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Asia is present process a world-historical geopolitical transformation. The rise of the Indo-Pacific as a coherent geoeconomic and geopolitical system coincides with the rise of what this writer has beforehand termed the “Indo-Abrahamic,” an rising transregional order connecting India to West Asia and the japanese Mediterranean. Till now, the geographic vastness of Asia and the legacy of “divide-and-conquer” colonialism have saved the continent politically and economically fragmented. By reshaping their bilateral relations, Cairo and New Delhi can seize the strategic alternative to hyperlink the Indo-Abrahamic with the Indo-Pacific, thus realizing this envisioned West Asian system.
Leaders of the Non-Aligned Motion
Cairo and New Delhi share an intertwined historical past. British colonialists coveted Egypt not just for its riches but in addition because the gateway to India, the crown jewel of the British Empire. Britain’s sprawling colonial enterprise created a transcontinental geostrategic and geoeconomic system that linked India to Egypt to Britain by way of the Suez Canal. Indians and Egyptians took up the struggle towards British colonialism virtually concurrently and the 2 nations gained their independence inside a decade of each other, in 1947 and 1956 respectively. Bilateral relations blossomed right into a quasi-strategic partnership underneath Egypt’s Pan-Arabist President Gamal Abdel Nasser and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The 2 charismatic leaders championed liberation actions worldwide. Alongside Yugoslavia’s President Josip Tito, Indonesia’s President Sukarno, and Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah, Nasser and Nehru based then led the Non-Aligned Motion (NAM), which claimed neutrality throughout the Chilly Conflict and fostered Afro-Asian unity. Regardless of their professed neutrality, Cairo and New Delhi leaned in favor of the Soviet Union as a result of they considered Washington as an avatar of the West’s darkish historical past of colonialism.
Cairo and New Delhi past Islamabad
Within the Fifties, India’s particular relationship with Egypt fashioned a cornerstone of New Delhi’s overseas coverage within the Center East and Africa. Nehru and Nasser themselves bonded on the helm of the NAM. However the Indo-Egyptian partnership wasn’t all about political solidarity and decolonization. Nehru and Nasser hoped to assist one another’s navy and industrial growth as a protection towards coercion throughout the Chilly Conflict.
Cairo has tried to foster relations with New Delhi and Islamabad with out having to prioritize one over the opposite. Relations with India are central to Cairo’s self-perception as each a pacesetter of the Arab world and considered one of solely a handful of African nations highly effective and revered sufficient to characterize the continent on the world stage. Equally, New Delhi has seemed to Cairo as a nation with deep-seated cultural roots and widespread political affect that might rehabilitate India’s repute broken within the Muslim world by the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. Egypt respects India’s standing as a regional and world energy in addition to Pakistan’s standing as the only real Muslim nuclear energy. Cairo helps talks between the 2 over the Kashmir battle. Cairo’s relations with Islamabad circumscribe, however don’t altogether sabotage, its ties with New Delhi.
The present state of affairs between Egypt and India
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India keep a pleasant, cooperative rapport and present a transparent urge for food for nearer ties. After President Sisi assumed energy in 2014, PM Modi visited Egypt in August 2015, they usually met one month in a while the sidelines of the U.N. Normal Meeting. In the course of the third India-Africa Discussion board Summit in New Delhi in October 2015, President Sisi met with PM Modi for the third time. In 2016, President Sisi traveled to India together with his high cupboard members on a state go to in a extra organized effort to develop relations. Sisi’s and Modi’s private chemistry is prime to Egypt and India’s strategic ties. The rising energy of the bilateral relationship was highlighted by Egypt’s cargo of 30 tons of medical provides and 300,000 doses of the antiviral drug remdesivir to India throughout the pandemic.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has solely exacerbated Egypt’s financial woes by chopping off wheat imports from Ukraine and Russia. Inside this context, Cairo has seemed to India as a substitute provider. Due to the brutal heatwave at present impacting India’s grain manufacturing, New Delhi imposed an export ban on wheat in mid-Might. India did, nonetheless, exempt Egypt from the ban. This exemption speaks to the robust, resilient relationship between Egypt and India. The character of bilateral relations and Cairo’s determination to assist New Delhi throughout the pandemic paved the way in which for India to assist Egypt in staving off its looming wheat shortages.
