India - Gulf: Aggressive Diplomatic Initiative
A diplomatic drive by the government to reconcile multipolarity in India’s extended neighbourhood, writes KP Nayar, Strategic Analyst, “is expected to place New Delhi way ahead of its competitors for influence in the Gulf as mass vaccination efforts at both ends and an economic rebound prepare the region to overcome the adverse impact of the pandemic.
“Across the Gulf, on its Persian and Shia side, the drive has already positioned India better than most other countries to do business with Tehran as the new Biden administration in the US is weighing the option of rejoining the multi-nation nuclear deal with Iran. Most of all, proactive actions in Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, where heads of state or government passed away recently, have given India an early start in engaging the new leadership in these countries.”
The diplomatic initiative will also enable most of the 3-.5 million Indian workers return to the UAE. During External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recent visit to the UAE, it was made known that his mission, in part, was to find ways for the rehabilitation of Indian workers. The remittances they send home is insignificant.
‘Realisation that a new trend in geopolitics is towards multipolarity within regions’
A significant change from the past, “is the realisation that a new trend in geopolitics is towards multipolarity within regions. For this reason, India chose not to confine its latest diplomatic initiatives to the Arab side of the Gulf alone. When Jaishankar visited Persian, Shia Iran, he revived a bilateral Joint Commission at a time when most countries were keeping Tehran at arm’s length for fear of incurring Washington’s wrath.
“Afterwards, India hosted the first Trilateral Working Group meeting among India, Iran and Uzbekistan on the joint use of the Chabahar Port. Among the major democracies in the world, India is one of the few countries which can be equally active on both sides of the Gulf……Other than India, it is only France, Germany and Japan which have attained this level of diplomatic leverage in this region which is critical to India.”
Welcoming reconciliation in GCC: India has rightly welcomed that the “nearly three-year-old fracture within the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ended four weeks ago and normal relations with Qatar have been restored mutually by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. This was a multipolarity which was more difficult to deal with than engaging the multiple poles in Tehran and Riyadh. There were no ethnic, linguistic or religious differences between the UAE and Qatar: the differences were over ideas and policies and not fundamental unlike the great divide across the Gulf between Shia Iran and the Sunni rest.”
