The quadrilateral meeting that brought India together with the United States, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates in October 2021 has raised hopes that the US-India partnership in the Indo-Pacific could extend to the Middle East. As Washington diverts its attention and resources to the competition with China and Russia, American strategists hope that US partners could be counted on to carry a larger share of the regional security burden. India, in particular, has considerable economic and security interests in the Middle East; it sources over 58% of its crude petroleum imports from the region which is also home to about 9 million Indians, accounting for over 50% of India’s inward remittances. 

It was not a foregone conclusion that normalization between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain (and later Sudan and Morocco) would stick when the Abraham Accords were announced amid our collective pandemic fog in August 2020.  Nonetheless, looking back it is possible to place the move within broader regional trends. Going forward, bilateral trade and investment are likely to underpin cooperation in other areas. However, it may be joint investments in third countries and other multilateral economic arrangements that will do the most to advance shared strategic objectives.

During the Obama administration, the United States began deprioritizing the Middle East, turning its attention increasingly to the Indo-Pacific and the challenge of rising Chinese power. Biden administration officials have stated that they intend to continue the process. As a result, the United States could find itself drawing down its Middle East presence even as an increasingly ambitious China makes strategic inroads in the region through such measures as its Belt-and-Road Initiative.

Crafting security and defense strategies is hard.  Doing so in a time of significant geopolitical, economic, and technical change is harder, and implementing new and more relevant strategies with dated security organizational structures is harder still.  Add to that a biased calculus of power and any resulting strategy is sure to miss the mark.   All these cautions should be top of mind in a changing Eurasia.