Trust Jaishankar to show a mirror to the West on duplicity of the old world order – Firstpost

S Jaishankar is a hard man to be cornered. His recent comments to London-based Financial Times, that the “virtues of the old world order are exaggerated”, has expectedly stirred controversy and offended the defenders of the post-1945 order. The trouble with the defenders – the Europeans, for instance, who are still pining for the ‘rules-based order’ despite Donald Trump’s savaging of it simply because the setup had been profitable for them – is that they are not ready to accept the bias that is baked into the system in their favour.

It easy for the Europeans, from that vantage point, to therefore assume absolutist positions such as Carl Bildt did at Tuesday morning’s panel at the ongoing Raisina Dialogue. To the former Swedish prime minister, the world must support Ukraine and take a position against Russia because Ukraine “is about international law, not just European values—respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity.” According to him, “Russia’s invasion violated this principle.”

The issue with these normative positions is that the positions become untenable in absence of consistency. For Europe to be taken at its word, it must be consistent in its approach in applying the principles of territorial integrity, but these so-called ‘normative powers’ are experts at bending the rules in accord with their self-interests when it suits them.

Trust Jaishankar to cut through the narrative. He called the old order “a product of its times” and indicated that those extolling its virtues were the “rule makers” whose perspective would always be different than the “rule takers” or those who are the receiving end of the application of those rules.

His message to the ‘normative powers’ was stark. “If you capriciously… you know… If it suits your interests somebody is good, not good… and you apply that order to the same country on the same issues differently”.

I haven’t seen too many from the Indian side in recent times cite Kashmir as the example of the West’s duplicity on “international laws” and “territorial integrity,” but the foreign minister pulled no punches.

“We all speak of sovereignty and territorial integrity. It’s a vital principle, a bedrock of global rules. After the Second World War, the longest-standing illegal occupation of a territory by another country pertains to India, what we saw in Kashmir.”

“When we went to the UN, what was an invasion was made into a ‘dispute’. So, the attacker and the victim were put on par. Who were the culpable parties? UK, Canada, Belgium, Australia, USA. So, pardon me, I have some question marks on that one… I can give you many more. We speak today of political interference. When the West goes into other countries (for interference), it’s apparently to ‘preserve democratic freedoms’. When other countries come into the West, it is ‘malign intention’.”

The minister also gave the example of Western deceit on Taliban. “The same Taliban which was an outlier, was welcomed in the Doha process, welcomed in Oslo… at that time people were okay with it. Today again we are saying, Taliban is doing all these not so good things… You had a British general describing the Taliban once as ‘country boys with their own honour code’. Now, so when it suits you to deal with the Taliban, they are okay. When it is not, they are not okay. You are an extremist today, you wear a suit and tie, you are okay (referring to Ahmed al-Sharaa, head of the US-designated terrorist outfit Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, currently in power in Syria). You know, I think I have a problem with that all,” said Jaishankar.

Calling for a strong UN, the external affairs minister said, “we need a strong UN, but a strong UN requires a fair UN. A strong global order must have some basic consistency of standards. We have military crews to our east in Myanmar. They are no-no. We have them even more regularly to the west. You know where? They seem to be okay. I think it’s important to audit the working of the world for the last eight decades and be honest about it… We need a different conversation.”

To a question from the moderator, Ashok Malik, on how India sees itself, the minister laid out India’s self-perception in four dimensions. To him, India is a member of the Global South because it is “impossible to appreciate India’s position without being cognisant of India’s colonial history”.

India also sees itself as a democracy and a market economy, and according to Jaishankar, “our choice to become a democracy in the 1940s drew on our own traditions”.

Third, he said in a way we have navigated, adapted to a world which has not always been kind to us, we have developed a certain skill (dexterity). We have a five-year, ten-year, long view of things.

The fourth character that defines India, as the fifth largest economy and the most populous country, is an “advocate for a multipolar world, where India is concerned to think how to become a leading power”.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.