India's foreign policy in the Middle East of fine balancing of global and regional geopolitical dynamics stands greatly unraveled by the October 2023 events which in its wake has not only spawned a major war between Israel and Iran aided by its Proxy Militias but has also mired the Middle East in collateral conflicts, like the Syrian Civil War, sharpening the bipolar global divide.
The Syrian Civil War is heading towards a regime overthrow of the Russia and China backed Syrian President. This would rob Russia of its only military toehold in the Middle East. Russia can be expected to trigger another regional conflict to reattain its military bases in Syria.
Sharp geopolitical divides between the Russia-Iran-China Axis backing Iranian proxies like Hamas & Hezbollah and Iran's Direct Attacks on Israel, and United States solidly backed Israel, with tacit backing of some Arab regimes.
The unprecedented devastation and bloodshed of the Middle East in 2024 has surpassed the two Gulf Wars interventions by the United States. of the 1990s and 2001.
The advent of President Trump's ascension to power in January 2025 in all probability could sharpen the global and regional political divides, notwithstanding President Trump's good relations with Russian President Putin.
India's foreign policy planners in 2025 will have to contend with the implicit aim of Rusia- China Axis to dislodge United States from the Middle East, using Iran's fifty-year-old hostility to wipe out Israel and the United States, as the spearhead.
Contextually, can India jettison the US-India Strategic Partnership nurtured since 2000? Can India afford to work at cross-purposes with United States security interests in the Middle East under challenge by the Russia-China Axis? Does the unfolding geopolitical dynamics in Middle East extend India the strategic bandwidth to fine balance its policies in the widening bipolar divide?
The answer to all of the above critical questions is a BIG NO!
At the regional level similar geopolitical interlocking questions need to be asked by Indian foreign policy planners to themselves.
Can India afford to abandon Israel which has stood by India in all of India's Wars since 1971? Can India be a party to Iran's relentless "War of Isreal Extinction"? Is it advisable for Indian foreign policy to be predicated to 'Hedging Strategies' being undertaken by some major regional Powers?
Here too, the answer is a BIG NO!
Concluding, if all the answers to the pertinent and critical geopolitical questions impacting India's foreign policy are in the 'Negative', then obviously a 'rethink' and 'reset' of the fundamentals of Indian foreign policy in the Middle East is an IMPERATIVE.
Finally, when India's Middle East foreign policy since 2014 stands predicated on India's geopolitical imperatives, unhinged from domestic vote banks politics, churning geopolitical cauldron in Middle East, demands revised perspectives.
No comments:
Post a Comment