IIt’s India’s turn! In case you missed it, earlier this month, India will lead the table of G20 countries. India decided to delay one year in taking up the appointed role and will now End Its presidency in December 2023. You can guess that this delay was chosen to coincide with India’s domestic calendar as it is marching strongly towards the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. could be possible. Whether it is the US, the architect of the G20, or India, currently in its chair, domestic politics is set to play a bigger role in shaping a new international order.
The greatest temptation of the present day is to confuse the narrow for the global and the national for the international. Early indicators point to India’s inability or strategy to actually play into this temptation.
India’s leadership in the G20 has come at a turning point in global affairs. One, the duality of a complex energy crisis and rising inflation has given priority to the self-interest of each nation. Globalization is rapidly losing ideological momentum, even though the world is more connected than ever. Two, COVID-19 and the global shutdown during the pandemic have certainly put a halt, if not halted, on much of the developed world’s relationship with China. Finally, and above all, Russia’s—now nearly year-long—war on Ukraine is testing and changing the nature of alliances and antagonisms. The old certainties of ‘blocks’ and ‘partnerships’ are also gone. Look no further than Europe’s new isolation as the US chooses a relatively inward stance on Ukraine.
Crucially, the once clear but conflicting norms and ideologies of international relations appear up in smoke. It is difficult to plunge the world into an ideological battle, at least in the name of liberal internationalism, because its brutality and hypocrisy have crept in. In short, it is a time of global crisis.
Read also:
China and the new century of crisis
Ironically, the G20 was empowered and established at the end of the last global crisis. A relatively young multilateral forum, it was established shortly after the 2008 financial crisis under the presidency of Barack Obama. The G20 primarily focuses on global economic orders. Barring the entry of emerging economies such as India and Brazil, and for all the glitz, the G-20 is but a continuation of what has come to be known as the Bretton Woods system. Forged in 1945, it notably privileged the US dollar as the currency of global exchange, and empowered the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a creditor of sovereign debts, and much more.
Seventy-seven years later, the Bretton Woods system is looking out of date as it has a major contender in China. Officially now the world’s largest creditor, China also overwhelms the other arm of the Bretton Woods system, the World Bank. As the centerpiece of unbalanced structural adjustment programs, the IMF has helped make China the preferred lender to many African and Asian economies. Recent Western criticism of the IMF is certainly on point – particularly on its bad habit of meddling in the domestic politics of borrowers. Although the West, perhaps, Waking up late to self-criticism, the world has, in important ways, already moved on. If in doubt, ask Pakistan or Sri Lanka, two of China’s biggest debtors.
China may or may not be as strong as it was three years ago. Nevertheless, as recently concluded 20th The Communist Party Congress signaled that China is ready to look away from the West and is keen to focus on the Global South. For all intents and purposes, the so-called and much publicized conscious separation of the West and China is becoming a very mutual affair.
This is not to say that the G20 does not matter. far from it. The G20 is relatively more representative of the current state of the global power game. In contrast, consider the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which is zealously hidden from view of the Cold War architecture of the world order.
This makes India’s position and role even more important, even if it is prone to risks.
Read also: Joko Widodo leads G20 in difficult times, Modi also has responsibility for the underdeveloped
of India realistic foreign policy
In dealing with these turbulent times, one of India’s assets will be External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. As a career diplomat with close knowledge of China and the US over decades, right up to the current global crisis, Jaishankar’s ringside view and experience is phenomenal. While there has been no official launch of a new ‘India Way’, even a cursory glance at the newspapers – to say nothing of India’s new strategic and think-tank architecture – a new foreign policy confirms the view. Even though eyes are on it, it’s not just about Ukraine. Of course, India remains ‘neutral’ even as it continues to buy oil and more from Russia. This is in continuation with the precedent set with Iran by defying US sanctions to buy oil from the country. Nevertheless, there are significant elements of discontinuity.
For one, while many Western observers take India’s current stance on Ukraine as an example of its old policy of non-alignment, the Indian strategic establishment clearly casts it as a pragmatic pursuit of national self-interest. This mainly counts as successful spinning Because Nehruvian non-alignment was neither completely altruistic nor completely idealistic. But words and labels matter.
Second, in reorganizing its current position in these contexts, India, under Jaishankar, appears as a realistic player on the global stage. That is to say, more than beliefs and ideas, the nation-state and its interests are the declared determinants of India’s internationalism. For Realists, the international arena is understood not as defined by our common humanity but as the principal arena of conflict and competition.
Finally, global unrest is being driven by India’s insistence that the world is ‘multipolar’, as it undermines the growing bipolarity of the US and China. Rightly or wrongly, India wants to take advantage of this language as a number of new acronyms appear for various multilateral engagements, from QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) to BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) . These alphabet soups are hard to maintain, which obviously doesn’t bode well for their power.
As India leads the G20, it is clear that the Bretton Woods system has peaked. Countries that had seen themselves stabilized by the monetary regimes of that system are now closely linked to China economically. The Global South has never been more strategically empowered, at least in its collective bargaining position, as China and the US remain globally pulled and distracted by domestic demands. Yet, for all its pragmatic power, India’s new realism arguably cannot be sufficient, let alone a winning strategy. Mainly because many countries in the Global South are now competitors rather than ideological allies. Non-alignment, at the very least, symbolically succeeded in reducing the multiplicity of competition.
Looking towards India’s leadership in the G20, Jaishankar reinforced the New Realist approach. He highlights India’s recent capacity-building experience in overcoming COVID Vaccine rollout and digital infrastructure as guiding drivers for India’s G20 Leadership. This seems to coincide with India’s domestic policy priorities and even recent achievements. Nothing wrong with that. Except that it’s just that—a little too homely. But in spite of this, all Indians do not get tired of saying that India is big (in scale)! At its best, this so-called realism appears to be a policy formulation and at its worst a short-sighted vision. It may add fireworks to a general election but beyond that it will be a moist satire.
No doubt it is India’s destined turn towards the sun. For all the bang and excitement, if the enormity of the opportunity to shape the world is matched with a grand vision, this will truly be India’s global moment.
Shruti Kapila is Professor of Indian History and Global Political Thought at the University of Cambridge. She tweets @shrutikapila. views are personal
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)