Round The World

New Delhi, 29 June 2016

India’s Membership Tales

DEFEAT IN NSG, VICTORY IN SCO

By Amrita Banerjee

(School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi)

It has been a mixed week for India’s foreign policy and diplomacy with one unsuccessful attempt in attaining membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) bringing in disappointment and one successful membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) bringing in cheer.

True, diplomacy often does not yield instant results. It involves years of consistent efforts. Happily, India’s efforts in the SCO were rewarded finally when the communiqué issued by the SCO leaders in Tashkent granted membership.

However, New Delhi’s diplomatic efforts were snubbed in Seoul when in spite of the intense lobbying that included cross-Continent campaigns between Prime Minister Modi and Chinese President Xi Jingping did not yield fruitful result in spite of Modi’s call to China to make a fair and objective assessment of India’s application and judge it on its own merit.

In reality, New Delhi had gone to Seoul without any certainty of victory and knowing that Beijing could create hurdles in India’s pathway, as it was nothing new. Even though China cited ‘procedural hurdles’ and insisted India sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) before getting membership.

But the real reason was that it did not want to annoy its ‘all-weather ally’ Pakistan, another non-signatory of the NPT, which too was seeking membership of the NSG. This Chinese tactics of hyphenating relations between India and Pakistan has set a dangerous trend. 

Indeed, it is ironic that a country which desires to rewrite the rules of the 21^st Century world, could not judge another country’s membership objectively in spite of repeated insistence. The loud Chinese opposition also encouraged eight other members to raise procedural questions also. Whereby India lost despite getting overwhelming support from the US, Japan, Russia, UK and France.

Notably, even though the bloc didn’t shut the door at the future participation of countries which have not signed the NPT, a NSG statement reiterated the centrality of NPT to the NSG membership.

At the outset, it might look as if India lost and China won but in reality the NSG membership bid was actually a case of ‘missed opportunity’ for Beijing. If China would have adopted a different yardstick for judging India this time, it could have laid a foundation of a stronger relationship with its Asian neighbor.

Also, it could have bridged the ‘trust deficit’ existing between the two countries since the 1962 War and that might also have facilitated a quicker solution to the lingering India-China boundary dispute.

However, Beijing decided to play safe by shutting the NSG door but opened the SCO door for India as it was convinced New Delhi would have a marginal role to play because it is the Russia-China dynamics which shapes the trajectory of the organization.

Undoubtedly, the SCO has served both as a means to keep control of Central Asia and limit American influence in the region. With India’s membership, China hopes to stave off some of the criticism of the organization as a grouping of nations with little affection for the Western world order.

Beijing has also made sure that even as it supports India’s membership in SCO, its ally, Pakistan gets a berth in the organization too. Analytically, the SCO has emerged as a significant factor in the post-9/11 environment as growing ethnic nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism surfaces as major causes of concern for Russia, China and Central Asian countries.

Importantly, if security is the uniting factor in the SCO, apprehensions have been raised about the incompatibility between India’s and Chinese security interests. Also, China does not look at Pakistan-sponsored anti-India organizations in its mission to combat terror.

Pertinently, if ever India tries to move any resolution against such terror groups, the motion will not garner support from China and its puppet nations in the SCO. Further, fighting cyber terrorism would be another challenge as Beijing itself is a cyber bully and has (State-sponsored) Chinese hackers.  

Moreover, SCO is mired with certain problems. First, it has no clear idea as to how the organization would deal with challenges if chaos there flares up to engulf the region, like the Afghan situation.

Second, despite the SCO bindings Central Asian countries showed their strong inclinations for cooperating with the West on a broad set of issues. Third, the growing China-Russia contradiction also has the potential to impede the SCO’s growth.

Lastly, the problems vis-à-vis expansion which becomes limited because the SCO’s ‘official language’ clause (which includes only Chinese and Russian) keeps the English speaking countries away from entering the grouping. 

Certainly, even though the SCO is not free from lacunae, it can bring credible benefits for India. One, gain geopolitically i.e. to protect New Delhi’s interests in Afghanistan, keep a close watch on Russia-Pakistan nearness, rebut any useless resolutions put by Islamabad on the SCO table and learning from SCO’s success in containing the spread of extremism and terrorism in Central Asia.

Two, the SCO membership could give India a new way to build promising bridges with Central Asia by giving New Delhi more leeway in pursuing its energy interests and along with Pakistan’s membership, projects like CASA, TAPI, IPI might eventually also see light.

Three, India can create a vast network of physical and digital connectivity which extends from Eurasia's northern corner to Asia's southern shores. The International North South Transportation Corridor is a step in that direction.

Four, India brings decades of experience in dealing with social issues especially in the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural settings that could be shared with SCO countries which are confronted with many social and religious challenges.

Five, India could gain from SCO’s public information and mass media mechanisms for enhancing greater presence in the Eurasian space. Six, New Delhi could gain access in Eurasian region’s soft-political areas through participation in educational, environmental protection, disaster management and rescue operations, climate change debate, water related issues and people-to-people contact (through institutional means).

Seven, participation in other non-conventional security areas such as food security measures, drug-trafficking control, information and cyber security, etc could be of advantage for India. Last, New Delhi’s participation in the SCO’s military and counter-terror exercises could be beneficial for our armed forces to understand and interact with other militaries, thereby instilling greater confidence at the regional level.

Clearly, India would gain from the SCO membership but uncertainty about the possible benefit still remains as the membership has not just been given to India but also Pakistan. Seeing the Indo-Pak track record in SAARC, it is hard to imagine how their paired inclusion would allow the SCO to become a more dynamic and cooperative forum.

Nonetheless, having got an opportunity in the organization, India must have a clear pro-active policy otherwise it might risk becoming a focal point of criticism by Central Asia nations, akin to the way New Delhi is targeted in SAARC. The future alone would be able to say whether India actually benefitted in SCO. Till then, we must wait and watch. ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)