NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century by Sunil Khilnani Read Free Book Online Page A

options and constrain our future horizons.
West Asia
    In few parts of the world, outside its immediate periphery, does India have greater interests at stake than in West Asia. The region accounts for 63 per cent of our crude imports, $93 billion of trade and provides employment to 6 million Indian expatriate workers who remit over $35 billion every year. Securing and advancing these diverse sets of interests has become a pressing challenge in the wake of the political turmoil in West Asia and the contiguous parts of North Africa. This situation is likely to persist in the near to mid-term future, with unpredictable consequences for the region as a whole. While our policy towards each country will be determined by its particularities and by the evolving situation, it is important to consider these in an overarching strategic framework. In thinking about sucha framework, we need to bear in mind four factors that are likely to remain in play for some time in West Asia.
    First, the political landscape of the region has been dramatically transformed and there is no possibility of reverting to the erstwhile status quo. Popular movements comprising new or re-energized forces powered by new forms of social communication and mobilization are now an ineradicable feature of the West Asian political terrain. These popular uprisings will throw up forces, especially Islamist political parties, which have hitherto been suppressed or marginalized by several regimes in the region. The extent to which these states’ bureaucracies, military and intelligence services will be prepared and able to work with these parties remains an open question. While the elected Islamist parties might not be overtly suppressed, they are unlikely to be fully acceptable either. This will remain a key source of instability across West Asia.
    Second, the strategic consequences of the US war in Iraq will continue to play out in the years ahead. It is now clear that the principal beneficiary of the war was Iran. Not only has the war resulted in the emergence of a Shiite Iraq, but it has also extended Iranian influence in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. A corollary to this has been the Iranian drive to acquire nuclear weapons—a desire that has almost certainly been accentuated by the Western interventionin Libya. The confluence of these trends has created a sharp geopolitical divide between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and their respective allies and clients. The resulting spiral of insecurity and armament will be a principal source of tension in West Asia in the years ahead. This dynamic will play out against the backdrop of existing problems: above all Palestine, which will remain a driver of conflict in the region. The interaction of these two axes of tension will result in a more unstable regional environment.
    Third, the nature of Western interests in the region is undergoing an important shift. With increasing access to other forms of energy (particularly gas) and accompanying breakthroughs in technology and marketability, Western dependence on oil from the region will certainly decline in the years ahead. However, the geopolitical importance of the region will remain undiminished—not least because of its centrality to the economies of the emerging powers. As a consequence, the United States and its allies will have greater room for manoeuvre in West Asia.
    Fourth, the combination of these three factors implies that the Western propensity for intervention in the region is likely to persist despite the thinning out of Western forces on the ground. West Asia may well become the main arena for introducing and testing new norms of great power intervention. Such intervention is likely to bejustified on humanitarian grounds, though these principles will continue to be applied rather selectively. One can already see this happening in Syria.
    These four factors underscore certain strategic principles that need to frame our policies in West Asia. For a start, we need to engage