India needs to reconsider the plethora of those alliances and rationalize them after a reality check
The current uproar over AUKUS – the tripartite security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, announced on September 15, 2021 – has exposed the dangers of group diplomacy, which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi anticipated by President Ziaur Rahman. estimated at the time. Bangladesh proposed a regional organization for South Asia.
SAARC Year
Apart from its objections about the reference to security in the draft charter of SAARC, or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, India was in a dilemma – that not joining the forum would make it look like India is against regional cooperation. And if he joins in, he faces the prospect of ganging up on his neighbors and using SAARC institutions to pressure India on various regional issues. Another concern was that the proponent of such a group would be suspected of wanting to lead a region.
On balance, India joined the Association with a number of conditions such as exclusion of bilateral issues, decision making by voting, and holding meetings without the presence of all members. But despite the imperative of cooperation in critical areas, SAARC has become an arena of India-bashing, especially by Pakistan. It was bilateral diplomacy under the guise of multilateralism and it was moribund as India did not attend the final summit. SAARC became a liability as it was clear that the region was not mature enough for a regional instrument.
Today, there is a whole spectrum of groups in the world – from the European Union at one end to the African Union at the other – with different shades of cooperation. Groups with abbreviations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and numerical groups ranging from a hypothetical G-2 to the actual G-77, with over 100 members, exist.
Many of them do not have the regional, ideological or thematic uniformity to give a reason for grouping. Not only does the time, money and energy spent in organizing the summits, but also ministerial, official and expert level meetings seem unjustified. The bureaucracy, along with UN salaries and perks, grows around these bodies, developing vested interests to maintain them. Groups that do not have “sunset” clauses continue to decrease in importance after
looking for an agenda
Finding the agenda for these organizations and groups is another difficult task. The growing agenda of the United Nations includes everything from peace on Earth to celestial bodies and even UFOs. When India decided to remain in the Commonwealth even as an independent country, the nature of its affinity for the British Crown changed and its agenda went beyond the concerns of the former British colonies. After Zimbabwe became independent and apartheid disappeared in South Africa, the only way to survive was to copy the agenda of the United Nations and repeat the declarations of member-states made in other organizations. The role of the Commonwealth was reviewed, but members came to the conclusion that it had continued relevance.
Their justification was not clear even when some other new groups were formed. A Goldman Sachs economist found similarities between fast-growing economies such as China, Russia, India and Brazil and recommended large-scale Western investment in these countries. The respective countries formed an intergovernmental grouping called BRIC and later BRICS, with South Africa being added as the representative of the African continent. It was feared at the time that the presence of China and Russia would make it an anti-American group. as expected. China quickly assumed leadership of BRICS and tried to change the international economic system by setting up a bank with the possibility of credit to its members. The result of this development was diminishing the relevance of another, less ambitious grouping of India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA), which had many similar interests. As candidates for permanent membership of the Security Council, he had specific views on UN reform and South-South cooperation.
on Afghanistan
Afghanistan was on its agenda in the recent BRICS summit and diverse groups were only able to reach a conclusion with varying warnings. Russia and China were more sympathetic to the Taliban than others. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, delegations found some common elements of concern, with dramatically different perspectives. The SCO started out as a friendly group consisting of China and some former republics of the Soviet Union, but with India, Pakistan and Iran, it became a diverse grouping and could not reach agreement. Pakistan naturally seemed victorious, but even Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan could not break free from the shackles of the Taliban in the face of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan. Whether the Chinese presence at these summits and the meetings between Wang Yi and S Jaishankar (Chinese State Counselor and Foreign Minister and Foreign Minister of India, respectively) made any difference to the standoff in Ladakh remains to be seen. But we know that frequent meetings with Chinese leaders do not mean meeting of minds because the pace of Beijing’s thoughts and actions is very unpredictable. Those who saw Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in talks in Mamallapuram (near Chennai) at the second informal summit between India and China in October 2019 would never have imagined they would ever be in an armed conflict .
India and other groups
India also has experience in taking initiatives to encourage groups without Pakistan’s involvement, knowing full well that Pakistan’s presence is a sure recipe for trouble. One of them is the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), an international organization of seven South Asian and Southeast Asian countries that depend on the Bay of Bengal: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand. The group remained dormant for several years until it was revived a few years back as an alternative to SAARC. Although it has an ambitious agenda for regional cooperation, it has not gained much momentum.
Another group that India has championed is the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). The organization was first established in Mauritius in March 1995 as the Indian Ocean Rim Initiative and formally launched on 6–7 March 1997 (then known as the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation) ). It also proceeds without any significant progress.
On the other hand, two active groups, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), are far from us, even though we have a big stake in them. We actively campaigned for membership of both these bodies, but gave up when we did not make any progress. In the process of working with the US on groupings like the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the NSG, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group, we ended up with membership of the Wassenaar and Australia Groups, which we were not interested in.
Quad and AUKUS
The Quad has a history of flirting with India until the Chinese threat became real in 2020, but New Delhi’s reluctance to call the spade a spade has led the US to new alliances such as AUKUS as the second Quad and then the US inspired. Wanted to strengthen himself with allies against China. But France’s response to AUKUS has raised an issue of loyalty among allies, although AUKUS has made it clear that this was only to enable the US to transfer nuclear-powered submarine technology to Australia.
The proliferation of alliances and groups will be the subject of close scrutiny by many countries in light of the new trend initiated by American collective bargaining, a strength of group diplomacy but cannot be effective without a commitment to a common cause. The reason for this is that India should also reconsider the many groups we belong to and rationalize them after a reality check.
TP Srinivasan is the former Ambassador of India to several multilateral bodies, and is currently the Director General of the Kerala International Centre, Thiruvananthapuram.
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