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Friday, 23 January 2026

The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC). It’s Future is Once Again in Doubt

The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC). It’s Future is Once Again in Doubt

The end of IMEC might result in an Emirati-Indian-Israeli bloc formed in opposition to the emerging Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish one.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which was envisaged as a game-changing geo-economic megaproject when it was announced in September 2023 at the G20 Summit in Delhi, was abruptly frozen by the Gaza War that broke out a month later and the West Asian War that followed. The end of those conflicts then gave rise to optimism that Saudi Arabia would normalize ties with Israel like it reportedly planned to do prior to their outbreak as the political prerequisite for building IMEC.

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After all, without the normalization of Israeli-Saudi ties, there can be no logistical connection between IMEC’s Emirati and Israeli Mideast anchors across the West Asian landmass. Saudi Arabia requires Israel at least making superficial concessions on Palestinian independence, however, which Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to doing after the latest wars. This dilemma might therefore derail IMEC yet again unless the US mediates a creative compromise or gets one of them to back down.

That’s difficult to imagine as a result of three fast-moving developments in December. The first was Israel’s recognition of Somaliland’s 1991 redeclaration of independence as a sovereign state. Saudi Arabia fiercely opposes this, and while it was argued here that Israel was motivated more by its rivalry with Turkiye than its one with Iran (whose Houthi allies still control North Yemen), a related motivation could have been to ensure the security of maritime trade with India in the absence of IMEC.

That’s reasonable if Israel tacitly accepted by then that the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia won’t happen as a result of pressure upon it by the international Muslim community (Ummah) over the humanitarian consequences of the Gaza War. Shortly afterwards, Saudi Arabia militarily aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch against UAE-backed South Yemen despite considering the group as a whole to be terrorists, after which South Yemen was swiftly conquered by the Saudis’ Yemeni allies.

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Israel just finished a war with the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, Hamas, so the aforementioned development would have understandably led to a further deterioration of trust in the Saudis. In parallel, the Saudis demanded that the UAE withdraw from South Yemen within 24 hours, which it did. That ultimatum also described the UAE’s actions in South Yemen as a threat to Saudi national security. Even though they didn’t come to blows in South Yemen, trust between them is now absolutely destroyed.

Accordingly, even if Israeli-Saudi ties were to normalize in spite of Saudi anger at Israel over its recognition of Somaliland, new Israeli distrust of the Saudis over their military alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, the Ummah’s pressure on Saudi Arabia, and new Saudi-Emirati tensions would still undermine tangible progress on building IMEC. India’s trade with Israel and Europe will therefore remain reliant on traditional maritime routes since IMEC’s future is once again in doubt.

In fact, given how serious Saudi Arabia’s problems with the UAE and Israel are, IMEC might never get off the ground at all. India might then strengthen its ties with those two afterwards since it could consider them to be more reliable partners, especially after Saudi Arabia’s mutual defense pact with India’s Pakistani nemesis last September that Turkiye now wants to join too. The end of IMEC might then result in an Emirati-Indian-Israeli bloc formed in opposition to the emerging Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish one.

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

When You Do As Your Enemy, You Become the Enemy

When You Do As Your Enemy, You Become the Enemy

By Helena Glass

Global Research

The American empire of Trump’s investment pledges:

Heavily weighted on AI data centers and pharma. Neither of which produce economic growth on behalf of consumers. Data centers add cost to every business, including utilities and water which are heavily weighted.

Water; one data center can use upwards of a million gallons daily.

Electricity; one data center can use the same amount of electricity as an entire town.

Pharma does not add to growth – they add to injury and death.

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These are not economic boosters – they are nightmares. Data centers are like banks – nonproducing economic drains. Defense spending needs to be cut by 70%. It does NOT add to the economy – it is a toilet emptying into a sewer. We need unimpeded trade. Manufacturing is a dying art in America. Revitalizing it without ‘workers’ is a dead fish stinking up the sewer. Trump is focusing on elites which in the long term is simply another toilet. Elites don’t produce, they don’t work.

The $18 trillion in investments has been redefined as $9.7 trillion weighted between Middle East pledges with the exclusion of Israel which produces IDF mercenaries. Somehow, Japan’s initial ten-year pledge of $490 billion has ratcheted up to $1 trillion per the White House. Does Japan know? Because Japan’s government/economy is heavily indebted – ranking number one in the world at over 250% of GDP.

