India must make its presence felt at Gulf forum

WITH the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) in limbo and the I2U2 grouping (comprising India, Israel, the UAE and the US) unravelling, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is rising to the occasion to fill a void.

India must do much more than it did at the first India-GCC Ministerial Meeting for Strategic Dialogue on September 9 in Riyadh. Redoubled efforts to expand New Delhi’s engagement with the GCC are needed to respond to the I2U2 falling into a coma and the IMEC unlikely to recover any time soon from the blow it has received after the attack by Hamas on Israel and the conflict it has entailed.

A significant line in the readout by the Ministry of External Affairs about New Delhi’s perception of the September 9 meeting points to its underwhelming outcome. “It was also decided that more areas of cooperation can be included in the Joint Action Plan, based on mutual consensus, later on,” said the readout.

This refers to a five-year Joint Action Plan from 2024, which was adopted in Riyadh for undertaking various joint activities between India and the GCC. It is customary for governments to put their best foot forward when new, potentially ambitious diplomatic initiatives are launched. Intense preparations ensure that much more is put on the plate at the start than can be reasonably ingested. Shortfalls are thereafter acknowledged and efforts are intensified to make up for shortcomings. With the first India-GCC Ministerial Meeting, the reverse appears to be the case. If adequate preparations had, indeed, been made, there would be no need to add “more areas” to the Joint Action Plan “later on.”

Those on every side, who spent at least a year preparing for the pioneering meeting, ought to have done their best to ensure that foreign ministers had a full plate when they sat down in Riyadh to take up the agenda of their meeting. Clearly, that was not the case.

This was also obvious from a long statement issued by the GCC on June 9 after an earlier meeting of the organisation’s Ministerial Council held in Doha. It did not even acknowledge the proposed joint meeting with India. On the other hand, the GCC statement devoted space for both, its ongoing and planned joint meetings with Central Asian countries, the European Union, Turkey, the US and ‘expatriates’ from the failed state of Yemen, a critical neighbour of the GCC.

Instead, it was left to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) to comment on the GCC’s new initiative with India on its eve. The Secretary General of the GCC, Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, told SPA that the joint meeting, attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, “reflects the GCC countries’ commitment to exploring and opening new horizons for cooperation.” He said its aim was to “strengthen strategic relations with countries and organisations worldwide.”

Jaishankar’s speech at the start of the one-day meeting was rich in sound bites but status quoist on India’s relations with the Gulf. “There are many ways to contemplate our partnership. Let me offer the framework of 3Ps — people, prosperity and progress,” was one such memorable sound bite. “It is adversity that brings out the real importance of friendships,” was another, stressing sentiment instead of the way forward. It is entirely possible that asymmetry in India’s ties with every GCC member state made it difficult to present an overarching vision for the entire regional bloc.

Looking back, India’s challenges were similar when the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty of the European Union (EU) created the office of the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). India’s predicament in dealing with Europe was further complicated with the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon for consolidating and coordinating foreign policy for the entire EU. In a mirror image of India’s relations with individual GCC states, this country’s ties with each EU nation are distinct. This is likely to hold back — rather than advance — the new effort to “chart an ambitious and far-reaching course for the future” with the GCC, which is what Jaishankar called for in Riyadh.

Perhaps, there are lessons to be learnt from New Delhi’s ‘Look East’ policy in the years when PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister. Had it not been for Singapore’s dogged determination to integrate India into plurilateral structures of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the challenges similar to the EU and the GCC, would not have been easily overcome. In the Rao years, New Delhi’s ties with Singapore were the strongest within the ASEAN, while links with Brunei and the Philippines were the weakest. Kuala Lumpur, under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, was almost hostile to New Delhi. With the GCC now, India’s ties with the UAE are the deepest, while links with Kuwait are the weakest. Other GCC countries fall somewhere in between.

As with Singapore in the ASEAN’s example and with Germany during the complicating early period of the CFSP, Jaishankar should persuade the UAE to play a similar role in tailoring a common, all-fitting approach to the GCC. Otherwise, the India-GCC Ministerial Initiative for Strategic Dialogue will be non-starter.

Unfortunately, it is not something the Ministry of External Affairs can afford at a time when two important projects, the IMEC and the I2U2 have failed to take off. The slow pace of these two projects verging on failure must be contrasted to a revival of the GCC. It was not long ago that the Gulf grouping appeared to be on the verge of collapse. The ostracism of Qatar by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE within the Gulf threw the GCC into disarray. However, mediation by Kuwait helped tide over those intra-Gulf differences. Subsequently, the GCC has not only been on the mend, but is thriving.

Its latest Riyadh conclave and the previous June meeting in Doha saw the emergence of an assertive plurilateral grouping. Its strong joint stand on the situation in Gaza was only to be expected. What was unexpected was the GCC’s attempts to stop Iranian activities on three disputed islands, which are also claimed by the UAE. The GCC’s equally strong collective stand against Iraq, demanding respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Kuwait, also points to the council emerging as a force to reckon with.