Nitin Pai: India must urgently build a coalition to contain the conflict in West Asia

US President Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will blockade the Strait of Hormuz for ships headed for or leaving Iran’s ports threatens to impose pain and suffering on hundreds of millions of innocents.

In the wars that followed the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, New Delhi has studiously remained silent despite its nationals suffering injuries and death from Israeli military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. The same posture continued when Iran targeted other Gulf countries, hurting our nationals. The Indian government did not object after US Navy submarines sank an Iranian ship in what India’s maritime doctrine calls our primary area of interest.

While New Delhi’s refusal to protest has been criticized by many commentators, the government’s position can be understood—even if it is debatable—on the grounds that such rhetoric will not change things but merely sour our relations with the US, Israel and Arab states of the Gulf.

India can no longer afford a posture of silent forbearance. We are heavily reliant on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf region. The closure of Hormuz is an acute threat to our economy (and a Bab-el-Mandeb clamp would worsen it). Over 60% of our energy comes from that region.

The surge in oil prices is an acute fiscal risk, throwing our current account out of kilter and eating into our foreign exchange reserves. The US has now threatened to stop all ships with Iranian cargo from transiting Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran has warned that it will get the Houthis to block Red Sea passage. Silent forbearance cannot continue when India’s economic jugular is at threat.

So what should India do? New Delhi should immediately work on putting together a coalition of countries that are not involved in the war but have been severely affected by it. Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and perhaps South Korea are the first set of countries to consult. They are seriously affected by the war, carry significant economic weight and have common geopolitical interests. The Philippines, Australia and Singapore could also be part of this coalition.

The coalition’s main purpose would be to engage in diplomacy to encourage the warring parties to exercise restraint and prevent escalation and expansion of the wars in West Asia. If its members agree on political and economic coordination, the coalition will have greater leverage and a bigger set of diplomatic tools to engage Washington, Tel Aviv, Tehran and the Gulf capitals.

Recent West Asian wars have been characterized by the conspicuous absence of what used to be called the ‘international community,’ usually represented by the United Nations (UN), that would call for restraint and apply political and moral pressure on belligerents. Led by liberal democracies of the West, international pressure did not stop wars from occurring but did manage to prevent them from getting out of hand.

There is a vacuum in that space now because the power contradictions within the UN have grown too large to pretend that it is still effective. Europe’s blinkered approach to West Asia and its cravenness towards Washington put paid to any hope of the ‘international community’ of the past weighing in on the present crises. Structures like Brics+ and the ‘Global South’, which are motley groups of countries with no shared geographies, interests or values, have also been exposed as ineffective or irrelevant in the face of this serious global crisis.

Restricting the scope and ambition of aggression is usually a good formula for diplomatic effectiveness. A coalition that aims to do little more than secure the interests of non-involved but affected parties, without pomp and pageantry, is the right approach at this time. It should be big enough to include important stakeholders, but small enough to act swiftly and coherently.

It is within New Delhi’s capabilities to reach out to a handful of its East Asian partners to build a common front against the war.

To be clear, building such a coalition is not an exercise in moral grandstanding or peacemaking. The former is perhaps pointless at this stage and the latter would require India to get involved in the complex politics of West Asia. As I wrote in a previous column, India should stay away from the war and keep it away from our shores.

There is nothing India can gain by involvement that it cannot by non-involvement. The second part of that doctrine, keeping the war away, requires us to speak and act in ways that protect our interests.

New Delhi should recalibrate its posture. It must be more forceful, perhaps in public but definitely in private, in explaining to Washington and Tel Aviv what its interests are and that it expects its partners to be sensitive to them. And that it is a two-way street.

Other Asian countries are reaching similar conclusions. They will have a stronger voice when they speak together.

The author is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.