The Long Road: From India through the Middle East to the Baltics

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Envisioning the Indo-Pacific as a single megaregion, stretching from East Asia through the Indian Ocean and the Middle East into Europe, has become increasingly central to contemporary geopolitical thinking. The concept reflects both economic and strategic realities: the dense commercial networks that connect Asian manufacturing, Gulf energy, Mediterranean shipping, and European markets, as well as the growing strategic competition over control of maritime trade routes and critical infrastructure. Yet the full significance of this emerging megaregion has not been adequately appreciated. The strategic potential of the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) would expand dramatically if it were linked to the Three Seas Initiative (3SI), creating a north–south connectivity architecture stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic.

Such a corridor would not merely diversify trade routes. It would reorganize Eurasian infrastructure around a maritime-oriented and market-based axis connecting India, the Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, Central Europe, and Northern Europe. In geopolitical terms, it would strengthen the “rimlands,” as theorized by Nicholas Spykman, against the continental powers associated with the Eurasian interior. The result would be a strategic system linking many of the world’s most important littoral regions through overlapping networks of trade, energy, digital infrastructure, and security cooperation.

Source: Geographies of Cooperation Atlas