As was expected, the G20 summit turned out to be a loud, flamboyant gabfest that brought India and prime minister Narendra Modi’s leadership into global focus. Most of the spotlight was of a favorable kind. The western powers led by the US were more than willing to acknowledge India’s arrival on the global stage – of course, more as a power that could act as a countervailing force to China, now effectively the world’s No 2 power raring to take over as the No 1. And to that end, the summit made quite a statement. More so, with Chinese president Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin choosing to give the summit a conspicuous miss.
But New Delhi has made it clear through its diplomacy that it doesn’t want to be seen as taking sides between the US and China – albeit, in recent years, the country has grown far more closer to the US than it ever was before. China’s 2020 incursions at five points along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh made India acutely aware of its need to secure its flanks. West’s support came thus handy. But it is not that only India needs the west. The west, in a sense, needs India more than vice versa. The reason is that while India only needs west’s cooperation to create space for its geopolitical maneuvering in the teeth of China, the west led by the US faces an existential situation vis-a-vis China and desperately needs allies in the fight. And what better than India, a subcontinental size country with a 1.4 billion population. What is more, by the current official estimates, India is also a fastest growing economy. The alliance with New Delhi thus not only offers a decisive geopolitical advantage but also a large market to boot.
As it has turned out, India has stayed well short of allying with either of the emerging cold war blocks. It has acted in its core national interest and zealously guarded its strategic autonomy. The country has now accumulated enough military and economic muscle to act largely independently and wherever possible even throw its weight around: for example, in its relations with Pakistan, or for that matter even against Canada, as the lukewarm approach towards Canadian president Justin Trudeau at the G20 summit underlined.
The G2O declaration was a best example of India playing a deft hand in international affairs: it ensured that the declaration didn’t come down hard on Russia and the world including the west went along. So, once again, India effectively asserted its strategic autonomy by walking a tightrope between the west’s demands and Russia’s expectations. This approach also doesn’t pit India against the emerging China-led bloc as Russia is its most powerful member after China. So, whichever side wins or loses in Ukraine – West or Russia – India won’t be the loser.
Another geopolitical factor that goes to the advantage of India is that the US-led unipolar world birthed by the break-up of the USSR in 1989 is giving way to a multilateral world – the continuing pre-eminence of the US notwithstanding. This has given New Delhi a greater diplomatic heft in regional and global affairs. And it is apparent in current geopolitical order: India is no longer equated with Pakistan, something the West was wont to do earlier. The country is now seen as a rival to China despite the large power gap between the two. Earlier this year, a report by Center for a New American Security said that a potential India-China conflict was now a bigger worry for the West than India-Pak tension. Over the past two decades, India has incrementally left Pakistan behind in terms of conventional military and economic advancement. But it has yet to gain a decisive advantage over its longstanding adversary. The centre of gravity of regional power equation between the two countries is still far from shifting in favour of New Delhi.
Similarly, in the case of China, while India is now amply qualified to be a geopolitical rival it is still short of measuring up to Beijing’s military and economic might. Result of this is that there is a complex geopolitics in operation regionally even as the new global cold war takes shape. India faces formidable challenges in navigating a non-aligned relationship between the West and China, but it is also aggressively wooed by the two. This has strategically located the country in a geopolitical sweet spot.
Where do we go from here? It could be more of the same in the near future. China and Russia’s boycott of the G20 has added to the existing bitterness in the geopolitical affairs. Much will depend on the outcome of the ongoing war in Ukraine. America, despite its setback in Afghanistan, its failure to have its way in Syria, and its difficulties in pushing Russia out of Ukraine, remains the world’s pre-eminent power. Its GDP and defense expenditure remains several times higher than its nearest competitor China. That said, we are at an interesting moment in history. The victor in Ukraine will determine the new global geopolitics if not the new superpower of the world. And as the G20 summit underlined, India won’t be on the wrong side of the new order.
- Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
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