Anurag Kumar
New Delhi After a weekend that drew the globe to Delhi for an incredibly successful leaders’ summit, New Delhi may exhale with peace that everything went smoothly during the Indian Presidency of the G20. To be proud of its accomplishments is a perfectly reasonable response.
The summit and its declaration, as well as the bilateral and multilateral meetings held on the margins, reflected the Indian government’s foreign policy priorities and the nature of its relationships with key actors. The declaration will also have implications for bilateral relations, especially with the United States, Russia, and China, India’s ambition to be the voice of the Global South, and efforts to revive reformed multilateralism during a particularly bleak period in the international system.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar wrote in his book The India Way, “Now is the time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw in neighbors, extend the neighborhood, and broaden traditional bases of support.” On each of these fronts, India was successful in achieving its goals.
Engaging America
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States in June was a giant leap forward, then President Joe Biden’s visit to India was a consolidation and deepening of trust. Consider the two visits as a fiery opener that sets the stage for a massive score, followed by a solid middle-order effort that consolidates the innings. This was reflected in international, regional, and bilateral cooperation.
The US owes India a debt for its flexibility regarding the text of the Delhi declaration. There is little doubt that Biden, who has been arguably the most committed Democratic president to the India relationship in history, authorized the removal of a specific reference to Russia’s aggression in the context of United Nations resolutions and the adoption of a more general and expansive formulation. The Europeans then followed suit because, despite their hubris, it is the United States that has so far defended Ukraine against Russian aggression. In addition, American flexibility allowed India to mobilize the Global South and exert collective pressure on Moscow. But even beyond Ukraine, the Delhi-DC synergy on multilateral development banks (MDBs) or DC’s acceptance of India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a possible global template or collaboration in the Global Biofuels Alliance demonstrates how India and US want to shape the world together.
On the regional front, the significance of the India-Middle East-Europe corridor announcement cannot be exaggerated. Yes, it will take decades to complete the endeavor. Rarely have so many diverse actors from four regions (North America, the European continent, West Asia, and South Asia) collaborated for the common benefit on a project of this scale. This can not only provide a viable alternative to the exploitative model of Chinese infrastructure financing, but it can also provide India with enormous commercial opportunities.
And bilaterally, Biden and Modi reviewed the swift implementation of a number of agreements signed in June of last year and made a number of new announcements. The GE jet engine and MQ-9B transactions are proceeding smoothly. Under the initiative on critical and emergent technology (iCET), the space, semiconductor, defense innovation, education, quantum, biotechnology, and telecommunications industries have collaborated. All trade disputes between India and the United States have been resolved at the WTO. And there are emerging financial partnerships in the realm of climate change.
Put everything together. The summit demonstrates that Delhi and Washington, DC are engaged. Their friendship is deepening. The collaboration is both open and confidential. And they are discussing issues that extend far beyond the traditional boundaries of their bilateral relationship.
Reassuring Russia
The weekend also highlighted the complexities of the India-Russia relationship, in which the public and private, the short-term and the medium-term, and the past and future must be viewed differently.
In terms of the relationship’s public projection, the summit demonstrated that the ancient bonds of friendship between Delhi and Moscow continue in the short term. At a time when Moscow has invaded another country, it is unlikely that any other nation would have been able to construct a situation that would have provided Russia with international face-saving.
To accommodate Vladimir Putin’s request, however, India guaranteed that the declaration’s text omitted any explicit reference to Russian aggression. But in doing so, it gained the space to insert a series of paragraphs that are clear criticisms of Moscow’s positions and actions, ranging from its threat to use nuclear weapons to halting the implementation of the Black Sea Grain deal, from attacking civilians and infrastructure to the second-order consequences of its actions in terms of destabilizing the global economic environment, from violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of another state to embarking on a military buildup in eastern Ukraine.
However, this combination of accommodation and criticism is not the focus of the narrative. As evidenced by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s praise for the Indian presidency on Sunday, Moscow is pleased with the events in Delhi. If the objective was to reassure Russia of India’s commitment to the relationship and that Delhi retains its autonomy despite growing closer to the west, India has yet again accomplished this.
This reassurance is required in the first place because privately, Indian policymakers know that the future of the strategic partnership isn’t as bright and, for its own national security, Delhi has no choice but to diversify its relationship and dependencies. India may or may not say it, but it is aware that Moscow’s attack on Kiev was unjustified. It is aware that Moscow’s comprehensive national authority is weaker today than it was before February 2022. It is aware that Moscow’s reliance on Beijing has complicated India’s perception of its principal security threat, China. It is aware that the Indian military is having difficulty meeting its needs due to the dilution of the Russian military-industrial base. And it recognizes the importance of strengthening connections with the rest of Europe.
And if India is aware of this information and is acting accordingly, Moscow is aware that Delhi is aware of it. Consequently, actions with medium-term implications must be distinguished from short-term posture. The weekend highlighted both this disconnect and India’s ability to simultaneously pursue both courses.
