The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and its Strategic Implications

On September 10th, 2023, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United States of America, the Republic of India, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, and the European Union at the G20 Summit in India signed a memorandum of understanding to establish an economic corridor connecting India to Europe via the Middle East (IMEC), capturing much of the attention of media outlets.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously discussed IMEC earlier that month during his September 3rd meeting in Cyprus with the Cypriot and Greek Presidents, along with the possibility of connecting Europe to India via Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, establishing a fiber optic cable for data transmission, and building gas pipelines connecting Israel and Cyprus to Europe.

Axios also published the news ahead of New Delhi’s announcement, claiming that lengthy negotiations between the parties involved preceded the agreement.

Scrutinizing this announcement elucidates several notable matters:

The agreement remains a memorandum of understanding and has not reached the status of a plan, an executive project, or a binding treaty, like many memos of understanding signed only to be forgotten under piles of paperwork.

However, if this project materializes and moves to implementation, it will have significant geopolitical and economic objectives that may benefit some parties but harm others.

As Netanyahu stated in Cyprus, implementing the project may pave the way for Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Abraham Accords of 2020 and forge peace and reconciliation between the KSA and Israel. This has also been a strategic objective for US President Joe Biden since last year, actively seeking to achieve it. For that purpose, he sent his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, on several visits to KSA to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. However, MBS stipulated several conditions to join these efforts: an American commitment to defend Saudi interests against threats and attacks, providing the Kingdom with the types of weapons it desires, including F-35 aircraft, and assisting the Kingdom in establishing a domestic Saudi-run nuclear program.

The economic corridor and infrastructure project could provide a cover for Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Abraham Accords, following the example of the UAE and Bahrain, and normalization of relations with Israel, despite Jake Sullivan’s denial of any connection between the two.

Implementing this project will likely make it the objective and geopolitical-economic equivalent of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Becoming part of IMEC contradicts and undermines claims of Saudi Arabia’s alignment with China and Russia and the weakening of the

Saudi-American strategic relationship. It is inconceivable to reconcile these projects because the implementation of one will necessarily be at the expense of the other, therefore leading the United States to prohibit the use of Chinese technology, such as 5G network, in the infrastructure of this project, due to factors related to American national security.

If completed, this economic corridor will undoubtedly negatively impact the revenues of the Suez Canal. The lower cost of transportation through this corridor will decrease the traffic in the Suez Canal, depriving Egypt of a main source of foreign currency and that Egypt is in dire need of to rescue itself from its long-standing economic crisis. This might risks harming Saudi-Egytian relations.

Moreover, this corridor will serve as an alternative to the South-North corridor, for which Iran and Russia have advocated for a decade. This corridor connects the Indian port of Mumbai to the Iranian port of Chabahar, then to the Caspian Sea through Iranian territories, and then to Russia and Europe.

It seems that this project will also serve as a challenge to the (South-North) corridor, upon which Iran and Russia rely for the transportation of goods, commodities, people, and capital, as well as for escaping the sanctions imposed on them. This could potentially harm Saudi-Russian relations and bring relations with Iran back to a period of turmoil and crisis.

Also, this project may undermine efforts to establish the strategic Zangezur corridor that Turkey is working on, connecting Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic through Armenian territories and to Turkey, linking China and Central Asia to Europe via Turkey to create a global economic corridor for the transportation of goods and commodities via railways, Caspian Sea ports, and Turkish ports.

This could harm the Saudi-Turkish relationship, which had recently begun to mend.

Moreover, this project could have implications for the BRICS organization and the addition of new members to it at the beginning of 2024. It raises doubts about the foundations and feasibility of BRICS if its members, such as China, India, and Saudi Arabia, are involved in geopolitical rivalry, economic interest contradictions, alliance confrontations, and project antagonism. (For further information on the BRICS Alliance: https://en.icgers.com/index.php/2023/10/25/the-disintegration-of-non-ideological-alliances-brics-as-a-conspicuous-examplethe-disintegration-of-non-ideological-alliances-brics-as-a-conspicuous-example/ )

However, the new economic corridor requires elaboration on several of its facets:

· The funds necessary to finance this corridor and the essential resources required by the project, as well as identifying the regional and international entities (countries, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) that will finance and invest in it in detail, as well as its projected revenues.

· Defining the geopolitical framework of the project, such as designating the Indian and Gulf ports that will be connected and the countries that will participate in extending the railways (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, and Israel). The implementation of this project revives a plan discussed in 2019 to establish a corridor linking Dubai to Eilat via Saudi Arabia and the NEOM project and then to the port of Haifa.

Analysts might take various approaches, praising the merits of this project or exposing its drawbacks by alleging that it is a propaganda and a public relations campaign by the United States against China and Russia.

If this project is propaganda, then BRICS and the accession of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Argentina to it are also propaganda and public relations campaigns.

If BRICS and its expansion are indeed a reality and a strategic endeavor by China and Russia to establish a multipolar world, then IMEC is a real challenge to their efforts and their geopolitical and economic projects, primarily due to the alignment of the United States, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada with it.

Biden’s strategy, based on multilateral action and reliance on alliances to undermine China’s geopolitical project, unlike former President Donald Trump’s reliance on bilateral agreements, reveals a profound and far-reaching strategic danger for the USA.

This danger lies in the fact that the United States is merely replacing an immediate looming threat with a future one when it seeks to create an Indian global pole to be an objective and alternative counterpart to China. What secures the United States is not India becoming a strategic threat and challenge to American interests once it turns into a global power, as was the case with China. The United States supported China in the 1980s to counterbalance the influence of the Soviet Union at the time. After the Soviet threat disappeared, China, aided by Washington, became a strategic challenge to American interests a decade ago. What will secure the United States in the future is to stop India from becoming a strategic threat.

The United States should itself engage in strategic projects to safeguard its long-term interests rather than relying on others.