Prime Minister Modi recently visited Kuwait – an Indian Prime Minister’s first visit to the country in 43 years. The visit is happening amongst continuing Israeli offensive strike in Gaza.
The Arab countries’ relationship with Beijing in the west Asia region is strong, but India’s economic, military and diplomatic rise in the region is also undeniable. India’s interests in the West Asia focus first and foremost on the economic front, starting with its energy needs. The country relies on imports for 87.9 per cent of its oil consumption. India’s West Asia policy is further influenced by the presence of about 8.5 million Indian workers in the region, particularly in the Gulf. In the UAE, no fewer than 3 million such workers are working, three times the population of the country.
Locally, the Indian diaspora likes to say that Dubai is India’s fifth-largest city. Over the past decade, security and defense have also become a structuring element in the dialogue between Delhi and its local partners. This covers various aspects, starting with intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism cooperation. During this period, cooperation between Delhi and the Gulf monarchies has accelerated considerably, particularly in the dismantling of South Asian terrorist cells and criminal organizations that used Dubai as a financial platform and planning base for their operations.
Maritime security is also part of Indias’ strategy as part of its naval presence strengthening in the Indian Ocean. Delhi intends to maintain ties with Gulf navies, to guard against crises in the region, whether in the Red Sea or the Strait of Hormuz. Exchanges with Saudi and UAE navies have increased, and India’s contribution to the region is appreciated by the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Last but not least, a significant component of India’s regional policy involves arms imports, particularly from Israel, which has become Delhi’s fourth-largest partner in this area (behind Russia, France and the USA).
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are India’s other two key partners in the region. There too, bilateral relations are highly personalized at the highest level. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman does not hesitate to refer to Modi as his “elder brother”. Similarly, the rapprochement between Abu Dhabi and Delhi is largely linked to the relationship between the Indian Prime Minister and the Emirati President, Mohammed bin Zayed. In the Arabian Peninsula, this is also reflected in a noticeable distancing between the Emiratis, the Saudis and Pakistan, despite the Gulf monarchies’ long-standing partnership. In 2015, at a time when the Saudis and Emiratis were drawing closer to Modi’s India, Islamabad refused to join the coalition assembled by Mohammed bin Salman to wage war against the Houthis in Yemen.
This decision was seen as an affront by the Gulf monarchies and convinced them to turn to India. From then on, this realignment between the Gulf and South Asia saw Riyadh and Abu Dhabi lend their diplomatic support to Delhi when Modi launched a retaliatory operation against Pakistan after the Uri attacks in 2016. This is also reflected in the relative indifference of Arab leaders to the treatment of India’s Muslim minority, and their support for Modi’s reform of the status of Kashmir in 2019. These privileged ties between India, Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia could lead one to believe that Delhi is modeling its partnerships in the West Asia on a model fairly close to that of Washington.
The strengthening of India’s partnerships in the West Asia has also been accompanied by an unprecedented multilateral dynamic. This has seen Delhi participate in several new initiatives in the West Asia. The most emblematic of these “mini-laterals” is I2U2, an acronym for the dialogue between India, Israel, the UAE and the USA. This four-way consultation framework was launched in the autumn of 2021, in line with two concomitant diplomatic strategies.
On the one hand, I2U2 is the extension of the Abraham Accords, which formalized the normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE in 2020. Building on the parallel strengthening of ties between Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Delhi, the establishment of this forum is a logical follow-up, as seen from Washington. On the other hand, the Biden administration sees I2U2 as an extension of its Indo-Pacific policy. As soon as this “quadrilateral” was announced, American and Indian observers were quick to refer to it as the “QUAD” of the West Asia, in reference to the US-Japan-India-Australia dialogue reactivated in 2017. The analogy suggests that I2U2, like the Asian QUAD, is strengthening American partnerships in the area to better contain Chinese expansion.
The development of India’s increasingly ambitious West Asia policy over the last ten years is set to continue. Ultimately, it should reshape diplomatic dynamics in the region, just as relations with the region can no longer be thought of without taking India’s presence into account.
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