South Block Watch Delicate balancing of interests continues
For South Block, the fine balancing act between interests and interlocutors continues. After a very public display of bonhomie with US President Donald Trump in Houston, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in a very public ‘informal’ summit in Mamallapuram, performing a delicate pas de deux with the two most powerful men in the world within a fortnight of each other. Both Trump and Xi have bitterly faced off on trade issues since 2018 and, as the heads of the world’s two largest economies, those moves are threatening the entire global economy, strong headwinds from which are also hurting the Indian economy.
The effort of this very public diplomacy is to ensure that India joins the big league and its voice is heard clearer and with increasing impact on the global scene. And to find a way to balance between conflicting interests of its major interlocutors. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said recently, “Today if you look at the big debates at multilateral forums - G20, BRICS - you will see that the Indian voice, Indian views are today heard much more clearly.”
Some of Trump’s financial and geopolitical measures have hit India’s economy directly, like removal of the tariff concessions under the generalised system of preferences, sanctioning Iran and thereby disrupting vital oil supplies to this country, that imports 80% of its energy, forcing it to look elsewhere for energy security and also try to make some headway with greater market access in China.
Houston’s ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event happened soon after Trump had publicly ended direct US talks with the Taliban to restore peace in Afghanistan, providing India an opportunity to get back into the reckoning in Kabul. Beijing was siding with Islamabad and rebuking Delhi for rescinding Article 370 in Kashmir and giving union territory status to Ladakh.
While Modi and Xi were holding their tete-a-tete on the scenic Coromandel coast, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Special Envoy for Afghan Reconciliation, was back in Islamabad talking to the Taliban leader Mullah Baradar, again raising some concerns in South Block about what is happening in Kabul, where the presidential elections held on September 28 has only added to the very fluid security situation.
While Jaishankar told this writer, “Have you seen India being left out of any major discussion?” referring to Afghanistan’s peace talks, the prospect of a Taliban government in power in Kabul is definitely worrisome. Three kidnapped Indian engineers have been released in an exchange involving the release of 11 Taliban.
Meanwhile, Pakistan, during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to New York for the UN General Assembly session at the end of September tried to overplay its Kashmir card and got carried away in New York, trying to forge an Islamic group, starring Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, to pressurise the Indian government over Kashmir and generally remove global misgivings about Islam.
This backfired badly, with Riyadh getting very upset. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who lent his personal aircraft to Pakistan’s Khan to travel to and from New York for the UNGA, had Khan and the Pakistani delegation offloaded from the plane, forcing them to fly back to Islamabad commercially.
Modi met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in New York and discussed how best to operationalise the Chabahar port which is critical for its access to Afghanistan and beyond, to Central Asia.
And to see if there was any way to continue getting oil supplies from there. Both Saudi Arabia and the US have said they would meet the shortfall from the loss of Iranian oil, but the matter has not been firmed up yet.
Modi is travelling to Riyadh later this month to thank the Saudi leadership for their strong and continuing support and to personally brief the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques how removing Jammu & Kashmir's special status will help develop the border state as restrictions are gradually eased.
Along with national security issues, the economy is the other key foreign policy focus during all these meetings and will feature strongly during the visit of the Dutch monarchy.
The Netherlands is the fifth largest investor in India and the King and Queen, who will inaugurate a Technology Summit, are accompanied by a delegation of 140 business leaders from diverse sectors.
The effort of this very public diplomacy is to ensure that India joins the big league and its voice is heard clearer and with increasing impact on the global scene. And to find a way to balance between conflicting interests of its major interlocutors