The huddle or “pull-aside” on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit Monday morning at Tianjin offered the much-awaited photo-op: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in a friendly banter. Putin signalling his aide to step in to translate, Modi making a point and Xi listening intently completed the visual symbolism of a new possibility –– of a powerful geopolitical and geoeconomic grouping in the making. One that has complete strategic autonomy.
Modi and Putin hugging, walking hand-in-hand towards Xi, later both travelling in the Russian President’s car for the official meeting at the latter’s hotel and the bilateral bonhomie were all carefully curated geopolitical theatre. This was Modi’s response to 50% tariff and the abusive comments that have come from the White House. The intended audience was not just US President Donald Trump, but the entire West. It was a power statement of three top military and economic powers of the world standing together to safeguard their sovereignty, refusing to bend down to Western colonial diktats.
The message was threefold.
Putin’s leadership: he holds the key to bring peace between India and China. The ice was broken and de-escalation of tensions and disengagement of Indian and Chinese troops at Ladakh began only after the meeting between Modi and Xi at Kazan in Russia in October last year. Monday’s huddle underscored Putin’s personal charisma and credibility vis a vis Modi and Xi. He is not isolated one bit, as the Europeans might want the world to believe. And Russia’s friendships have only deepened despite the US imposing secondary sanctions on India for buying Russian oil. Putin holds strong levers of global power, vast reservoirs of goodwill and resources galore.
Modi’s manoeuvrability and options: he stands tall taking on Trump and is definitely not cowed down. Something akin to the Indo-Soviet treaty of friendship and cooperation of 1971, which thwarted the US military intervention, has been achieved in terms of economic relations with the possibility of Chinese partnership in the horizon. Instead of Nixon’s Seventh Fleet, Trump slapped trade sanctions on India and the answer ought to have been economy/trade related. And so it is. The Indian market is always hungry for Chinese digital and telecom equipment, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, fertilisers, rare earths, magnets and all that it manufactures. An economic partnership, with investments flowing from China, would be a magic potion for India’s capital-starved industry.
China has risen. It has emerged as the centre of the world. One of the key takeaways from the India-China bilateral meeting was the assurance that both countries should accommodate each other’s concerns and uphold harmonious coexistence. Simply put it means that India will not become a puppet in Western hands to play the role of a rival, competitor or a containing military force. China’s concerns over Quad and Western containment are being addressed. By offering Modi the grand stage and the imagery of a Russia-India-China huddle, Xi has emerged as a geopolitical powerhouse transmitting strong currents of electricity to energise multilateralism and a multipolar world.
Sure, the Russia-India-China platform is only a possibility. But the seed of an idea whose time has come has been sowed in the minds of 2.8 billion people and the leaders across the world. There are contradictions aplenty between India and China, no doubt. In fact, contrary to the normal practice of the visual media going gaga over an ambitious Prime Ministerial gambit, most of the commentariat immediately exposed their Western bias by using this moment to attack China.
The cause for their grief was the Tianjin Declaration –– that it had reference not just to the Pahalgam massacre but also to the attack on Jaffar Express. Why not? When India is not fuelling the conflict in Baluchistan, it need not baulk at a reference to a terror incident in Pakistan. A section of the Indian commentariat found it hard to digest that China continues to be friends with Pakistan. Is it not strategic autonomy that India strives for? India too is tentative in engaging in the Elephant-Dragon dance. Modi indemnified himself against future diplomatic missteps by visiting Japan (China’s traditional rival) prior to the Tianjin summit and inviting Japanese PM Ishiba Shigeru to the Quad meeting.
But that does not lessen in any way the gravity of Modi’s China visit after seven years. This is a moment –– one that would seldom come –– pregnant with the possibility for peace and prosperity in Asia. Two Asian giants have got together to bury their bitter differences, recalibrate their relations and to reset their engagement. The debilitating standoff on the icy tops of the Himalayas, which had cost both sides men and material and commitment of huge resources, has been resolved. That in itself is a matter of joyous relief.
While the Chinese side did not want the border dissonance to define bilateral relations, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri clearly articulated India’s stand: the insurance policy for bilateral relations is peace and tranquillity on the boundary. Sadly, Indian diplomacy is hostage to domestic politics of the worst kind, which refuses to acknowledge that conflict is only an extension of diplomacy and that war is not a permanent state of human endeavour. Unless, of course, the aggressor is a colonial or neo-colonial war machine that profits out of misery.
Soviet Russia and China were engaged in a conflict that began with an ideological divergence leading up to border clashes in 1969, which gave the opening for Kissinger and Nixon to bring China closer to the USA. Sovereign states do fall out and then repair their relations and move on. India has shown the maturity to understand the Western game of containing China and the sagacity to pull back from a disastrous proxy war. For, the West had not exhibited any intention of diversifying its supply chains to benefit India; and the latest attack from Peter Navarro only proves that Churchillian hatred for India continues to be the bedrock of Western foreign policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment