G20: India has to be a juggler & tightrope artiste par excellence

G20

The power games of the G20 seem to be playing out in other arenas.

On March 8, the fourth cricket test match between India and Australia at Ahmedabad got off to an unusual start, as the two captains waited for prime ministers Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese to slowly complete a lap of honour of the enormous ground in a vehicle featuring an array of oversized cricket bats and stumps on its posterior.

Thus did sport become the continuation of diplomacy by other means.

But the bonhomie among the homies did not come in the way of the Indian Prime Minister raising the issue of `unfortunate’ attacks on Hindu temples in Australia at a meeting with Albanese on March 9.

``Indian immigrants are the second largest expat community in Australia. They are making significant contributions to Australian society and economy.

It’s a matter of regret that for the last few weeks we have been getting regular news of attacks on temples,” Modi said in his statement.

His Australian counterpart did not touch upon Modi’s comments but said the two leaders had agreed on an 'early conclusion' of the ambitious Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) `as soon as possible'.

The CECA, launched in May 2011, is stalled as talks were suspended in 2016 after nine rounds of negotiations due to lack of progress.

Talks resumed in 2021 but a deal has yet proved elusive.

There are indications that there will be more such exchanges leading up to September 2023, when the 18th G20 Heads of State and Government summit is held in New Delhi.

In the first week of March, New Delhi became the arena for geopolitical power play as the world’s top diplomats swept in to drive their agenda. In a typical display of the thrust and parry of world politics, the G20 meetings were held alongside a meeting of the Quad.

While G20 has been dominated by anti-Russian — and by extension anti-Chinese — sentiment, foreign ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) stuck to their `steadfast commitment to supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific,’ a euphemism for a profoundly anti-Chinese position.

The Quad meeting, held at the annual Raisina Dialogue, was presided over by Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and attended by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi, and Australia’s Penny Wong. The meeting drew Chinese ire and fire, which said that ``state-to-state interactions should pursue peace and development and contribute to mutual trust, rather than exclusivity.”

But it was, at best, a sideshow. The G20 meetings, in which India is heavily invested, have evolved a consensus on nearly all major points except where it is needed the most — the Russia-Ukraine war.

On climate change, the increasing burden of debt on developing nations, digital transformation, rising inflation, and food and energy security, all of which reflect India's priorities, there is hardly any difference .

But the year-long bloody conflict in Europe has cast its shadow on G20 proceedings, as part of which 200 meetings in over 50 cities across 32 different workstreams have been planned.

Late last month, G20 finance ministers failed to agree on a closing statement after their meeting in Bengaluru. Both Russia and China declined to accept parts of a closing statement that deplored Russia's aggression `in the strongest terms.’

It was left to India to release a chair's summary which noted `different assessments of the situation’ in Ukraine within the group.

Among the foreign ministers in attendance were Russia's Sergei Lavrov, Antony Blinken of the US, and China's Qin Gang. Since the war began over a year ago, top US and Russian diplomats met face-to-face for the first time on the sidelines of the summit.

Jaishankar admitted to the differences. “There were issues. The issues, very frankly, concerned the Ukraine conflict, on which there were divergences."

Former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal told Moneycontrol: ``What we are going to see are the differences between Russia and Ukraine, which was evident in Bali (site of the 2022 G20 summit) but have been highly aggravated since then.

While the West says that they are keen to promote G20, it is not borne out by facts on the ground. As the finance minister and foreign minister meetings showed, a joint communique could have been obtained if there was determination, but none was evident.”

While the G20, since its inception in 1999, has been focussed largely on macroeconomic policy, it has since expanded its ambit to include trade, climate change, sustainable development, energy, environment, anti-corruption, and is now consumed with global multilateralism.

Predicts Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian, a former Indian diplomat who coordinated the evacuation of over 1,76,000 Indians from Iraq and Kuwait in 1990–91: ``The G20 will not do anything significant because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The West and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) are determined to humiliate and isolate Russia. They have done it at the UN General Assembly and want to do the same at the G20 sessions. If you wish to end the conflict, not wanting to talk is not an option.”

The big challenge before India, therefore, is to make rivals look past their differences and forge a consensus on the war. Experts say Delhi also had the delicate task of balancing its non-aligned policy on the war.

Nonetheless, India did succeed in its main objective of raising a voice for the Global South or the comity of developing nations, and Jaishankar said that `on the bulk of issues we were able to get an outcome document.’
Says former Indian ambassador Rajiv Bhatia, currently Distinguished Fellow at the think tank Gateway House: ``I think we need to take a realistic and positive view of the outcome. It is not the end of the road. It is actually the first clear attempt by India to bridge divergent views on the Ukraine crisis. I think these efforts should continue and we should look forward to the day in September when the Delhi summit will take place."

Sibal notes that the breakdown of consensus is so severe that even a formulation on terrorism, which nations normally agree to, has proved elusive.

``The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suspension of Russia’s membership, stating that Moscow’s war in Ukraine violated the organisation’s principles, reveals that the USA and West are out to isolate Russia using any means possible. The decision to suspend Russia was made at the behest of Ukraine. Russia is an important country in the fight against terrorism and has been a victim of it.”

There are still several months of diplomacy left before G20 leaders meet in September, and New Delhi will hope things improve – even if an end to the Ukraine war is not in sight. India has resisted pressure and continued with its strategy of not directly criticising Russia, which is its largest supplier of arms. It has regularly abstained from voting on UN resolutions condemning the war in Ukraine, including a vote held at the UN general assembly recently.

While New Delhi has defended its decision to increase its oil imports from Russia saying it has to look after the needs of its people, it has also talked about the importance of "the UN Charter, international law, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states" in its past statements on Ukraine.

Ambassador Bhatia says India needs to go back to the fundamental mandate of the G20, which is a large body of 20 big and influential economies, where the focus is primarily economic. Now the G20 has been forced to look at the challenges of peace and security, which have arisen out of the Ukraine conflict. ``I would say this is the beginning of a tough journey for Indian diplomacy,” he told Moneycontrol.
The trouble is that if the shadow of the Ukraine war looms too large, then global resources earmarked for themes like climate change would be pumped into the conflict, he adds.