Saturday, August 18, 2018

The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia's Growing Presence in the Middle East revised with a new preface Edition by Geoffrey Kemp (Brookings Institution Press)



The is an intriguing study of developing trade patterns in Asia. For a student of ancient and medieval history, this is nothing less than the old silk road trade routes coming back to life after centuries of dormancy. Driving that revival is the return to economic vitality and centrality of India and China - as well as Japan and the smaller Asian economies such as Korea, Thailand and the Philippines. The sense of déjà vu is striking for a historian looking at the "longue duree". However, unlike the commodities traded on the old silk road, the commodities now being traded include energy and resources as well as the supply of services, in particular the provision of major construction and infrastructure projects by Chinese and Indian corporations. Rather than being traversed by dhows and camel trains, super tankers and transcontinental pipelines criss cross the new silk road. The author includes an exhaustive catalogue of commodities and projects supplied by and to the Asian giants - reading something like a latter day Marco Polo's Travels.

The author separately studies India and then China,. A chapter is devoted to Japan, South Korea and Pakistan.In the case of India, the author sees the return of India to an area with which it has historically had close connections, noting that during the period of British rule of India, the British dominated the Middle East from Delhi and and not London. In the case of China, the author recalls the historical journey of the Chinese admiral Zheng He into the Indian Ocean in the fifteenth century and sees something of a return of China to the area.

The study concludes with an examination of various strategic scenarios of how the up and coming powers of Asia will work with and against each other in the Indian Ocean and Middle East, a theme developed more fully by Robert Kaplan in Monsoon. He speculates on how these powers will deal with each other as well the how they may engage with the tense politics of the region, noting that thus far, they have avoided any real involvement in regional issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict - at least for now. For the West, which has in the last two centuries dominated the Middle East, the question is one of having to adapt to the return to their old areas of influence of the great Asian powers, especially India and China, which in the end may supplant the West in the region.

If however one sees the Middle East as mainly a cockpit for great power rivalry, this may miss something more fundamental that is happening. That is the re-assertion by Middle Eastern powers themselves as players in the game, especially Turkey and Iran as centres of power in their own right - and their ability to make their own destinies regardless of what great powers want, as the recent events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya demonstrate. Great powers often forget how resourceful and effective smaller powers can be in playing off great powers one against the other, in order to maximise their own room for manoeuvre. China and India may have already forgotten that they themselves once did exactly this during the Cold War in steering a course between the two superpowers of that era. If Western or the newer Asian great powers see the Middle East as just a stage for their own power plays and simply as a treasure house of resources awaiting exploitation, it may be that those who upset the apple cart will be Middle Easterners themselves and not rival great powers. They just could have their own ideas about the proper order of things.

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