EXERCISING IN THE INDIAN. Apparently, the United States Navy is preparing to engage in a large scale Indian Ocean exercise with Australia, India, Japan, and Singapore. Three aircraft carriers will be involved, including the Kitty Hawk, Nimitz, and the ancient Indian carrier Viraat (the former HMS Hermes, commissioned in 1959). Numerous submarines and surface vessels will also participate. There are a few things going on here. First, the exercise is an indication that India is becoming ever more tightly integrated into US defense planning. Like the Cope India exercises, this operations will improve trust between the services, and increase interstate capability. Intentionally or no, the exercise will also send a message to the Chinese, who complained bitterly about joint U.S.-Japanese-Indian exercises last month. Finally, and most importantly, exercises like this are critical to the 1000 Ship Navy concept, an idea near and dear to the heart of Admiral Mike Mullen, who will soon be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The animating idea behind the 1000 Ship Navy concept is that navies around the world should view capabilities complementarily, rather than competitively. This will enable not only multilateral military action, but also disaster relief, humanitarian support, and activity against pirates, drug traffickers, and so forth. Cooperation of this sort, often involving the United States only in a support and enabling role, has already seen tremendous progress in reducing piracy in the Straits of Malacca. Exercises like this have real world diplomatic and political effects, yet few seem to hear about them. We remain under the mistaken impression that the bulk of diplomacy is undertaken by the State Department, when in fact the combatant commands have far greater resources than State and enormous latitude in both military and diplomatic affairs. This isn't an entirely negative development; Admiral Fallon at PACCOM had the resources to do a lot of good and necessary work underwriting cooperation between Southeast Asian navies. --Robert Farley
