Rising Powers in Maritime Security

Rising Powers in Maritime Security?

Comparing the Strategies of Brazil and India

By Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Danilo Marcondes de Souza Neto

In the fluid, highly uncertain context of the post-Cold War period, rising powers have begun to engage more intensely in region-building, redefining their strategic vicinities through a combination of inter-state cooperation and military build-up. Although this topic has been addressed in depth with respect to China’s behavior in the Pacific and Russia’s actions in the Arctic, relatively little has been published on region-building efforts by rising powers in the Southern Hemisphere.

In the article Region-Building by Rising Powers: the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Rims Compared, published last March in the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, we compare the strategies that these two countries have pursued within their respective maritime spaces: the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. Although the geopolitics of those two regions are vastly different—broadly put, the Indian Ocean is marked by much sharper tensions and competitive dynamics—we find that these two rising powers have increasingly turned to the seas, and more specifically to maritime perimeters, as they work to increase opportunities and influence abroad.

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Source: piracy-studies.org