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Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
»
Author : G. Ivashentsov
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
THE WORLD'S MAIN REGION of oil
and gas extraction; the world's busiest trade
route; the only year-round route between
Russia's European part and its Far East; the
home region of Afghanistan and Iraq, the
seats of the largest armed conflicts, and of
Iran, the target of Western attacks for over
three decades - now the Indian Ocean and
its littoral zone is an entanglement of nu-
merous problems. Some of the local states
cannot boast domestic stability while pirates have made the coastal waters of the Horn of
Africa and the Strait of Malacca very dangerous.
FORTY-THREE years ago, in December 1971, the UN GA passed a Declaration initiated
by the non-aligned states which called "upon all States to consider and respect the Indian
Ocean as a zone of peace from which great Power rivalries and competition.... should be
excluded."
In the post-Cold War period, Russia practically ended its naval presence in the Indian
Ocean; the U.S., on the other hand, made its presence even more obvious. Today, the Indian
Ocean belongs to the responsibility zones of two American.
Very much as 30 or 40 years ago, the missiles carried by the U.S. air-crafts and submarines
deployed in the Indian Ocean are targeted at Russia. According to the American president,
Russia, as a threat to the world, ranked between the Ebola virus and ISIS.
Today, Washington is working on a Greater Middle East project to spread its control to
the littoral of south Eurasia which Zbignew Brzezinski called the Eurasian Balkans.
SINCE THE 1990S, the United States has been using the aquatic of the Indian Ocean as
a toehold from which it shelled Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries and which served
the starting point within the "war on terror" against the Afghan Taliban in 2001 and the
Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.
NO MATTER how strong it is, the United States will have to part with its monopoly in
the Indian Ocean. New and fairly strong players are ready to join the Big Game to limit
America's regional impacts in the area sooner or later. India and China, their naval poten-
tials strengthened by the fast growing economies, are the most likely newcomers together
with Iran, the only Middle Eastern country steadily building up its economic, scientific,
The Indian Ocean: New Players in the Game