During the BRICS summit in Kazan last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India and China need to work together for multipolarity and democratisation of International politics. PM Modi replied that India wants to work for multipolar Asia and the world. A month earlier, during his farewell address before the United Nations General Assembly, United States President Joe Biden said that the world is at an inflexion point. This idea was elaborated a year earlier as well by Secretary of State Antony Blinken when he said that the world is going through a third period of transition — the first happened after World War 2 and the second after the Cold War. Since then, “inflexion” and “changes” have been a regular feature in policy statements of the great and emerging powers.
Admittedly, the West is most feeling the gravity of the transition, as the US and its allies are seeing challenges appear everywhere. However, countries like Russia and China have also declared that they are seeing “changes unseen in a century”. The poly-crisis engulfing the world caused by man-made and natural factors is leading to a flux in international politics. Blinken stated that for the US, the next few years will impact the coming decades. For countries like India, this is an opportunity — but it depends on whether we seize the moment or let it bypass us.
Post-election Indian foreign policy
Indian foreign policy in the last decade has followed a strategy of multi-alignment. However vague its contours, it builds on the strategies of traditional non-alignment and maintaining strategic autonomy. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar explained the strategy of multi-alignment and its difference from non-alignment of the 1950s as follows:
“It’s different for two, three reasons. One, obviously our interests were more defensive then. Our capabilities were less. So, the difference between the earlier era was it was more defensive, it was less capability-driven. It was also less active in actually pursuing outcomes. So here you have a dog in every fight as you get bigger. So, you can’t say, I don’t like it, and I will stay away. You may not like it, but you’ve still got to work on it in some fashion, directly or indirectly. And I think the willingness to take risks also increased because once you want an outcome, you can’t be passive. So, it’s far more active, capability-driven, and I would say more willing to make choices. Because one of the characteristics of the non-aligned period was also there was a certain reticence. You would not have had a quad in the non-aligned era. You would have a quad in a multi-alignment era.”
Although Nehruvian non-alignment was never passive, today, Indian stakes and capabilities are increasing. In the last decade, New Delhi has got some major trends right and missed a few. As Pankaj Saran, former Deputy NSA points out, India has been right on Ukraine, green transition, digital transformation and global reform, but there is still a long way to go. Shaping the outcomes of global meetings is essential to accelerating India’s path to modernisation. India has been facing challenges on the issues of neighbourhood, globalisation, unemployment, China and industrialisation.
Before the 2024 general election, Indian foreign policy relied heavily on domestic factors. While it is still a crucial factor, the Narendra Modi government has started to make necessary adjustments. This can be gauged, for example, by convening the all-party meeting on the recent Bangladesh developments. Furthermore, on China, the government has encouraged a debate — one on the floor of Parliament would be most beneficial. On Ukraine, the Opposition has expressed support for the government’s policy. However, issues such as Gaza, neighbourhood, border security, and overseas Indians remain contentious. These debates originate from the domestic churn underway in India after the election results. At the same time, this is a period to display unity of purpose when it comes to strategic thinking. This is possible if the government takes the Opposition into confidence on urgent foreign policy and strategic matters.
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The international picture
This domestic unity is important for the larger international picture. A vision and strategy are required for Indian foreign policy for the next few years. These would require clear ends, ways, means and the necessary flexibility to adapt to the fast-changing occurrences that would unfold. These will manifest in new and different ways all across the world.
We have already seen an intense domestic debate in the US with regard to its future role in the world. A second Trump victory would be a continuation of the retrenchment visible in the Trump and Biden years. Kamala Harris, on the contrary, has argued for American leadership in an open and rule-based order. However, whether this new order will be equitable and inclusive depends on the extent her administration can distance itself from the preceding Trump and Biden governments.
The US is in decline and the rise of China has been overt since the financial crisis of 2008. Trump and Biden administrations reversed globalisation, extricated the US from leadership postures, and abjured proactive diplomacy in favour of issue-specific “variable geometry of partnerships”. The Gaza war has exposed the double standards of American primacy.
In her 2020 book, An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order, Kamala Harris’ foreign policy advisor Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper argued that the United States should move away from efforts to remake the world order in its image and instead invest in maintaining a free and open world where it can thrive. “Insisting upon the United States’ international leadership role but departing from reliance on primacy as the cornerstone of a messianic liberal mission, a strategy of openness departs from post-Cold War liberal universalism, Cold War-style containment, and the traditional alternative of retrenchment,” they wrote.
China has emerged as the predominant challenger to the US through the developments in the new century. The Chinese economy possesses the size and surplus needed to support its rise. However, China is not ready for primary leadership since it lacks the will and a democratic political system, which is a core weakness. While the Chinese argue that democracy is not an ornament to be flaunted, it is a conundrum that the Chinese leaders have yet to resolve. The Chinese deal with a strict adherence to principles of peaceful co-existence in their foreign policy, which has enabled their own rise. However, they are struggling with granting the same privilege to other emerging powers. With India, the Chinese have started to make a consistent effort since the election results which bore fruit in Kazan. The India-China reset is on.
In their dealings with the US, primacy is not the goal for China. The Chinese have opted for the next best option, which is to establish a modus vivendi with the US. Their rise is, thus, a fact of life for the next few decades. Whether China can translate it into favourable political outcomes is a test of Chinese foreign policy. There are early signs they could succeed.
National reflection
For decades, people have been writing shibboleths about the rise of India. While the present moment belongs to the rise of China and a new strategic thinking among traditional powers such as Europe and Russia, the next two decades can belong to India provided we are ready to pursue bi-partisanship and take bold decisions. This inflexion point gives India a rare historic opportunity to put in place the reforms and processes required to sustain its rise. These reforms need not reflect the Western version of neoliberal reforms but the social democratic character of the 2024 election mandate.
The Modi government constantly talks about a developed India by 2047. While that could be a difficult target, the narrative around India needs to shift from a rising India to an India that could have risen. Today’s inflexion in international politics exhorts us for collective national reflection toward that strategic outcome.
Prateek Kapil is a foreign policy expert. He has worked in the field for 15 years with MEA, embassies and think tanks based in Delhi. He is currently senior fellow at a Delhi-based think tank. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)