Meta has pledged $600 billion on net equity of $182 billion. Its pledge is based on AI and ‘workforce expansion’ which has so far resulted in 4,600 layoffs and an announcement that 10% more are forthcoming. Apple has also announced major restructuring. Its balance sheet reveals current assets short roughly $20 billion compared to current assets. Net equity of $73 billion.

Pledges are only as good as the air we breathe – remastered by chemtrails and toxins. The fact that Trump desperately needs adulation is indicative of a man whose façade is deception. Having been married to a psychologically diagnosed narcissist – I have become intimately aware of the traits. Pathological lying is ALWAYS one of the prominent symptoms.

Middle East pledges are typically defense- and pharma-related. Like defense, pharma does not add to economic growth because it creates disease and disease means death. The White House is either grossly deluded or grossly deluding when it purports to state that these ‘investments’ have ANY positive effect on the standard of living for Americans.

The biggest drivers of a good economy for consumers are built on wage growth, stable prices, low interest rates, and rising asset values – particularly housing. Wage growth has been artificially linked to false inflation numbers. Prices have risen 50% when inflation is clocked at 2%. Trump called for a 10% interest cap on credit cards to which not ONE has agreed to the ‘suggestion’. Why? Because it is not a law. It is merely a superficial request. Like a pledge. Like a pinky swear. Like – when my ship rolls in.

Trump is simply Biden with a different AI projection. An illusion.

Delusions of grandeur have consumed politicians and bankers and we need to extricate these human imposters before The Georgia Guidestones become our reality. Of course, the $1.598 question is – How? History answers the question. But it also reveals that the sewage has never been fully cleansed of its putrid toxins and instead humanity bought time. Before the cycle was reborn. Each time, more evil than the last. As though Hell itself was opened upon earth.

This concept is being played out between Russia and Ukraine as Putin slowly comes to the realization that a peace deal on a piece of paper is meaningless. The only answer to the elimination of evil is its complete eradication. While various journalists including Seymour Hersh radically denounce Russia for not being more formidable in their destruction of humanity, Putin’s deterrence was rooted in humanity – and unless you have been assigned this military command you can’t possibly understand. Zelenskyy, Trump, Netanyahu are aligned in a psychological Babylonian construct. Killing innocent persons – for the greater good – would be Hersh’s means of ending conflict; a decision that for a true Christian is untenable in the sight of God. Hindsight is always the greatest insight. As I have stated before – when you do as they do, you become the enemy you fight. A difficult decision for a man.

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Helena Glass is Former CPA & Series 7, with emphasis in Real Estate and Financial Planning. Two brains in one: former Bronze Sculpter and Danseuse. Visit the author’s blog.

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The Amazon data center in Boardman, Oregon (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Why Nobody takes Europe Seriously Anymore? “The Old Continent is In A Mess”

Why Nobody takes Europe Seriously Anymore? “The Old Continent is In A Mess”

By Drago Bosnic

Global Research,

On January 19, after a phone call with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico stated that “the European Union is not taken completely seriously by world leaders”, citing its “suicidal migration policy” and “nonsense climate goals” as examples of its incompetence. Slovak state press service reported that Fico also told Merz that he would “send an open letter on Tuesday [January 20] to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and circulate it to all EU prime ministers and heads of state”, in which he would “express concerns relayed to him following a meeting with US President Trump over the weekend and offer solutions”.

It should be noted that PM Fico is among a handful of sovereign leaders in the EU and NATO, which is why Brussels-backed neoliberal extremists even tried to assassinate him back in May 2024.

The fact that one such European statesman doesn’t really have anyone to talk to in the EU halls of power is very telling of the troubled bloc’s true state. Instead, Fico focused on realpolitik and opted to pursue an independent foreign policy, maintaining contacts with the United States, Russia, China and other prominent global powers. He also visited Trump and his State Secretary Marco Rubio at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

“The US president is clearly pursuing the nation-state interests of the US. If the EU had acted this way, we would be in a completely different place than we are now,” Fico said.

Bratislava described the meeting as “informal, a sign of respect and trust”. Discussions included the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, bilateral Slovak-US relations and the EU, with both Rubio and Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar present. PM Fico stressed that he and Trump agreed that “the EU as an institution is in deep crisis in relation to its competitiveness”, as well as “its energy and migration policies”. They criticized the troubled bloc’s mindless obsession with the so-called “green agenda” while discussing agreements on nuclear energy cooperation, a rather unusual occurrence when it comes to European countries.

