Round
The World
New Delhi, 3 January
2020
India And The World
SUCCESS & DISAPPOINTMENTS
By Dr. D.K. Giri
(Prof. International Politics, JMI)
One more year ended
when India secured a mixed bag of success and disappointments, and quite a few
monkeys on its back. The New Year 2020 seems to be more challenging than the
year gone by in terms of New Delhi consolidating ties with existing allies, gaining
new ones, and fending off challenges from adversaries.
Towards the very end
of the year, one of the new allies, Saudi Arabia has raised the hackles of
South Block by announcing a special conference of OIC on Kashmir. Apparently,
Saudi’s move is aimed at appeasing Pakistan, who boycotted at the behest of
Saudi Arabia the OIC conference held in Malaysia. This is not good news for New
Delhi especially as South Block was deepening the economic and security ties
with Riyadh.
To be sure, New
Delhi’s footprint in international politics was lessened as much by the
uncertainties obtaining in its allies as by developments at home. India’s
closest ally Israel is caught in leadership crisis as no clear winner for the
post-Prime Minister has emerged so far. Benjamin Netanyahu, the outgoing Prime Minister
was saddled with scandals of fund misappropriation and ‘breach of trust’ etc.
The other supposed ally Donald Trump was facing impeachment by the Congress.
Prime Minister Modi was unable to meet up with Shinzo Abe, which was billed to
be an important trade and investment meeting. Bangladesh, another friendly
neighbour was put off by unpleasant and inappropriate remarks made by BJP
ministers and spokespersons defending the Citizenship Amendment Act. I have
commented in this column how dragging Dhaka into a domestic political issue was
imprudent on the part of our government.
The year 2019 began
ominously with terror attacks on our security forces at Pulwama, the
retaliatory surgical strike at Balakot, and the terror listing of Masood Azhar,
the last one eventually going in favour of India.
Quite evidently, the
Balakot strike and Azhar brought huge electoral dividends for Modi’s incumbent
government that secured a comfortable majority in the General elections. Modi,
bolstered by the new majority, abrogated Article 370, nullifying J&K’s special
status and turning it into a Union Territory, under direct control of the
Centre. This was certainly a bold move which did not provoke much domestic
reaction, but a few countries -- Turkey, Malaysia and of course Pakistan
reacted negatively. Saudi Arabia being a fellow-Sunni Muslim country of
Pakistan vacillated in its reaction.
Apparently, the
reaction at home to the radical changes in status of Kashmir is subdued, but
simmering. Undoubtedly, Kashmir will remain an international challenge for New
Delhi as Pakistan will keep it aflame. The best way for New Delhi to blunt the
reaction to Kashmir from overseas is to initiate the political process and
restore normalcy sooner than later.
The other notable act
last year in India’s internationalism is the appointment of career diplomat as
the Minister for External Affairs. Some of us expressed our unhappiness in
appointing bureaucrats as ministers. I wrote in this column that diplomatic
deftness cannot be the substitute for political acumen. Only those elected by
people in a democracy should become ministers, and others, diplomats, experts,
and academics can be advisors. Anyway, that is history. S. Jaishankar is in charge.
He articulated his strategic priority in our foreign policy as “combination of
greater diplomatic activity, more intensive development partnerships, stronger
security engagements, and a growing global profile’.
Jaishankar, the
Foreign Minister, like many an expert agrees that the determinants of Foreign
Policy have changed. Earlier, they could be political values which are called
soft power, or military strength, the hard power, but now it is the economy,
and strategic alliances. Economy drives diplomacy. This is where the last year
was not promising. Modi government faltered in setting the economy right, the
growth rate, the main indicator of a robust economy, fell below expectation,
and the figure is contested by experts. What is uncontested is the fact that it
has slipped from fifth to seventh largest economy by nominal GDP. The slowdown
in economy weakened India’s clout in global politics.
A related shortcoming
observed in 2019 was New Delhi’s inability to take advantage of the trade war
between the two big economies, USA and China. It is quite apparent that the US
wanted to build India as a counterweight to China. But New Delhi dithered on
that strategy and wavered between engaging and countering China. The patience
of the US on India seemed to have thinned as it is going ahead to sign a trade
deal with China. New Delhi also has added to USA’s discomfiture by allowing
Huawei, the big Chinese ICT company to install 5G network. New Delhi’s
ambiguity on Beijing has been quite dismal last year. And worse, were the informal
summits which sent confusing signals to the world.
New Delhi is yet to
grasp the new maxim “economy is the key determinant” to our foreign policy.
Experts argued that ‘withdrawing from RCEP’ was an example of New Delhi not
anchoring its foreign policy on trade. New Delhi negotiated in bad faith and
withdrew from it after six years, at the last moment. As New Delhi cited China
angle, some of us supported India not joining RCEP. But what defies our
comprehension is New Delhi’s inability to sign any trade deal with any country.
It has not signed a
trade pact even with a closest friend like Israel. New Delhi has been
negotiating endlessly a Free Trade Agreement with European Union since 2007; it
has failed to initiate any trade deal with the US. Now that Brexit is a done
deal, has New Delhi broached a Trade Pact with Britain? Japan looks favourably
at India; their leadership has sounded that Japan will not sign RCEP if India
is not in it. With such strong support, New Delhi failed to tap Japanese
goodwill.
What was more
important? A summit meeting with Japanese premier which would have resulted in
greater investment and trade opportunity or creating chaos by shoddily
formulating and presenting the CAA, NRC and NPR etc.? Obviously, Modi
government misplaced its priorities. A robust foreign policy based on trade and
investment would bring jobs and incomes to our country, which was neglected,
and a needless controversy was created by CAA, NRC etc.
To be fair, there
have been three inflexion points in our recent foreign policy. One was the
nuclear test of 1998, the second, India-US nuclear pact of 2008 and the
Abrogation of Article 370 on August 5 last year. The first two went well in
India’s favour adding extra-profile to the nation, but the last one, on Kashmir
is yet to see its logical end. The Kashmir issue vis-a-vis Pakistan has been
backed by Modi government with infusion of huge dose of nationalism into
India’s body politics. It has worked well so far. But nationalism alone by
itself with its emotional contents will not help any country forever.
To conclude, on the
record of last year, New Delhi did well on putting its stamp as a decisive
power to reckon with, especially on India-Pacific area. It presided over the
upgraded Quad last year and openly engaged with other Indian Ocean powers –
France and Indonesia. The lapses consisted of dealing decisively with China and
not drawing closer to US on trade, and making trade its key tool in foreign
policy. Hopefully, it does so this year. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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