As an important stakeholder in the Middle East, India has its task cut out. The Indian PM has
held talks with the PMs of the UK, Israel, the Presidents of
UAE, and Iran and Saudi Crown Prince
amongst other leaders. One can safely assume that similar
efforts could be underway at the
diplomatic level too. India has taken a nuanced stand,
condemning the Hamas attack even as it has
supported a homeland for Palestine. India has a healthy
relationship with the Arabs and Palestine
even as we pursue a strategic partnership with Israel.
However, India needs to look beyond and act
vigorously to mitigate and eventually overcome the adverse
effects of the current crisis. Firstly, we
ought to coordinate more closely with the US and jointly
impress upon Israel to calibrate its use of
force, explicitly refrain from targeting civilians and
ensure humanitarian aid in Gaza. Our common
friend (Israel) should be convinced that its
disproportionate use of force and a frenzy for ‘revenge’
is counter productive. Secondly, India should take the
initiative to build a consensus along with
other major stakeholders like the US, UK, Arab states,
Australia and Japan for a UN-mandated
collective deployment of warships to protect merchant
shipping in the Red Sea area. If done under
a UN mandate, it will find greater global acceptance and
take the steam out of Chinese and Russian
propaganda. The third action concerns Iran. Characterized by
high inflation, weak GDP growth,
depreciating currency and rising unemployment, Iran
nevertheless continues playing the game of
geopolitical destabilization by violence mostly through
proxies. Iran has displayed growing
closeness and strategic convergence with our strategic
rival, China while waging a hybrid war
against our strategic partners – the US and Israel. Despite
Iran’s profane track record on women's
rights, likely nuclear weaponization/ proliferation and
religious fundamentalism, India has been
quite friendly to Iran, even supporting its entry into SCO
and BRICS. Iranian act of supporting and
covertly directing attacks against commercial shipping
including India-bound ships is in direct
defiance of India’s principled and consistent stand on
freedom and safety of maritime commerce.
Iran’s irresponsible actions are increasingly becoming an
embarrassment to our friendship. More
importantly, they have raised the economic and reputational
costs for us while reducing our
strategic space. It is high time India firmly conveys this
to Iran and reminds it to be mindful of our
interests and concerns. The time for ‘fence-sitting’ is
over. Instead, it is time to call ‘spade a spade.’
Geopolitical stability is crucial for a rising India. Let us
hope and pray for a more peaceful 2024.
India must use its good standing with Iran, as well as with
Israel, to urge moderation and
restraint, lest the West Asian conflagration spreads and
sets the Indian Ocean alight.
As the Yemen-based Houthi rebels have risen after the
October 7 Hamas attack on Israel to
pose a serious threat to Red Sea merchant-shipping traffic,
one is reminded of the American
strategist Alfred Mahan’s declaration that “the necessity of
a navy, in the restricted sense of the
word, springs, therefore, from the existence of a peaceful
shipping, and disappears with it…” The
doughty Admiral was emphasising the paramount importance of
foreign trade and commerce, as
well as access to natural resources, for national prosperity
and reminding us that navies were only
a means to this end.
Shipping remains the cheapest and most efficient method of
transporting goods over long
distances, and thus forms the lifeblood of the global
economy. The waters of the Indian Ocean see
nearly 1,00,000 merchantmen, in transit, annually, carrying
80 per cent of the world’s oil and 10
trillion tons of cargo to Africa, Asia, Europe and the
Americas. Amidst this mass of international
shipping, there is the minuscule Indian merchant fleet of
about 500 vessels, and approximately 1.5
lakh Indian sailors serving on foreign-flagged ships.
5
The maintenance of “good order” at sea is, therefore, not
just essential in India’s own
interest, but also an international commitment. The
commendable alacrity shown by the Indian
Navy in responding to emergent situations in the Red Sea has
been in keeping with its self-assigned
role of “preferred security partner” in the region.
Trade warfare or waging war on seaborne commerce has
historically been a favoured
strategy to coerce an adversary by striking at the very
roots of his security and prosperity. Both the
20th century global conflicts saw Germany targeting Allied
merchant shipping in a deadly
submarine campaign that nearly brought Britain to its knees.
The eight-year long Iran-Iraq conflict
of the 1980s, too, saw the waging of a “tanker war” in which
both belligerents attacked merchant
ships in the Persian Gulf in order to impact each other’s
trade and to influence the international
community. Nearly 500 ships, flying 40 different flags, were
damaged before UN intervention halted
the attacks.
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