AMAN, the spatiotemporal exercise is held by Pakistan biennially and has established a strong foothold in maritime security since 2007. It has emerged as a symbol of Pakistan’s desire to keep the ocean secure and free from any threats aiming at uninterrupted movement through the seas for global traffic. It provides ample opportunities to nations to engage in collaborative security to gather and test operational capabilities, maneuvering skills against all sorts of criminal activities as well as exchange of views to deal with kinetic and non-kinetic security threats in the seas and oceans.
“Security” is probably one of the most extensively used words across the world, with numerous definitions and perspectives; and has been driven by several dynamics. The concept of security for the states is quite complex yet broad which may involve a spatial dimension. However, the concept of security is commonly mentioned and discussed with reference to the land mass. States establish cooperative, collective and collaborative measures to ensure their security; and even joint military exercises are arranged normally as part of their mutual understanding to fulfill multiple purposes. However, sometimes these arrangements and such exercises can be perceived as threats too for other states of the region or even outside. Such threat perceptions bring uncertainty to the geopolitical environment and states, due to their intrinsic insecurities, could get involved more in differences and even conflicts.
Maritime security is a broad domain with numerous threats as well as challenges. Overlapping national security concerns of the littoral states usually put them in an ordeal of finding a mechanism to defend themselves and stay secure from all external threats and internal strife in the vast seas and oceans. Nevertheless, joint exercises take place in the maritime domain. Yet the threat perception or the message being conveyed to the other actors could prove more intense with certain implications, resulting in shifts in maritime geopolitics. One such example was the weakening of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue arrangement between the USA, Japan, India and Australia soon after its establishment in 2007 when the Second Malabar Exercise of 2007 was conducted under that arrangement in the Bay of Bengal. It was interpreted by China and its friends as strategic containment of China, and an effort to increase control over the Asia-Pacific Region, which eventually put its purpose on hold for a long time.
The strategic importance of Pakistan in the region has increased especially since the new millennium began. There were a number of events since then which acted as a catalyst to shift focus from the land to the maritime domain, like convergence and divergence of the national interests of different states right after 9/11, and then emergence of new alliances and realignments between/among the states. Then the world started thinking with an established vision and, in some cases, perspectives were witnessed to be changing quite drastically. Since then, the region has been going through changing geopolitics which involve all sorts of interaction among states. This is the region with a large number of navies actively present, including the great powers’ military and/or naval arrangements at different points, like the US presence in Diego Garcia from where it can keep a check on the ongoing trade and communication through that region as well as on the movement of the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) in the Eastern IOR; the US presence in Bahrain helps it to monitor activities in the Western IOR. 
The writer is an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations, National Unversity of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad. She can be reached at malihazkhan@gmail.com. |
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