Augusto Manzanal Ciancaglini
Political scientist
The year 2023 ends with the United States leading a military mission in the Red Sea to protect cargo traffic. The international Operation Prosperity Guardian has a specific cause: Houthi attacks on merchant ships. However, the root cause lies in the Persian tentacles that drove Hamas to attack Israel; a swing between the lure of the West Bank and the loss of Gaza that, in the face of a relentless Israeli response, in turn provokes another subsidiary reaction through these Yemeni insurgents.
Iran seeks to encircle Israel with its satellites: Hezbollah to the north, Hamas to the west, pro-Iranian Iraqi militias to the east and the Houthis to the south. Meanwhile, Israel is gradually improving its relationship with the various Arab states. Tehran and Tel Aviv are beginning to develop a favourable terrain for an era of rivalry in a complex environment that continues to dilute the closed concept of the Arab world, where the allies of one are too weak and those of the other too timid. Indeed, each Arab state or militia has its own objectives.
Now, amidst competition from the great powers and regional powers, a long-awaited giant is finally showing its face: India overtakes China and becomes the world’s most populous country, just as it becomes the first state to land an unmanned spacecraft on the south pole of the moon. All during the year when the G20 summit took place in New Delhi.
The highlight of the summit was the unveiling of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a US-sponsored project that integrates Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with Israel, which appears to be a response, contested by Iran, to China’s Belt and Road Initiative through Kashmir, a point of tension with Pakistan.
India also shows itself to be an alternative to China for technology multinationals and continues to invest in technology. In this way, it is digitising and seeking to export its Digital Public Infrastructure; the One Future Alliance initiative would be a way to offer technical assistance and financial support to developing countries that want to implement it. There is no doubt that New Delhi is already beginning to reap the expansive fruits of its technological vigour, as 60% of its total services exports are in ICT and it is also becoming a player in AI.
India, without clearly aligning itself, is pragmatically propelled by technology, and in this area too it inexorably meets Israel: beyond the defence and cyber-security burden of recent years, given that India is the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, in 2023 the two governments have signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in research and industrial development.
After 30 years of fruitful diplomatic relations, Modi’s reaction to the Gaza war, denouncing Hamas’s terrorist attack, is evidence of his rapport with the Hebrew country; Netanyahu had already stated that the limit in relations between the two states was in the sky, while Subrahmanyan Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, called Israel the most reliable partner.
India and Israel have an energetic relationship based on technological cooperation to outpace the development of their strategic rivals, so it is not surprising that the year ended with an explosion in the vicinity of the Israeli embassy in New Delhi.
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