India’s Multi Axis Diplomacy Is Becoming Infrastructure
India is no longer doing Middle East diplomacy as a set of relationships. It is doing it as an operating system. The objective is not alignment and not slogans about leadership. It is optionality built through enforceable trade terms, corridor access, payments linkages, digital state capacity projects, and selective security coordination. In a world of sanctions risk, supply shocks, and contested sea lanes, the states that endure are the ones that design exits before the fire alarm.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s December tour of Jordan (15-16 December 2025), Ethiopia (16-17), and Oman (17-18) reads like a carefully drawn triangle: the Levant, the Horn of Africa, and the Arabian Sea approaches. The itinerary matters because it points to the real logic of Delhi’s West Asia policy today. India is treating the region as a connected system of trade, transit, labour, energy, and security, not as a theatre of speeches.
The easy headline is that India is “expanding ties”. The stronger, verifiable claim is this: India is converting strategic autonomy from a posture into infrastructure. The tour produced hard artefacts. A trade pact in Oman. Five MoUs in Jordan, including on renewables and water. A strategic partnership upgrade and digital state capacity deliverables in Ethiopia. Each is measurable. Each is designed to survive the news cycle.
Why this visit, and why now
India’s Middle East relationships are being reweighted by three pressures. First, the region remains central to India’s energy security and diaspora economics, but it is also increasingly a corridor space. Second, the global trade environment is more coercive, with tariff shocks and restrictions pushing states to diversify market access. Third, the architecture of power is shifting towards systems control: payments, data governance, logistics hubs, and enforceable trade rules. This is the terrain where India can build leverage without proclaiming it.
Delhi’s method is visible in the Ministry of External Affairs framing of the tour itself: sector cooperation, structured outcomes, and institutional mechanisms. It is not theatre. It is administration expressed abroad. As MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal noted in a Dec 16 briefing, these engagements aim to ‘institutionalize cooperation’ amid global uncertainties.
Multiple axis diplomacy
This is not non alignment as ideology. It is non alignment as risk management. India spreads dependence across suppliers, routes, payment channels, and security partners so that no single external actor can credibly threaten to switch off a critical input.
Oman as corridor insurance and enforceable trade terms
Oman was the tour’s anchor in hard economics. India and Oman signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on 18 December 2025. The numbers matter because they show the deal is not decorative. Reporting and official descriptions indicate Oman grants near universal zero duty market access on ~98% of its tariff lines for Indian goods, while India liberalises a large share of its own tariff lines for Omani imports, with exclusions for sensitive items. Bilateral trade, currently at $12.4 billion (2024-25), is projected to grow 15-20% annually post-CEPA.
Oman’s strategic geography is not a footnote. It sits close to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global oil flows and for India’s own energy and shipping calculations. A trade pact here is not only about export volume. It is about reducing exposure to choke events by deepening institutional ties with a state that sits beside one of the world’s most contested maritime junctions.
There is also a quieter ambition embedded in the public briefings and coverage: using the pact as a platform for services access, mobility, and payments cooperation. India’s pitch to multiple Middle East partners increasingly includes digital rails and settlement cooperation, not as a fintech export story, but as friction reduction for trade and remittances. The execution test is simple: do firms use the pact, do clearance times fall, and do settlement pathways become cheaper and faster.
Corridor politics
Modern influence is less about flags and more about throughput: who controls trade rules, port access, settlement channels, and compliance systems. Corridors are contested because they compress distance into leverage.
Jordan as resource security and low drama alignment
Jordan is not a Gulf oil state and that is precisely why it is strategically useful. It sits inside a politically loaded belt while offering tangible inputs that matter to India’s material security. The outcomes published by India’s external affairs machinery list cooperation on renewables and water management, alongside cultural agreements and a Petra Ellora twinning. Those are the formal surfaces.
Underneath, Jordan is also a supplier of critical fertiliser inputs, including phosphates and potash, which sit directly inside India’s food security and price stability concerns. Indian public summaries of the Jordan engagement highlight this supply dimension and the intention to deepen economic mechanisms, not just diplomatic warmth. As PM Modi stated in Amman: ‘Our cooperation will ensure stable supplies for India’s farmers.’
Jordan also offered a stable line on counter terrorism cooperation. That matters because India’s Middle East diplomacy is designed to avoid ideological entanglement while building practical alignment where interests overlap. It is a transactional security stance, not a moral crusade.
Why small states matter to big states
Small states can sit on regulatory or geographic junctions. They become useful not for scale but for access: permissions, corridor stability, specialised supplies, and diplomatic channels. India’s diplomacy increasingly treats them as modular components in a wider system.
Ethiopia as state capacity export and debt mechanics
Ethiopia was the tour’s clearest signal that India’s Global South engagement is evolving from solidarity language into capacity deals. India and Ethiopia elevated relations to a Strategic Partnership and signed agreements including the establishment of a data centre within Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is not a symbolic gift. It is an administrative asset that shapes how a state stores, secures, and processes sensitive information.
Alongside digital capacity, the two sides signalled cooperation on Ethiopia’s international debt under the G20 Common Framework. That places India inside the machinery of debt coordination, not only as a creditor voice but as a partner shaping stabilisation pathways. Combined with training and education cooperation, it shows a pattern: India is building influence through administration and systems, not through lectures. Additional MoUs cover customs, AI, and health, with India pledging ~$500M in investments.
The sceptical test is again execution. Ethiopia is politically complex and exposed to regional volatility. The question is whether India’s engagement is structured around measurable deliverables that survive shifts in internal politics. The presence of digital infrastructure and structured debt coordination suggests Delhi is trying to anchor the relationship in assets and mechanisms rather than sentiment. However, risks like Horn of Africa tensions could test this resilience, as critics note.
| Country | Key Outcomes | Strategic Value |
|---|---|---|
| Jordan | 5 MoUs (renewables, water, digital, cultural twinning); counter-terror coop. | Resource security (fertilizers); low-drama alignment. |
| Ethiopia | Strategic Partnership; 8 MoUs (data center, customs, AI, debt under G20). | Capacity export; debt leverage in Global South. |
| Oman | CEPA (98% zero-duty from Oman); payments/services focus. | Corridor insurance near Hormuz; trade diversification. |
What this means for power in the next decade
The mainstream question will keep returning: whose side is India on. That question is increasingly obsolete. India is behaving like a state that expects the system to stay fractured. Its answer is to build
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