Stakes high for India in West Asia
AS a power adjacent to West Asia, which includes the Gulf, India has significant interests in that region and engagement with its countries.
Regional equations are changing because of the diminishing credibility of US security assurances to its allies and partners in the region.
The region is India’s main source of oil and gas. There are nine million Indians who live and work in West Asia. Their safety and welfare are a continuing concern and the remittances they send to India are a substantial $15 billion. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have become major sources of foreign investment in India. The UAE is the first country in the region with which India has concluded a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.
India has important security stakes in the eastern as well as western reaches of the Indian Ocean. Its naval forces maintain a modest presence on its western flank and there are security partnerships with all key partners in the region. However, regional power equations are changing, as is the nature of great power competition in West Asia, and these have implications for India’s own engagement with the region.
The US continues to be the most formidable military power in the region, with key allies and security partners, including Turkey, a NATO member, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, where the US 5th fleet is headquartered. If great power competition during the Cold War was mainly between the US and the Soviet Union, today that competition is beginning to emerge between the US and China and residually between the US and Russia. Regional equations are changing because of the diminishing credibility of US security assurances to its allies and partners in the region. The doubts about the US go back to the Arab Spring of 2011 and its failure to support local elites in upholding regime security their chief preoccupation. For Saudi Arabia, the US failure to safeguard Saudi against missile and drone attacks from Yemen, which were seen as instigated by Iran, its chief rival, and subsequently, the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 only exacerbated these concerns. The US is no longer dependent on Gulf oil and gas, having become a substantial exporter itself. It has less of a stake in regional security. The polarised domestic politics in the US itself heightens the sense of uncertainty in the region. Regional actors are exercising greater agency in safeguarding their interests.
The normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two long term adversaries, is the most significant recent development. This has also marked a more active diplomatic role of China, which has emerged as a virtual guarantor of the deal. China’s interests in the region are obvious. The region remains the largest source of its oil and gas. China is trying to leverage its large oil purchases to support its effort towards the internationalisation of its currency the yuan. A decision by the main oil producers to start accepting the yuan as payment for oil and gas sales will be a huge gain for China and a setback for the US globally.
The Saudi-Iran accord has triggered other shifts in the region. Syria is back in the Arab League. Saudi Arabia has moved to repair its relations with Turkey, overcoming the hiatus which developed over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The Shia-Sunni overlay, which was seen as something of a fixity in the region, has shaken loose to some extent.
The US’ recent strategy has been oriented towards creating a regional coalition which could be tasked with safeguarding its interests and that of its chief ally, Israel, even while its direct intervention and presence has been diminishing. It sponsored the Abraham Accords in 2020 which formalised relations between Israel and the Gulf states of the UAE and Bahrain. This was followed later by Sudan and Morocco.
There are now formal relations between Israel and several key West Asian states, including Egypt and Jordan, which already had formal ties with Israel. It was assumed that Saudi Arabia would soon follow suit, since it is difficult to imagine that the UAE and Bahrain would have taken such a major step without a Saudi go-ahead.
This was also the assumption behind the establishment of the I2U2 grouping, comprising India, Israel, the UAE and the US, in July 2022. It was expected that eventually the grouping would include Egypt and Saudi Arabia. While the I2U2’s focus was development, it is perceived potentially as an influential coalition, backed by US power, to serve as a constraining factor on Iran and, importantly, excluding China. The Saudi-Iran and Saudi-Turkey détente has put a question mark on the viability and endurance of the I2U2 process.
India has pursued a bilateral and to some extent a transactional approach in managing its relations with the countries of West Asia and this has been quite successful. It has been able to expand its relations with the Arab states even while consolidating its ties with Israel. The I2U2 was its first foray into a coalition approach and it may have been less than productive. The success of India’s West Asia policy must be set off against the negative trends in its relations with Iran, which has always been a key partner for India because of long-standing historical and cultural links and its role in enabling Indian access to Central Asia, meeting India’s energy needs and playing an important role in South Asia. The Iran-Saudi accord has diminished India’s salience in Iran.
In much of the discourse on West Asia, the fate of the Palestinian people has become a non-issue and this suits Israel. But the Palestine issue remains a live and emotional issue on the Arab streets, even as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ ongoing visit to China is significant in the light of Beijing’s offer to broker peace. The prospects for a stable regional order are bleak without an equitable settlement of the dispute. It could re-emerge as an explosive issue right at the heart of West Asia.
