THAT global geopolitics is in flux following Ukraine war is clear from Saudi Arabia’s decision to host Chinese president Xi Jingping for three days from December 7. During the visit, Jinping will attend a China-Arab summit. The visit will include a bilateral summit chaired by Saudi King Salman and attended by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As regional skepticism about the region’s relationship with the United States, a vital security ally, has grown in recent years, Gulf Arab states have strengthened their ties with China and Russia. In doing so, Arabs have defied US pressure to choose sides. The relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia has soured in recent weeks after OPEC+ chose to decrease output despite the US urging an increase to offset current inflation.
If anything, the Arab defiance of the US is yet another stark example of how geopolitics is shaping up following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even though the US-led western coalition against Russia is holding up well, the rest of the world is increasingly asserting its autonomy in their response to the war. India too has refused to choose sides. For example, in South Asia, India has found itself in a tough situation to straddle its alliance with the US and its longstanding relationship with Russia. And so far it has been successful in pursuing a tight balancing act. While New Delhi has gone along with the West as for as the illegitimacy of the war, it has refused to abandon Russia. The West has found it difficult to countenance this assertion on the part of India. As a probable result, recent months have witnessed a newfound warmth between the west and Pakistan.
New Delhi sees it as a renewed appeasement of Pakistan. Many analysts in India see it as a punishment for India’s pursuit of an independent foreign policy in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine. But New Delhi has refused to budge from what it sees in its core national interest. Besides abstaining from western resolutions against Russia, India continues to import oil from the country at discounted rates, something that has not pleased western countries.
But India has stood firm. Rather than joining the western camp, India has sought to play a mediatory role in resolving the Ukraine crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting told him that “this is not an era of war” and that the Ukraine issue should be settled by diplomacy. War is continuing nevertheless. Ukraine is far from being defeated. So isn’t Russia, although it has suffered some reverses. But, meanwhile, the world around the site of war is changing.
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