The Oil Canvas

India must now confront the growing impact of China in the Middle East

Indias national security discourse has long seen the eastern and western parts of Asia as two unrelated worlds. If there were good reasons for this in the past the political cultures,economic preoccupations and the international relations of the two Asian regions were indeed poles apart Geoffrey Kemp persuades us to see the strategic consequences of the unfolding integration of East Asia and the Middle East.

Kemp,a well-known American specialist on the Middle East and long-time follower of Indian strategic debates,focuses on the growing Chinese and Indian role in the Middle East and the implications of the oil-rich Gulf looking East. At the core of this new integration is the insatiable appetite for oil in China and India.

Kemp asks some simple questions with enormous consequences. Will these two big Asian consumers of oil agree to live with American hegemony in the Persian Gulf? Or will they choose to become security providers,in their own right,to the Middle East? Will an exhausted America cede a bit of its burden in the oil-rich region to other powers?

These are the questions that Kemp tries to answer as he walks us through the changing geopolitics of the Middle East amid the rise of Asia. Kemps volume is a fine read on a subject that is bound to demand considerable attention in India in the coming years,but one it has barely begun to debate. The book begins with an examination of the Indian and Chinese engagement with the Middle East as they came to terms with the challenges of energy and resource security. It also delves into the broader strategic linkages that emerge in the region: there is a revealing chapter on the new infrastructure projects highways,railways,pipelines,and under-sea cable networks being built to link the two regions of Asia.

There is also a solid review of Beijings efforts to connect Western China with the Middle East through Central Asia and Pakistan. Kemp also examines the maritime implications of the Asian dependence on the Gulf oil and the dynamics of China and India expanding their navies.

Kemp examines four different scenarios for the Middle East Growth and Prosperity,Mayhem and Chaos,Balance of Power and International Cooperation. In each of these scenarios,he examines the role of major powers,including the current hegemon,the rising powers,China and India,and the potential wild cards that could be disruptive.

Whichever scenario might eventually prevail,the case for questioning the conventional wisdom in Delhi about the Middle East is apparent. The Indian debate on the Middle East has been a hostage to slogans about the United States. India must now confront the impact of Chinese power on the Gulf and Indias own opportunities in the region.

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Kemp bets that growing Asian presence in the Middle East will bring a welcome breath of fresh air to a region left with the bitter historical legacies of European dominance and characterised by contemporary antagonism toward the hegemonic role of the United States. But he also wonders how long it might take for China and India,to be drawn into the messiness of the Middle East politics at a time when the United States becomes disillusioned by the burdens of hegemony.