Namely, the “old continent” is in such a mess that one of its smallest and least populous member states is among the handful able to lead a truly sovereign foreign policy. In the meantime, top-ranking EU/NATO officials and Brussels-approved “leaders” of individual members keep making one nonsensical statement after another (to say nothing of their disastrous moves and policies). For instance, Finnish President Alexander Stubb somehow managed to refute himself in just ten minutes while discussing the EU/NATO’s ability to defend itself without US involvement. Namely, he stated he believes in this “unequivocally”, only to then criticize the journalist who quoted him minutes after the statement.

It should be noted that Stubb is infamous for his harsh anti-Russian rhetoric and calls for escalating tensions with the Kremlin along the entire Russo-Finnish border. And yet, he’s not the only one sending mixed signals to global superpowers. Namely, French President Emmanuel Macron called for “more Chinese foreign direct investments in Europe, in some key sectors to contribute to our growth, to transfer some technologies and not just to export”, adding that “it’s not about being protectionist, but about protecting our industry”. It’s extremely difficult to imagine a more confusing statement amid all these “mixed signals” to Beijing.

Worse yet, back in December, Macron threatened China with tariffs on a range of goods if it didn’t resolve the “problem of trade imbalance with the EU”. In other words, it’s somehow “Beijing’s fault” that Brussels is unable to maintain its economic competitiveness. After all, China is not forcing anyone to buy its goods and commodities. And yet, even if the Asian giant ignores such threats and focuses on the “new” Macron, who suddenly wants more Chinese involvement, who’s to say that a “newer” Macron won’t change his mind once again in a week or two? And then we have so many European “leaders” wondering why nobody takes them seriously.

And indeed, who in their right mind could possibly count on Brussels as a viable partner in any capacity when the EU/NATO can’t even set its priorities straight, including basic matters, such as strategic security? This is best illustrated by the Greenland crisis, where European nations can’t even determine where the actual danger is coming from. Namely, while the US is openly threatening to take the island, Brussels keeps looking to the East, accusing Russia and China of “scheming” and “having designs on Greenland”. President Vladimir Putin’s statements that this matter is of no concern whatsoever for Moscow don’t seem to reach the ears of EU/NATO officials.

“Negotiate with Putin, I think, is not a very good idea, because as the Americans said: if you want to speak, speak softly, but carry a big stick — we don’t have a big stick, we can only speak softly”, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stated.

If we ignore the fact that this is yet another nonsensical statement by European “leaders”, it’s only a confirmation of President Putin’s previous warnings that Russia has nobody to talk to in Europe (not by its own choice, obviously). And just as in the case of China, the troubled bloc acts completely erratically when it comes to economic cooperation with the Kremlin. It regularly calls for the boycott of all Russian goods and commodities, and yet continues to import them (mostly through intermediaries, which it also criticizes). US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent effectively ridiculed Europe for “buying oil from Russia and waging war against itself”.

Although this statement is pure projection (it’s the EU’s anti-Russian policies and dependency on exorbitantly expensive American energy that’s causing its economic unraveling), Secretary Bessent is unequivocally right that Brussels is waging war on itself. This was also confirmed by Chancellor Merz, who complained that his country faces severe electricity shortages and rising energy prices, both of which are only getting worse. Although he stopped short of attributing this to the EU’s aforementioned obsession with the “green agenda”, Merz made a rare admission that shutting down German nuclear power plants was a “severe strategic mistake”.

“To have acceptable market prices for energy production again, we would have to permanently subsidize energy prices from the federal budget. We can’t do this in the long run,” he said, adding: “So, we are now undertaking the most expensive energy transition in the entire world. I know of no other country that makes things so expensive and difficult as Germany.”

Berlin keeps refusing to acknowledge that its suicidal confrontation with Moscow is the very crux of the issue. Namely, one of the reasons Germany once had the most powerful economy in Europe was precisely the access to highly affordable Russian energy (natural gas, oil, coal, electricity, etc). All this was gone after the EU/NATO forced Russia’s hand in former Ukraine, leading to an entirely unnecessary and avoidable conflict that the Kremlin repeatedly tried to end, wasting nearly a decade on pointless agreements that Berlin later ridiculed as a ruse to buy time for the Neo-Nazi junta. This alone destroyed the EU’s reputation (likely forever), to say nothing of its current sad state.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

The original source of this article is Global Research