Discuss the significance of “West Asia Quad” in the light of India’s ‘Look West’ policy. (2023, 15 Marks)
The “West Asia Quad” is the press name for I2U2: India, Israel, the UAE and the United States. It began as a foreign ministers’ meeting in October 2021 and held its only leaders’ summit, virtually, on 14 July 2022. Its significance lies less in output than in what it shows about the evolution of India’s Look West policy.
From Look West to Link West
- Manmohan Singh launched Look West on 27 July 2005, calling the Gulf part of India’s natural economic hinterland. It yielded energy deals and the Delhi (2006) and Riyadh (2010) declarations with Saudi Arabia, but little politics.
- After 2014 the policy was recast as Link West: leader-level visits, strategic partnerships, CEPAs and de-hyphenation of Israel from the Arab states.
- What Look West lacked was a plurilateral platform. The Abraham Accords (September 2020) made one possible by letting Israel and an Arab state sit together with India.
Significance for India
- Economic and food security: the 2022 summit named six areas for joint investment (water, energy, transport, space, health and food security) and announced a US$2 billion integrated food-park programme in India and a 300 MW hybrid wind-solar project in Gujarat. Emirati capital, Israeli and American technology and Indian markets complement one another.
- Proof of de-hyphenation: India could join a formal grouping with Israel and an Arab state at once, without paying for one relationship with the other.
- Energy and diaspora: it deepens ties with the UAE, India’s third-largest trading partner (over US$100 billion in 2024–25) and home to some 3.5 million Indians.
- Strategic positioning: it keeps the United States engaged with India in a region where China’s weight is rising, and it prepared the ground for IMEC, announced at the New Delhi G20 in September 2023.
- Strategic autonomy: unlike the Indo-Pacific Quad, I2U2 names no adversary and has no security mandate. It is an issue-based coalition of the kind S. Jaishankar calls “convergences and issue-based arrangements”, suiting multi-alignment.
Limits
- Thin delivery: no leaders’ summit since July 2022 and no new flagship project.
- Dormancy since October 2023: the Gaza war made the Israeli leg costly for Arab partners, and the 2026 Iran war brought Iranian strikes on US bases in the UAE.
- Exclusions: Iran, Qatar and Oman sit outside; Saudi–Israeli normalisation has not happened; the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (August 2026) ties Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and Turkey.
- Realists see a commercial club with a borrowed name; liberal institutionalists reply that cheap minilaterals build habits of cooperation.
- Revival on India’s terms: in his Knesset address of 25 February 2026 Narendra Modi named I2U2 and IMEC as formats for closer work, but India has not endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed “hexagon” alliance against “radical” axes.
Conclusion
I2U2 matters to Look West as a symbol of what the policy became after 2014: plural, transactional and de-hyphenated. With modest delivery and a dormant present, it is a reserve option, not a pillar. India gains most by keeping it alive while building on bilateral Gulf agreements.