C Raja Mohan writes: What does an Indian PM’s first visit to Kuwait in four decades mean for diplomacy in the Middle East?

Then, as now, there was little internal criticism from India’s political class or foreign policy elite for the government’s refusal to condemn Saddam Hussein’s unacceptable aggression. Many arguments have been advanced to suggest that Saddam Hussein was “provoked” or “tricked” into invading Kuwait – in part because Brezhnev had no choice but to send troops into Afghanistan and Putin was provoked into invading Ukraine.

Certainly, as a post-colonial nation, India is deeply committed to the inevitability of territorial sovereignty as a core principle of international relations. Delhi was reluctant to condemn these attacks because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia are India’s closest allies. Many countries do not like to criticize their partners. India is not alone in discouraging the tension between principle and self-interest. All countries do. India’s problem in the 1990s was not about the prevailing hypocrisy in international relations.

Part of the problem was in assessing and dealing with the geopolitical implications and consequences of Saddam Hussein’s attempt to annex Kuwait. The Gulf Arabs as well as Egypt and Syria rallied together to support a large US expeditionary force to force Saddam Hussein to vacate the occupied territories and restore Kuwait’s sovereignty within a year.

Another element of India’s problem was its well-established ties to Baathist leaders in the Middle East, such as Saddam Hussein. Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar are also part of that Arab tradition. In the second half of the 20th century, Delhi was comfortable with radical nationalist Arab republics that supported pan-Arabism, socialism, secularism, anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism. But the Baathists also tragically proved to be extremely dictatorial.

Despite much goodwill for India over conservative Gulf monarchies and increasing energy imports and labor exports, Delhi tended to view them through Pakistan’s prism and struggled to develop a positive engagement strategy. India’s Iraq policy in 1990-91 is surprising in its relationship with Kuwait. It was well into the 2000s, when high-level visits between Kuwait and India resumed. Vice President Hamid Ansari’s visit to Kuwait in 2009 was the highest since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s visit to Kuwait in 1981.

Although the Gulf’s energy, economic and security advantages have increased in the 21st century, the region has remained low on India’s diplomatic priorities. During the UPA’s decade-long rule, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the three Gulf countries, one each to Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. There have been definite changes in the Modi year. The prime minister has visited the region frequently – seven times to the UAE, twice to Qatar and Saudi Arabia and once to Bahrain and Oman. His trip to Kuwait this weekend closes the circle of this wider engagement. For the past few months, the exchange of visits between the two foreign ministers in preparation for Modi’s visit has set the stage for the Prime Minister’s visit. High-level visits are only one metric of engagement between any two nations.

We have seen a qualitative change in the relationship between India and the Gulf monarchies over the last decade – from strong personal ties between Prime Ministers and Gulf rulers to intensifying business engagement and security partnerships to connectivity projects. The Arabian Gulf has emerged as a top strategic priority for Delhi today. Few of India’s other relations have changed as dramatically as Delhi’s relationship with the Arab Gulf states in the last decade.

The Prime Minister’s visit to Kuwait after the rapid fall of the last Baathist ruler in Syria is entirely coincidental. If India’s relationship with Kuwait was troubled by Delhi’s alliance with the Baathists, the fall of the Assad dynasty marks a long-overdue political booster shot for India’s relationship with Kuwait. Assad’s fall also underscores the tragedy of the Baathist republics that turned into brutal dictatorships in which the security services brutalized the population. Monarchies once reviled by progressives around the world have proven less oppressive than the republics of the Middle East.

Some of them, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are now undertaking significant reforms that seek to promote religious moderation, social modernization, and an economic transition away from oil revenues. In all these respects, the Arabian Gulf is a natural partner for India. Meanwhile, Pakistan has ceased to be a complicating factor in Delhi’s relations with Arab monarchies, which now give higher weight to ties with India. India’s partnership with central Arab states including Egypt, the Gulf, Jordan and Morocco takes on new importance amid post-Assad Syria and the inevitable realignment of the Middle East.

Deeper engagement with moderate Arab states demands a better appreciation of their core concerns in Delhi. This in turn involved the abandonment of many old Indian complexes about the region. Delhi also needs a clear assessment of the hierarchy of tensions between moderate Arab states and the region’s non-Arab powers – Iran, Israel and Turkey. The moderate Arab states had no desire to restore Ottoman imperial hegemony in their lands or to accept Persian claims to regional supremacy. Nor do they want radical Islamist republicans to replace the Baathist republic and sow regional chaos. They are deeply angered by Israel’s refusal to accommodate Palestinian concerns. A more flexible Israel could make it easier for moderate Arab states to cooperate with the Jewish state for stability in the Middle East. India should steer Tel Aviv in the direction of accommodation, betting on the hope of positive relations between Israel and the Middle Arab states in the form of the Abraham Accords. Modi’s visit to Kuwait should therefore be seen as the first step in raising India’s game in a Middle East that is poised for deep structural change.

The writer is contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express