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The year ahead for India and its diplomacy – Firstpost

The year ahead for India and its diplomacy – Firstpost



With active conflicts raging in Europe and West Asia, the enduring hegemonic impulses of powerful countries, the UN ineffective on issues of war and peace, multilateralism collapsing despite the need for greater international cooperation to address major issues facing humanity as a whole, and so on, the year that has ended presented many challenges to countries at large, including India, on the foreign policy front.

These challenges will persist as the current global system is getting fragmented. Two major power centres, the US and Europe on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, are in conflict over how power is going to be shared within an evolving global “order”.

This conflict is becoming geopolitically deeper, with the West seeking to preserve its traditional dominance of the global system and not only Russia and China seeking to challenge that supremacy but also major countries of the global south. The latter are pressing for the reform of the institutions of global governance so that the needed international re-balancing takes place, enabling them to better protect their interests.

What makes the situation complex is that unlike the rising powers of the global south, both Russia and China already have privileged positions in the global system. Both are permanent members of the UN Security Council, which gives them considerable political leverage. Russia is generally seen as a bulwark against the West’s hegemony by the global south. It has tremendous natural resources and is a formidable nuclear power. It still wields great influence in Central Asia, has considerable influence in West Asia, in parts of Africa and Latin America, and in East and South-east Asia as well.

Russia’s global power has, however, declined after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Under President Vladimir Putin it has tried not only to arrest that decline but also preserve its influence within the international system in the face of challenges from the West to its power. The West, especially in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine, is seeking to bleed Russia, isolate it internationally, subject it to enormous economic pressures by imposing draconian sanctions on it, the declared goal being to defeat it strategically. While this goal has not been achieved, Russia has been put on the defensive and has been forced to redefine its foreign relations.

China has carved out a position of influence within the existing global system, ironically with cooperation from the West, and is now considered a more powerful all-out adversary of the latter. It has become the second-largest economy of the world, the biggest manufacturing and exporting power, with an economic presence all over the globe, and increasingly controls the production and supply of critical raw materials and technologies as well.

Unlike in the case of Russia where both the US and Europe view it as a direct security threat, the US and Europe do not share the same view on the nature of the threat posed by China. The US is deeply involved in the security of the western Pacific through a web of military alliances, bases and force deployments, but Europe is not. No NATO like structure exists in the western Pacific. Europe can relate to the threat of Russian power because of history and contiguity, but cannot relate in the same way to the China threat. Unlike Russia, China has been a huge beneficiary of globalisation led by the US and supported by its allies. China, therefore, has cards in its hands which Russia does not.

For India, the challenges are particularly complex in some ways. India wants to be a “leading” power, with a greater say in an evolving global system. It believes that it is entitled to this because of its civilisational attributes, demographic size, growing economy, strategic military strength, and the like. However, despite its declared ambitions, it does not want to be seen as a destabilising force internationally. It does not seek to challenge the West’s hegemony through confrontation. It seeks, instead, a rational and consensual recognition that if the global system has to function at a desired level of cooperation on broader issues facing humanity then a rebalancing of the system that would give greater voice to the concerns and priorities of the developing countries, which constitute the vast majority of the UN, is needed.

For such a strategy, India needs to maintain ties of friendship with as many countries as possible, avoid taking sides in conflicts under pressure from one side or the other, and maintain its strategic autonomy, which is another word for the ability to take independent foreign policy decisions based on national interest.

This strategy presents its own challenges. On the foreign policy front, India’s ties with the US have become the most important in several domains. India cannot hope to rise in opposition to the US. It doesn’t have the military muscle of Russia or the economic muscle of China to pit itself against the US. In the last two decades India-US ties have transformed.

The US, however, is not an easy partner because its inclination as the world’s pre-eminent power is to dominate. India needs space to deal with it, and for this ties with Russia remain very important. This is over and above other reasons such as the historical stability of India-Russia ties, the trust factor, strong defence ties and the absence of any geopolitical conflict.  A P5 country like Russia that India can rely on is a valuable asset that must be conserved.

China is, and will continue to be, the biggest geo-political challenge to India. The issues in India-China ties are structural: China’s territorial claims on India and military intrusions across the Line of Actual Control, militarisation of Tibet when India poses no threat to China’s sovereignty over Tibet, the widening gap between the two countries on the economic and military fronts, China’s hegemonic ambitions in Asia and beyond, its interference in our neighbourhood, and so on.

Yet, India has to keep the doors of dialogue open with China so that it does not lose a degree of manoeuvrability in its diplomacy in our region, in Asia in general, and vis-à-vis its other partners, be it the US or even Russia with which China has forged deep strategic ties. Within BRICS and SCO, India can further its objectives of re-shaping the global order, such as it is, in favour of re-balancing, and yet restrain these groups from a path of confrontation with the West.

As was the case during the Cold War and bloc politics when India chose leadership of the non-aligned countries of the global south to affirm itself, India is today re-affirming that leadership role to promote a re-balancing of the global system in which shifts of power away from the West have taken place.

This suppleness of foreign policy allowed India to make the G20 summit a success by being able to forge a consensus final declaration despite the West-Russia confrontation over Ukraine, the US-China adversarial ties and India’s own issues with China. The declaration was focused on the priorities and concerns of the global south based on the Voice of the Global South organised by India before assuming the G20 presidency. That India pushed for and succeeded in making the African Union a permanent member of the G20 was part of India’s quest to re-shape the global order in which its own voice will also have increasing weight.

A new challenge to the world at large has arisen with the election of Donald Trump as US president. Already, with his uninhibited declarations that violate diplomatic norms and create uncertainties even before he has taken over formally, he is re-defining international politics. His territorial claims on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, his willingness to use the tariff weapon to extract trade concessions from rivals and partners, his close associates openly interfering in the internal affairs of even allied countries, are diplomatic time-bombs he has planted.

India cannot hope to be immune to the collateral consequences for the international system of such muscle-flexing and self-aggrandisement by Trump’s America even if we remain sanguine about managing the Trump presidency because of the good Modi-Trump chemistry and his appointees to key positions who are India-friendly.

Kanwal Sibal is a former Indian Foreign Secretary. He was India’s Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.



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