Geostrategic seams: power and peril in the Indian Ocean’s trilateral competition

In recent times, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has become a pivotal arena of trilateral competition among India, China, and the United States, each advancing distinct strategic frameworks (India’s SAGAR, China’s Maritime Silk Road, and the US’s Indo-Pacific Strategy) to shape regional influence. This study argues that the contest is organised not around a bipolar fault line, but around three durable ‘geostrategic seams’, zones of strategic misalignment where the powers define the regional theater differently, position third-party states such as Pakistan differently, and prioritise different instruments of influence. Anchored in neorealism and Mahan’s Sea Power theory, and using a structured, focused comparison of strategy documents and capability indicators, the study develops a typology of spatial-definition, actor-alignment, and instrumental seams. The comparison shows three distinct positions: Washington combines naval primacy with a command-bounded theater; New Delhi pursues economically expansive but resource-constrained autonomy; and Beijing tightly couples geographic scope, partnerships, and instruments. The result is uneven leverage across domains rather than predominance by any actor, while smaller states hedge to extract concessions. The study’s contribution is to convert ‘seams’ from a metaphor into an analytical tool that specifies when competition stabilises and when it escalates at maritime chokepoints.