Israel’s growing footprint

KP Nayar

Strategic Analyst

Many Indians are ecstatic that Israel and Bhutan established diplomatic relations last weekend. Going by posts on social media, conversations with those who take an interest in international affairs and the general tenor of reportage of the event in the national press, it is as if this was a wedding in the family to be celebrated by all its members, including distant relatives.

India can’t ignore that several South Asian nations are looking for someone as a countervailing force.

The same Indians would have condemned Bhutan if the kingdom had tied a similar knot with China. They would have ranted about betrayal by Bhutan although ties between Thimpu and Beijing are, in fact, something natural. China is next door to Bhutan, its immediate neighbour, and belongs there. Whereas Israel is not even a distant neighbour, the way Gulf countries are in India’s extended backyard.

Ties between this country’s friendliest neighbour, Bhutan, and one of New Delhi’s closest defence and security partners, Israel, are an occasion for India to reflect on where South Asia is headed, once the coronavirus pandemic abates. Israel is doing in Asia — including the Arabian Gulf — what India could have done three decades ago. Creative, clever and unafraid to take risks, as Israelis always have been, Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving Prime Minister in the Jewish state’s history, simply filled, with careful planning, a void that India had left in the Gulf.

Narendra Modi, as Prime Minister, has taken interest in repairing this historic mistake, both in India’s immediate and extended neighbourhoods, but six years are not enough to make up for decades of neglect. Other players, Israel for example, inevitably step in.

A decline in American power and President Donald Trump’s policy of extricating the United States from overseas involvements, which he considered unnecessary, forced Israel’s hand in one sense. It speeded up a process, which has been an evolving concept in Tel Aviv for many decades. Policymakers in West Jerusalem were merely waiting for the right conditions to expand Israel’s footprint in Asia. While Trump helped by vacating space, a certain space for India as a regional power always existed, which successive governments in New Delhi chose not to occupy.

Three decades ago, the Gulf countries were not attractive postings for Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers the way they are now. There were few IFS officers who had invested in the wherewithal to effectively serve in the strategically important monarchies in that region. Two decades had already passed since Britain had withdrawn from the Trucial States. The vacancy was India’s for the taking, to work with local rulers as a friend, neighbour and partner. But New Delhi abdicated a role in which it was cast both by history and geography.

In one year’s IFS batch, which took charge of Indian embassies in the Gulf in that period, Kiswahili was given the same importance as Arabic as compulsory foreign language for the probationers. It was a batch whose intake was larger than usual, yet the bulk of the recruits were taught Russian, Chinese or French. Besides, it did not help that those probationers who learned Arabic did their best to avoid a posting to an Arabic-speaking country, preferring the comforts of European capitals instead.

One officer was an exception to this rule. Naturally, he had access in Gulf capitals that went well beyond his rank and seniority in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). When he went to Saudi Arabia to prepare for then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh’s pioneering visit to the kingdom, the Minister of State for Defence in Riyadh told this officer, out of the blue, that the Saudis would like India to play a role in defending their kingdom against threats.

The officer was completely taken by surprise. He came back and recorded a detailed note about this conversation along with his modest prescriptions for a greater Indian role not only in the kingdom but in all of the Gulf. Nothing came of it, of course, and the note was probably consigned to the trash bin by his then bosses, none of whom knew Arabic and had never served in the region. Informally, the officer lobbied for some action, but was told that the Saudi minister must have said it to make the visiting officer feel good.

Israel has been preparing for the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations with some Gulf states — with more to follow — for many decades. India, on the other hand, did not even have a prime ministerial visit to key Gulf states for three decades until Modi ventured to go there. Israel has similarly been comprehensively preparing to lay their hands on a bigger diplomatic, security and commercial pie in South Asia ever since New Delhi and Tel Aviv established full diplomatic relations in 1992.

They started in Sri Lanka, meddling, unobtrusively, but cleverly on the Sinhala side in the island's violent and protracted ethnic conflict. The disaster perpetrated by Rajiv Gandhi with the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) gave an opening for Tel Aviv. The establishment of relations with Bhutan is a case of natural progression for Israel in achieving strategic depth in South Asia.

One of Tel Aviv’s goals is to have formal relations with Pakistan and Bangladesh. This may take longer with Dhaka than with Islamabad, in part, because Bangladesh has too much democracy unlike Pakistan. Even when this happens, it will constitute no threat of any kind to India. Israel is a friend for India and can be counted on as one in need. What Indians, especially politicians and those engaged in public discourse, lose sight of, however, is that Israel is expanding its presence in South Asia to protect its interests and its interests alone.

What India cannot ignore is that several South Asian countries are looking for someone in their backyard to balance India. China is toxic in this regard when it comes to their own ties with India. They do not want a zero sum game vis-à-vis India and China. Israel offers an ideal alternative for Thimpu, Kathmandu and Colombo, for now, and in the long run for Male, Dhaka and Islamabad as well. And finally, let no one forget that Israel has excellent relations with China. All of which means South Asia is all set for a new ‘Great Game’ in its territory.

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