europe, to Japan, and no Western policymaker was ready to concede their control—or the responsibility for their defense—to New Delhi.