Cairo hopes for deeper and extra strategic relations with New Delhi and vice-versa, and there is a number of untapped potential. Cairo and New Delhi ought to try collectively to create a worldwide system that preserves the cultural specificity of non-Western nations, incorporates world dysfunction, resists Western practices of coercion, and promotes fairness between East and West, North and South.
The 4 pillars of latest bilateral relations between Cairo and New Delhi
1. The rise of Egypt and India as civilization-states
As a response to the Western-dominated liberal worldwide order, its cultural rules, and interventionism, Egypt and India are constructing their very own civilization-states. As per Bruno Maçães’s definition, civilization-states, in distinction to nation-states, are “organized round tradition slightly than politics.” The idea of the civilization-state is essential to understanding nations reminiscent of China on their very own phrases. This writer argued in a earlier essay that Egypt is growing its personal civilization-state after many years of soul-searching over find out how to outline itself. Cairo’s home and overseas coverage choices ought to be considered and understood by way of the lens of the civilization-state paradigm. Modi’s India is following the same trajectory by embracing a civilizational perspective of itself and the world, emphasizing the concept that India is not only a nation, however slightly a definite civilization. Cairo and New Delhi think about themselves heirs to their respective civilizations and thus really feel compelled to protect their very own religion, traditions, and heritage towards the calls for of the dominant liberal world order. This angle informs each the home and overseas coverage of those two states, and their comparable self-conceptions can kind the bedrock of stronger bilateral relations.
2. The Non-Alignment Motion in a multipolar world
The unipolar second has handed and the world is on the verge of turning into a multipolar system. A number of elements now hinder the prevention and administration of conflicts: Elevated geopolitical pressure between the U.S. and different main powers (e.g., China and Russia); the rise of civilization-states reminiscent of Turkey and India; the shift of financial energy to Asia; world demographic adjustments; the digital transformation; and world warming. World dysfunction is poised to turn into the brand new regular. Cairo and New Delhi share the assumption that the liberal worldwide order is a thinly veiled car for Western political, financial, and cultural domination. Egypt and India do agree with the West on sure strategic pursuits, however disagree on many others. The struggle in Ukraine is a chief instance of this. Cairo and New Delhi worth their relations with Moscow and have refused to sentence the Russian invasion. The Ukraine struggle received’t be the final challenge the place Egypt and India pursue their very own pursuits towards the needs of the West. The NAM requires retooling to cope with an emergent multipolar worldwide system characterised by simmering competitors among the many nice powers. Egypt and India ought to try to transform the NAM right into a coordination mechanism able to sending a transparent message to policymakers in Western capitals, Beijing, and Moscow that its 120 member-states need to select their companions based mostly on their nationwide pursuits. In different phrases, they don’t need to be coerced into selecting sides within the ideological wrestle pitting the West towards Russia and China.
3. The Indo-Abrahamic framework
Coined in an essay by this writer, the idea of the Indo-Abrahamic refers back to the rising convergence of strategic pursuits between India, Israel, and the UAE — one that will in the end result in the emergence of a brand new geostrategic coalition between them. “For a very long time, India, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have maintained transactional relations. Nonetheless, final 12 months’s normalization agreements between Israel and several other Arab states, together with the UAE, in addition to Turkey’s bid to reassert its place because the chief of a Muslim order and the UAE’s rising distance from Pakistan, have resulted within the formation of an unlikely and unprecedented ‘Indo-Abrahamic’ alliance.’ This rising multilateral alliance has the power to reshape the area’s geopolitics and geoeconomics by filling the hole left by the USA within the Center East.”
