The View from New Delhi: Can IMEC Rival China's Belt and Road?
New Episode of The China-MENA Podcast
The latest episode of The China-MENA Podcast came out today. This is a show that I’ve been hosting for Atlantic Council since January 2022. We’ve released 27 episodes so far and it’s been a deeply satisfying project. If you haven’t come across it yet, check out the back episodes - there’s a good chance that we’ve talked about some angle of China-Middle East relations that you’re interested in. And of course, subscribe, rate, review, and share it with your networks.
For this episode I was joined by Ambassador Navdeep Suri and Kabir Taneja from India’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF) to discuss the report they co-authored with Nilanjan Ghosh, Sameer Patil, and Promit Mookherjee: India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor: Towards a New Discourse in Global Connectivity. The report is a deep dive into all things IMEC, and well worth a read.
While recent events would seem to undermine the corridor’s viability, the logic at the center of it - connecting markets, strengthening supply chains, and investing in the technologies that reshape regional economies - is fundamental to the Vision development strategies that Middle East governments have adopted. For the long term, IMEC makes sense, a point Ambassador Suri made during our conversation:
“So the people who are deeply invested in this project are not looking at the here and now. They're not looking at today and the next 3 months or maybe not even the next 3 years, but they're looking at a longer term vision of trying to change this region. And that's the ambition that they have. “
It’s a great conversation. Have a listen and let me know what you think, and by all means, check out their report for a better sense of how India is thinking about the Middle East.