Managing China
The G20 weekend revealed the immense difficulty India confronts in managing its relationship with China and how this will persist. Consider three specific manifestations of this phenomenon.
The first was Chinese president Xi Jinping’s decision to forego the summit, which marked his first absence from a G20 meeting since assuming office. In terms of domestic optics, this was likely a positive development for the Indian political leadership, as a Modi-Xi handshake or bilateral meeting could have attracted criticism from the Opposition, which would have argued that this was a sign of India’s weakness given the situation at the border. In terms of strategic signals, however, it was yet another indication that China’s political leadership wished to avoid the appearance of endorsing India’s success at the global table of power or, as it appeared prior to the summit, blocking it. It is also a possible warning that conditions at the border will not improve and may even worsen.
The second was the Chinese position during text negotiations. While supporting Russia’s position on Ukraine, it supported the remaining ministerial outcomes. In recent weeks, however, it has increased its obstructionism on a variety of other issues in an attempt to unnerve the Indian side. Delhi believed that the only way to get Beijing on board was to create a situation in which China would either have to be the lone holdout opposing a common text or would be forced to join in order to avoid being seen as an outlier and saboteur. Through adroit diplomacy, including by compelling Moscow and mobilising the Global South in its favour, Delhi did that. Beijing abandoned its opposition.
The third manifestation of this was specific geopolitical actions that were not directly related to China but will have an impact on the bilateral axis between Delhi and Beijing. In the past, Indian policymakers were wary of appearing too close to the West for fear that China would interpret this as an aggressive move against it. However, Beijing’s aggression assisted Delhi in resolving the dilemma. India has made it plain that it will pursue its interests with the United States regardless of how Beijing may interpret its actions. This strategy is exemplified by the Quad, for which Vice President Biden may return to India in January for a second time, and the intensified engagement with the United States in West Asia through the infrastructure corridor.
Overall, the episode demonstrates that India-China relations are fragile and will continue to be so. But due to power disparities, India needs time to bolster its capabilities. It also required China’s cooperation on a number of multilateral issues. And so it managed China, despite having no illusions that this management will resolve the structural issues that plague the relationship.
Traditional constituencies
This weekend demonstrated how India is integrating its neighbors (consider how Bangladesh was a guest at the G20 and received an unprecedented networking opportunity with the world’s political elite), working in the extended neighbourhood (the infra corridor with the UAE and Saudi Arabia demonstrates this), and expanding its transitional constituencies of support (consider the entire discourse surrounding the Global South).
Of these dimensions, the return of the Global South was the most prominent conclusion from the weekend. This is viewed by some as a return to the anti-Western, third-worldist rhetoric that once dominated Indian foreign policy. In contrast, India’s current strategy is founded on leveraging New Delhi’s unique position in the global hierarchy to bridge the gap between the West/North and the South. This manifested itself in four distinct ways over the weekend.
The first was African Union’s (AU) membership in the G20. Consider the matter carefully. The only African member of the world’s foremost forum for international economic cooperation was South Africa. Few data points illustrate the inequities of the global power structure as well as this continent’s startling lack of representation. While there had been discussions about bringing in AU, the fact that it occurred during the Indian Presidency will now be recorded in the annals of history. And the western coalition supported the initiative in its entirety.
The second was that the text addressed the most pressing concerns of the Global South. Regarding agricultural security, there is a need to implement the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which has been so crucial to meeting Africa’s needs. Regarding climate, it is widely acknowledged that a crisis exists and that the world is failing to meet its temperature objectives, but that the crisis must be managed according to shared but differentiated responsibilities. The declaration even specifies the amount of financing needed for developing nations to meet emission targets. Consider the sustainable development objectives and the setbacks in meeting them over the past few years, and there is talk of a new road map with the necessary funding to achieve them. Consider the approval of the concepts of DPI and financial inclusion, which will aid the poorest citizens in the world’s poorest regions. Every segment of the declaration embodies a spirit of inclusion for the most marginalized voices in the international order.
Lastly, the concept of reforming multilateral development banks (MDBs) must be viewed in light of India’s emphasis on the Global South. It used its presidency to make it plain to the West that the expansion of the World Bank’s mandate to include combating the climate crisis cannot come at the expense of eradicating extreme poverty. It advocated for innovative financial mobilization strategies to enable MDBs to meet these expanded objectives.
India is now shaping conversations on the concerns of the Global South and finding methods to address them, not in opposition to the West but in partnership with it. This was best illustrated by the photograph of the leaders of India, South Africa, Brazil, the United States, and the World Bank. Obviously, there was a strategic context to this. China’s ambitions to become the champion of the Global South will not go unchallenged; India will compete on its own terms and with its own partners, while paying close attention to what its partners desire.
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From the bilateral to the global, India’s foreign policy weekend in Delhi was its finest ever. In geopolitics, however, there is no period. What has transpired will usher in a new era as India navigates the next set of global challenges. However, the experience must have made policymakers more confident in their abilities and keenly aware of the challenges that lay ahead.