Right here I echo the Indian mental Raja Mohan’s argument that “positioned on the cusp of the Mediterranean – Europe, Africa, and Asia, Egypt is the middle and coronary heart of the Higher Center East.” By advantage of its demographics, geography, civilization, and site on the crossroads of Africa, Europe, and Asia, Cairo may give substantive depth to the rising Indo-Abrahamic bloc. In mild of the instability following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, a consensus fashioned in lots of regional and world capitals that Egypt had misplaced the luster that when allowed it to steer the Arab world, champion decolonization actions, and pioneer the NAM throughout the Chilly Conflict. Being dismissed and downplayed as a regional participant gave Cairo a strategic window of alternative to redefine its pursuits and sphere of affect with out arousing an excessive amount of suspicion. By leveraging its geoeconomic and geopolitical benefits, Cairo is rising as an influence in a number of strategic theaters, together with Libya, the japanese Mediterranean, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine. Engagement inside the Indo-Abrahamic framework would enable Cairo and New Delhi to ascertain a brand new safety structure for West Asia that addresses the area’s challenges in mild of the U.S.’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific.
4. Egypt as an anchor for India in Africa
As a rising nice energy, India has a strategic curiosity in increasing its attain to varied areas across the globe — particularly to Africa, which boasts a quickly rising inhabitants and center class and performs a central function in world commodities markets. With such points of interest, Africa is rising as an area of great-power competitors. Cairo performs a hybrid function in Africa. Egypt is positioning itself as a political, financial, and safety gateway to the remainder of the continent and is itself a rising strategic participant with a rising safety and intelligence footprint throughout Africa. Egypt has staked its geoeconomic technique on its engagement with the remainder of the continent. As an illustration, Cairo expanded its airline routes all through Africa, constructed medical and pharmaceutical facilities within the Nile Basin, and constructed a hydroelectric dam in Tanzania. On the strategic degree and to advance its place in its wrestle with Addis Ababa over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Egypt has ramped up its diplomatic outreach and established itself as an influential participant within the Nile Basin and the Horn of Africa in addition to East and Central Africa. As I highlighted in a earlier publication for MEI, “Cairo succeeded in forging strategic alignment with Khartoum to exert diplomatic strain on Addis Ababa, forming webs of alliances with completely different regional powers throughout East and Central Africa and the Horn of Africa to mission energy and affect, and exerting geopolitical ahead strain on Ethiopia in parallel with the diplomatic observe to unravel the Nile dispute.”
Their clear dynamism and shared pursuits in Africa, in addition to their frequent perspective on the worldwide order, create a gap for Cairo and New Delhi to redouble their efforts throughout Africa collectively. There are clear wants in Africa that Egypt and India may cooperate to satisfy in alliance with their African companions. The areas of potential cooperation run the gamut from pharma to infrastructure, training to well being companies, intelligence cooperation to navy workout routines.
From the shared wrestle for independence towards the British Empire to founding and main the NAM on the top of the Chilly Conflict, Egypt and India have lengthy maintained shut ties. Nonetheless, bilateral relations between Cairo and New Delhi in latest many years stagnated because of: 1) Egypt’s pivot to the West following the U.S.-brokered peace settlement with Israel; 2) the tip of the Chilly Conflict; 3) Egypt’s balancing act between Pakistan and India; and 4) India’s give attention to its rapid sphere of curiosity and affect. The present state of worldwide dysfunction and the rise of Indo-Abrahamic, nonetheless, create incentives for Cairo and New Delhi to work collectively extra intently. By advantage of their civilizational outlooks, demography, geography, and geopolitical aspirations, Egypt and India may develop a West Asian system that integrates the area. From coordinating on world and regional points to working collectively in different strategic theaters reminiscent of Africa and the Indian Ocean, Egypt-India bilateral relations maintain a lot untapped potential.
Mohammed Soliman is a Non-Resident Scholar with MEI’s Cyber and Egypt packages and a Senior Affiliate at McLarty Associates’ Center East and North Africa Follow. His work focuses on the intersection of know-how, geopolitics, and enterprise in MENA. The views expressed on this piece are his personal.
Picture by MONEY SHARMA/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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