HISTORY is a tough beast! It expects an idea or initiative to travel some distance before allotting the adjective ‘historic’. The G20 Summit in Delhi has been a diplomatic coup but it will require time before we know whether the paragraph in the joint communiqué on Ukraine leads to a frozen ceasefire, which is the best the world can hope for in current circumstances. The African Union, welcomed into the group by Prime Minister Modi, has to pull some economic weight before its membership is recognised as something more than a signal to virtue. Prime Minister Modi has in both cases crafted an important launching pad for a diplomatic journey that needs much more steering by him among the few at the helm.
His third and most significant achievement at G20, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) linking India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel to Italy, Spain and Europe, deserves the unreserved accolade of ‘historic’, because of its conceptual daring, practical potential and game-changing strategic implications.
The radical swerve is the connectivity between Saudi Arabia and Haifa, the largest of Israel’s three principal ports on the Mediterranean with a natural deepwater harbour.
An economic bridge
India’s ancient Spice Route took trade from Kerala and Gujarat to the Red Sea, then by caravan to the Nile and by boat to Alexandria where ships from Venice and Genoa were waiting to take the precious cargo to Europe. The modern corridor will traverse through the UAE, then travel on Saudi roads or trains towards Haifa in Israel, and thence to Europe. It is a coherent economic bridge with the Gulf as a fulcrum, and the ability to convert what has been described as the emerging Red Sea economy into a global asset.
This corridor marks an alignment with another remarkable diplomatic coup, the Abraham Accords, signed on September 15, 2020 between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain under the aegis of Washington during the Trump administration. The signatures marked the start of something far more than a limited trilateral understanding. They were not designed to increase the number of tourists and kosher restaurants in Dubai or enable a UAE company to buy into a football team in Jerusalem – all of which, incidentally, have happened.
Political implications
They were meant to inspire economic cooperation and integration across the hurdles of history and geography. The use of Abraham was homage to the Prophet and patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the three Abrahamic faiths. ‘Accords’ echoed the Camp David Treaty of March 1979 signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin under the benevolent gaze of President Jimmy Carter.
For nearly five decades Camp David has helped prevent a fourth all-out war between Arab nations and Israel. Camp David’s flaw was that while it stopped war, it could not start the momentum for sustainable peace.
The Abraham Accords had only two options: they could either grow or wither. They would not survive in the arid atmosphere of uncertainty.
Expansion did not mean the inclusion of distant and peripheral Morocco, which only wanted a trade-off American recognition for its claims in Western Sahara. The stability and strength of the pact lay in Saudi Arabia’s inclusion. But the political implications of Saudi recognition of Israel with Palestine still in limbo were a deal-blocker. Saudi diplomats understood the dilemma, even as they talked up the potential of a Red Sea economy bolstered by Israel and the Gulf. America is in the process of offering Riyadh a defence guarantee to encourage progress, but that is not a solution to the Palestine dilemma.
World is a family
There is an old Sufi answer to an eternal human question: what do you do when you are trapped in a vicious circle?
You create a bigger circle. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done just that. With brilliant finesse, he has expanded the arc of cooperation, thereby easing dangerous friction with just enough to accommodate a trade route that includes Saudi Arabia and Israel. The corridor does not over-promise, nor will it underachieve; that is its true strength. It harmonises the basic principle of Prime Minister Modi’s foreign policy, which was the theme of G20 in Delhi: the world is a family.
Simultaneously, IMEEC implements a dictum central to Modi’s pragmatism: a neighbour is defined by reach, not distance. In 2014 and 2015 Prime Minister Modi reached out to both Dhaka and Islamabad, but got a response from only one. The relationship with Bangladesh is flourishing. Pakistan remained obstinate, arrogant and shortsighted. It has been consigned to the shrug-and-ignore basket.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has publicly praised India’s progress under Narendra Modi since 2017, and lamented Pakistan’s regress. He might reflect on his own obduracy when he had the chance to cooperate with India. Today, India and Bangladesh are neighbours.
Gulf as a neighbour
Land border points and airports are amity zones. Pakistan is a geographical presence, not a neighbour: Attari in Punjab is better known for martial theatre at sunset than travel during the day. The Gulf and India are neighbours. There must be a thousand flights a week between them, evidence of multi-level reach between governments, businesses and people. Narendra Modi invested in this friendship; he was the first Prime Minister in 36 years to visit the UAE.
His predecessors were too busy travelling elsewhere. The initiative was reciprocated. India, a manufacturing hub and investment destination, is now the eastern bulwark of a corridor of prosperity between two continents, changing lives and relations along the way, eliding conflict and nurturing economic growth. This is the stuff of history.
