With the onset of the United States-Israeli war on Iran, the contemporary geopolitical landscape has moved beyond the theoretical "geometry of chokepoints" into a phase of active, high-stakes disruption as the global energy architecture has been shattered by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
For India, this crisis is a watershed moment that validates the shift from "Geography as Fate" to "Geography as Strategy." The development of the Great Nicobar Island would not just be an infrastructure project but an opportunity to develop a maritime strategy that converts geographic proximity into durable strategic influence. By contrasting the coercive leverage exercised in Hormuz with the facilitative potential of the Malacca gateway, we can discern a new model of "Blue Water" diplomacy, one rooted in the Mahanian theory. The Hormuz Lesson: What Coercive Leverage Looks Like
Iran’s actions around the Strait of Hormuz, which is located between Iran and Oman and connecting the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea have disrupted shipping flows and highlighted the vulnerability of global trade. These disruptions have affected nearly 20 million barrels of oil per day, around one-fifth of global consumption, while also impacting LNG supplies and critical materials such as helium used in semiconductor production. By deploying cruise missiles, naval mines, and submarines, Iran has demonstrated what may be called "negative power" which is the ability to create global impact not through direct control, but through disruption alone.
Yet, this model reveals its own structural limits. Coercive chokepoint strategy generates immediate leverage but invites escalatory responses, and long-term diplomatic isolation. This disruption of the critical lifeline of global energy trade highlights an important lesson which is, relying too heavily on a single chokepoint creates structural risk, which cannot be fully addressed through security arrangements alone. For a rising power like India, aiming to act as a net security provider, the Hormuz experience serves as a cautionary example where only coercive strategies often lead to tensions and counter-responses, rather than stable long-term influence.
Theoretical Framework
Three intellectual traditions illuminate India's strategic opportunity. Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory of sea power established that lasting national influence flows not from naval coercion alone, but from the ability to facilitate and protect trade across open seas. Nicholas Spykman's Rimland theory argued that whoever controls the marginal seas surrounding the Eurasian landmass can shape the flows of global power, a logic that maps directly onto today's Indo-Pacific, where the marginal seas between the Indian and Pacific Oceans have become the decisive strategic zone. Together, these frameworks point toward a third concept, called "facilitative hegemony", wherein a state converts geographic positioning into structural influence not by threatening shipping flows, but by becoming indispensable to them. This is the model India must pursue, and Great Nicobar is where it begins.
India's Geographic Opportunity: The Great Nicobar Case
India’s geographic advantage lies in its proximity to this valve through the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. The Great Nicobar Project, formally called the Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island, is located on India’s southernmost island, was conceived by NITI Aayog and approved by the government in 2021. featuring a transshipment hub, integrated airport, and township, is positioned at the intersection of the Six Degree Channel and the entrance to the Malacca Strait. Given that more than one third of the global trade passes through the Malacca Strait, the project holds both economic and strategic significance. Taken together, these elements position India not as a threatening presence but as an indispensable node, the facilitator of trade flows that the entire Indo-Pacific depends upon.
The Complications
The most underappreciated threat to Great Nicobar's strategic rationale is the much discussed canal across Thailand's Kra Isthmus. If built, this waterway would offer an alternative to the Strait of Malacca, potentially diverting significant shipping traffic and diminishing Great Nicobar's centrality. More dangerously, it would open a direct maritime corridor connecting China to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Andaman and Nicobar territorial zone entirely and providing a strategic shortcut to Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. However, the Kra Canal remains uncertain. India should proactively engage Thailand and ASEAN partners to shape the diplomatic environment around this proposal before it becomes a fait accompli, while simultaneously ensuring that Great Nicobar's value proposition extends beyond Malacca traffic alone, encompassing surveillance, domain awareness, and disaster response.
The next complication is China. China's expanding maritime presence in the Indian Ocean anchored by Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Gwadar in Pakistan, and a network of port investments across the littoral forms an encircling logic that strategists have termed the "String of Pearls." Great Nicobar does not neutralise this network, but it complicates it materially. A fully operational Indian facility at the Six Degree Channel places Indian surveillance and response assets within striking proximity of the Malacca entrance, constraining Chinese naval freedom of manoeuvre precisely where it matters most. India's Act East policy finds its most concrete maritime expression here.
Another complication which makes India solely cautious is the Environment and the Indigenous ights. The Shompen people are the indigenous community of Great Nicobar and the island's exceptional biodiversity are not merely ethical considerations. They are liabilities if mishandled. International criticism, domestic legal challenges, and reputational damage can delay, delegitimise, or derail the project entirely. Sustainable development and indigenous non-displacement must therefore be understood not as constraints on strategy, but as conditions for its success. It is imperative that the virgin forests of Great Nicobar stay intact, biodiversity preserved, and the Shompen left undisturbed not as concessions, but as requirements of strategic durability.
Recommendations
Four concrete steps should anchor India's strategy going forward. First, the transshipment port should be fast-tracked with an explicit commercial-first, military-secondary public framing., for not mere optics but it reflects the genuine logic of facilitative hegemony and reassures regional partners who might otherwise read the project as provocation. Second, India should establish a Maritime Domain Awareness centre at Great Nicobar, structured as a shared facility with willing ASEAN partners. This converts a unilateral strategic asset into a regional institution, dramatically raising its diplomatic value. Third, India must engage with Thailand proactively and urgently on the Kra Canal question. Fourth, India needs to develop a strategic maritime doctrine which would help in taking any necessary action in the time of crises.
The 2026 Hormuz crisis has proven that geography is the ultimate weapon of the 21st century. Iran has used its geography to disrupt; India must use its geography to dominate and facilitate. The Great Nicobar Project is the cornerstone of this new ambition. By leveraging its unique position between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, India is rewriting the rules of maritime engagement. It is moving away from the 'Straitjacket' of being a secondary player and toward a future where it is the indispensable anchor of the Indo-Pacific order. In an era where global trade is under constant threat, the power to facilitate is the most durable power of all.
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The author is a Mukherjee Fellow'26
