India needs to view multilateral strategic summits with greater importance

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The ‘special meeting’ of foreign ministers in New Delhi on June 16 to commemorate a milestone in South East Asia’s engagement of India could have been a full and all-encompassing celebration of India’s ‘Look East’ initiative, which became its ‘Act East’ policy after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister.

Instead, the meeting became the 30th anniversary remembrance of a process within the confines of diplomatic channels of India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which got its first shot in the arm when the two sides started a partnership in specific sectors in 1992, which has expanded in strength at 10-year intervals ever since.

The anniversary is very significant in itself, considering the reluctance with which then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao’s about-turn on ASEAN was received by some East Asian nations at that time. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar could not have been more truthful when he opened the special meeting with a remark about the “steadfast support and co-operation” from Singapore in furthering the ASEAN-India Strategic Partnership.

Singapore’s then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who started the “India fever” in his island nation in a National Day speech, worked with Rao and his successors during 13 of his 14 years as Singapore’s head of government to expand the common ethos of their nations to cover the entire ASEAN. These efforts have produced one of the biggest foreign policy successes in modern Indian history.

For three days from June 10 to 12, two dozen defence ministers from all over the world met in Singapore in a Track 1.5 dialogue, the biggest such coming together of heads of defence ministries at the political level since the war in Ukraine heralded changes in relations — military and political — among geostrategic groups worldwide. India was starkly absent at this important gathering at the defence ministers’ level, which made headlines from China to Canada, and from France to Fiji.

Not just that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was missing from the deliberations which discussed India at length, after having privately agreed— but never announced — that he would attend. Singh lost an opportunity to get acquainted with ‘new kids on the block’, as the idiom goes, in his line of work. Australia, Canada, France, and Germany — in fact, most major powers and India’s key strategic partners — all have new Ministers of Defence either because elections brought new governments to power or because of Cabinet reshuffle. At the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier defence summit, all these new ministers met one another and their colleagues who have been in office longer, such as China’s Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe and United States Defence Secretary (retired) General Lloyd Austin.

In three days, nearly 130 sit-down bilateral meetings took place on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, which is blessed by the Singapore government, and was addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as keynote speaker in 2018.

India had a team of bright officials and experienced men from the navy and the army, including respected China-watchers, but they are inadequate substitutes for the Defence Minister at such summits. Protocol lowers a country’s standing, visibility, reach, access, and capacity to be heard when other major powers are represented by their defence ministers, but not India.

It was at the Shangri-La defence summit that Modi articulated, for the first time, India’s vision towards the Indo-Pacific region after changing the ‘Look East’ policy to ‘Act East’, and including emphasis on political and security ties in the region in addition to economic and trade-based policies. It is now forgotten that a few days before Modi addressed the Shangri-La Dialogue, the US renamed its Hawaii-based ‘Pacific Command’ as the ‘Indo-Pacific Command’. In appreciation, the only bilateral meeting which Modi had on the sidelines of that defence summit was with then US Defence Secretary James Mattis.

Eleven Indian defence ministers have spoken at the Shangri-La Dialogue since it was first held in 2002. Some of them have addressed it twice, such as George Fernandes, the normally reticent AK Antony. Pranab Mukherjee and Manohar Parrikar contributed to this summit when they were in office. So, Singh’s late-in-the-day decision to give it a miss is puzzling, more so since the world is at a turning point in a military sense.

Bilateral meetings are at the core of such Track 1.5 summits. At the annual Manama Dialogue, also organised by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), with the blessings of the government of Bahrain, leaders of successive Indian delegations used to have up to 14 bilateral meetings with their counterparts from key partner countries. Sadly, at a more recent Manama Dialogue just before COVID-19, the only aspect of India, which was acknowledged was the sumptuous biryani served at lunch.

This ought to change. China has been showing the way, shedding reticence about making the most of its political presence at Track 1.5 meetings as in Singapore. The US has done that for decades and benefited from it. At the Shangri-La Dialogue 2022, Wei and Austin presented conflicting, but compelling narratives of the strategic situation in the Indo-Pacific.

The Special ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers’ Meeting to commemorate, among other things, a decade of India’s Strategic Partnership with ASEAN makes up for the opportunity that was lost in Singapore a week ago, but only partly. For a region, which is still miffed over India’s last-minute rejection of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), more Indian involvement, not less, is needed. A statement by co-chairs of the special meeting, unanimously adopted by all the ministers is a good augury. It focuses on COVID-19 and health, trade, commerce and connectivity, education and capacity-building, all of which are vital.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. 

Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.