PM Modi in Greece: How outreach to Mediterranean region is vital to India’s geopolitical interests

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on an official visit to Greece while returning from the BRICS Summit in South Africa. His visit is the first by an Indian prime minister in 40 years since Indira Gandhi’s visit in 1983. Modi’s visit would not just strengthen India-Greece bilateral relations, but it would also be another step in enhancing India’s outreach to the Mediterranean region. Outreach to the Mediterranean region is vital to India’s geopolitical interests from two perspectives. First, the Mediterranean region covers three continents – Asia, Africa and Europe. Greater engagements with countries of this region increase India’s connections across three continents. Second, the Mediterranean region is also important for India’s Indo-Pacific policy. The past few years have seen an increasing number of European countries, particularly those located in this region like France and Italy, formulating their own Indo-Pacific policies. India as a major power of the Indo-Pacific region is an important partner for the Mediterranean countries to connect with the Indo-Pacific. India’s ties with the Mediterranean region are not recent but could be termed as unequal, implying that India enjoyed close ties with only few countries in the region. However, India has been redefining its engagements with this region from time to time. India’s trajectory in relations with the Mediterranean region could be understood in three phases. The first phase of engagement was limited to shared goals at individual and global level. This refers to India’s ties with Egypt. Egypt has been one of India’s oldest links to the region. India’s interactions with Egypt have spanned on either side of India’s independence. In the pre-independence era, India and Egypt shared a common interest of independence from the British. Post-independence, both the countries cooperated on the shared vision of non-alignment. Parallel to Egypt, France has also been an important Mediterranean country that developed close ties with India in the post-independence period. France has been supporting India’s quest to be a nuclear power since 1974. The second phase was marked with India strengthening its ties with France and Israel starting from the early 1990s. It resulted from India opening its economy and seeking to expand its foreign engagements with the western countries following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This phase proved to be vital and extremely fruitful for India’s relations with the Mediterranean region. Since the 1990s, France and Israel have become top suppliers of defence equipment to India. France is one of India’s oldest strategic partners as the two countries entered into a strategic partnership agreement in 1998. Similarly Israel is also a strategic partner of India as the two countries cooperate in diverse areas such as defence, technology, agriculture and trade. In the third phase of engagement with the Mediterranean region, India is following a two-pronged approach. First is building upon the ties with the countries with which it already has cordial relations. Second is expanding outreach by engaging with those countries with which it had little interaction hitherto. Last one decade has witnessed India intensifying its engagements with the region. India’s defence cooperation with France and Israel has only deepened. On the other hand, India is reaching out to countries like Egypt, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Greece for a greater footprint in the region. With Egypt, India is resetting its ties. In the case of Spain and Greece, India is reaching out to them after a long gap. As aforesaid, Greece will welcome an Indian prime minister after 40 years. And, in 2017, Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Spain in 24 years. India is following the trajectory of its ties with France and Israel while increasing footprint across the region. Strategic cooperation is the defining factor as India is developing new friendships in the Mediterranean region. This is evident from India’s engagements with Spain, Italy and with Greece as well. During Modi’s visit India and Greece are expected to sign a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to strengthen ties in the areas of defence and trade. India is procuring Airbus C-295 aircraft from Spain. Egypt has shown interest in purchasing Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas from India. While defence cooperation has played an integral part of India’s relations with the Mediterranean region, India has also been proactive in exploiting the fault lines in the geopolitics of the region to protect its own strategic interests. Turkey has been an irritant in India’s otherwise cordial ties with the region. Turkey’s open support to Pakistan on the Jammu and Kashmir issue has met with a befitting reply from India time and again. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had raised the Kashmir issue at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2019, 2020 and 2021. In 2019, India countered Turkey’s actions with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding meetings with the leaders of Greece and Cyprus (as also Armenia), as these countries have territorial disputes with Turkey. In 2020, India’s then Permanent Representative to the United Nations T S Tirumurti called on Turkey to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations. In 2021, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met with the Foreign Minister of Cyprus and called for adherence to the resolutions of the United Nations with respect to Cyprus. While India had sent humanitarian aid to Turkey in February this year following a devastating earthquake, there is little possibility of any breakthrough in the India-Turkey relations. Meanwhile India is engaging with like-minded countries as a counter to Turkey. The Mediterranean region is important for India to increase its strategic footprint. Modi’s visit to Greece will further strengthen India’s presence in the region. The author is a political analyst and researcher based in Vadodara. His areas of specialisation include international relations, foreign policy and geopolitics. He tweets @NiranjanMarjani. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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