Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent eight-nation Africa tour ending with a visit to Seychelles on 9 Feb 2007 has reinvigorated long deliberated and delayed US plans to set up a military command headquarters for Africa or AFRICOM. Shaped as Donald Rumsfeld's last big project before he left the post of US defence secretary, India, whose maritime security is intimately affected by China's growing African involvement, has reacted with consternation.

However, the contours of the Indian response appear anything but clear. Although China has been remarkably successful in wooing African leadership, elected or otherwise – forty-one heads of government or state of forty-eight African states attended a China-Africa summit in November 2006 – opposition to China in Africa is building up. South Africa is opposed, Zambia is split, and China is losing international goodwill, carousing with Sudanese leadership blind to atrocities in Darfur, and of course, cavorting with Zimbabwe's international pariah Robert Mugabe.

Hu was at pains to contain the backlash from China's no-holds-barred policy of tapping up Africa for oil, platinum, cooper, quality wood and minerals, in addition to fending accusations of dumping sub-standard manufactures at the detriment of local businesses and indebting African states with overly generous loans and crippling trade deficits. The Chinese President was particularly stung by insinuations of neo-colonialism. If China, in pursuance of growth rides roughshod over its own environment, in some cases pays Chinese workers less than their prescribed minimum wage, hosts poor labour laws, and bans unionisation, why should Africa expect any better?

Unfortunately, the US decision to create AFRICOM by September 2008, partly to counter China, is a throwback to yesteryear. Between 1990-2000, America conducted over twenty military operations in Africa, and ten since 2000. To counter Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the African sub-regions, it formed the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa and Operation Enduring Freedom - Trans-Sahara in 2002 and 2005 respectively. But sections of the US military and scholars argue that even all these engagements do not justify a dedicated combatant command. They argue that a military command militarises a region, and denies it the security that is sought in the first place.

The US Central Command, set up in response to the Iran Revolution and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, has sucked America deeper into the Middle East morass, and worsened and/or created Islamist and Islamic sectarian conflicts. Aware of these sensitivities, President George Bush noted that, "Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa." But reservations remain, because of the failure of these purported objectives in the Middle East. Militarily though, AFRICOM overcomes the seams in parsing Africa among three US commands, PACOM, CENTCOM, and EUCOM.

India's problem is that its military footprint in the region, the Indian Ocean littoral and hinterland, and its economic and diplomatic profile, trail its ambitions. K.M.Pannikar and then Nehru saw the Indian Ocean as India's lifeline. "History has shown," said Nehru, "that whatever power controls the Indian Ocean has, in the first instance, India's sea-borne trade at her mercy, and in the second, India's very independence itself".

Because of the Indo-Soviet friendship, the US with China and Pakistan contained India in South Asia throughout the Cold War. Much later though India's "look east" policy met with unexpected success. An FTA with ASEAN, and building an overland alternative to the sensitive Malacca Straits up to the South China Sea, via Myanmar and Thailand, would consolidate these gains. But India's modest sea power, built around one carrier, when it needs a minimum of three; mostly ageing destroyers, vintage frigates, and a less-than-adequate sub-surface force, have limited its strategic reach.

On the west and southwest of the Indian Ocean region, the naval gap is more acutely felt. Post-9/11, India's energy security – it imports seventy per cent of its oil, which will rise to eighty-five per cent by 2020 – has been frayed by instabilities in the Middle East. This is compounded by damaged relations with Iraq and Iran, and has forced a degree of dependence on the United States against its natural quest for "strategic autonomy".

About its strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean region, India is clear. To keep the sea-lanes open for free trade, especially the critical oil passages. As the Persian Gulf is a choke point, India sees reason to engage Iran, aside from its own self-interest. In addition, because of Bab-el-Mandab at the Red Sea mouth, India sees Israel, Eritrea and Djibouti as vital to its maritime strategy.

But China's "string of pearls" strategy, to create capabilities to eventually station or deploy naval power in the Indian Ocean, hurts at the efforts to keep these waters free, and heightens Indian apprehensions of Chinese "encirclement". From the Indian, and indeed the US viewpoint, Hu's latest stopover at Seychelles on 9 Feb 2007, better known for its sun-warm beaches, fully exposed Chinese intentions. The Chinese president left behind $6.4 million for "mutually agreed future projects", further unsettling Indian policymakers.

India and the US have overlapping interests in containing China in the Indian Ocean region. Since signing the June 2005 defence framework pact and the July 2005 civilian nuclear agreement, the two democracies have found themselves closer to each other than at any other point in history. For the foreseeable future therefore, India and the US, understanding each other's strategic interests, look to have joined hands with other like-minded states to secure the Indian Ocean region.

As much as China denies strategic competition and rivalry in the Indian Ocean littoral, it unfortunately indulges in them. India has no choice but to heed Nehru's prophetic words or accept death by strangulation - made possible, by a string of pearls.