The link below is a report from the Thaindian.com website about the recent visit of India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to Saudi Arabia. The visit sought to develop ties between India and Saudi Arabia on a wide range of subjects including defense issues and sought to develop a “strategic character” to ties between the two nations. The word “strategic” cooperation usually indicates a military alliance is being hoped for or at least is being considered. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah had visited India in 2006.
India is in a competition with China for securing sources of oil and natural resources as both nations expand their economies and military forces. My March 7th blog dealt with the visit of a high-level military delegation from China to Egypt seeking “in depth cooperation between the two militaries” of China and Egypt. These high-level visits indicate that both China and India are seeking to forge alliances with nations having much to offer them. Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil and Egypt does not, but Egypt is very strategically important because it controls the Suez Canal. Whoever controls the Suez Canal controls the flow of many raw materials and products between Europe, the Mideast, Africa and the Indian Ocean routes to Asia.
China has huge currency reserves and can offer much development money to any nation. However, from a geographical standpoint, India is in a much better position to forge strategic ties with nations in the Mideast. India dominates the Indian Ocean while Chinese ships have to access the Mideast nations via a very vulnerable chokepoint in the Strait of Malacca and its vessels would also need to transit the Indian Ocean past the Indian landmass. India has also been forging closer ties with both the USA and the Israelis, so China’s ability to project strategic military strength into Mideast nations (or protect any potential ally there) faces many obstacles. I’m sure every nation in the Mideast is aware of this fact.
China and India are increasingly becoming strategic rivals, and both are jockeying for global alliances which will improve their own security interests. Ezekiel 38’s prophecy clearly puts China in the anti-western Gog-Magog camp. Since India has good reason to fear the Chinese-Pakistani alliance against India, India needs a strategic alliance with the USA and the West. Ironically, the more China accelerates its military build-up, the more India is forced by default into the arms of the western alliance.
There is one other intriguing possibility in warming Saudi-Indian ties. The Israelis have developed warm relationships with India, and the more Saudi Arabia does as well, it puts the Indians in a position to broker better ties between Saudi Arabia and the Israelis. It would be very much in India’s strategic interests to turn the Saudis and Israelis into allies. I think the Israelis would welcome it as well. As Iran’s military threat to the Saudis in the Mideast looms ever-larger, this idea might appeal to the Saudis as well. Such an arrangement would have been unthinkable until recently, but strategic realities are changing dramatically in the world. There is a strong logic to the old maxim: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Iran is an enemy of the Israelis and it increasingly looks like an enemy to the Saudis as well.
I regard the Saudis (and other Arabs) as the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham. Because the Ishmaelites are not mentioned anywhere in Ezekiel 38:2-6 as being part of the Gog-Magog alliance, the odds are that the Ishmaelites will be allied with the modern nations of the ten tribes of Israel and the Israelis, who are descended from Abraham’s other son, Isaac. Other articles and blogs have mentioned my belief that many in India are descended from the sons of Abraham’s unnamed concubines, who were sent eastward out of the Mideast (Genesis 25:6). It appears to me that a Divine Hand is shaping world events to drive the modern nations who are descended from Abraham into an alliance that will be the rival to the Gog-Magog alliance at the end of this age. Genesis 17:1-7 records God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would grow into “many nations.” This blog hasn’t even mentioned the various modern nations descended from Abraham’s later wife, Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4, or those descended from Abraham’s grandson, Esau. An alliance including all of Abraham’s descendants would include many modern nations!
