G20 & the politics of optics : The Tribune India

MK Bhadrakumar

Former Ambassador

If Indian foreign policy is morphing as a tributary of the upcoming election cycle culminating in the 2024 General Election, that does not come as a surprise. Surely, an event of pomp and pageantry becomes a high probability — perhaps, say, a state visit by King Charles III. After all, it is a rare moment in history that a former colony gained on its erstwhile imperial ruler without causing rancour.

India, the poorest G20 member, will be called upon to play second fiddle to the western demand for rules-based order.

Indeed, the diplomatic event slated for September — the G20 Summit that PM Modi will be chairing in New Delhi — too has great optics. Arguably, there is nothing wrong, in principle, if a democratically elected government puts its best foot forward before the electorate to seek a renewed mandate to rule. And these are times of pandemic and economic recession when success stories are hard to come by.

However, a caveat must be added. When the government indulges in an extravaganza like the G20 Summit at enormous cost in time and treasure, there must also be a higher purpose than optics. To that end, the government needs clarity of mind as to what the G20 is about. A radical makeover of the Indian mindset is overdue. Alas, a belief gained ground since the early 1990s as India chose the neoliberal economic policy path and veered toward the Washington consensus, that foreign policy is but an accretion of transactional relationships robustly defined in terms of self-interest.

Ironically, the apogee was reached when India, a revisionist power, ended up as a votary of the ‘rules-based order’, which is a metaphor for the post-Cold War order borne out of the ‘unipolar moment’ of the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ‘end of history’. Suffice it to say, we should grab the G20 Summit as a golden moment to return the country to the moorings of the first four decades of Independent India when foreign policy was suffused with an international outlook, as bequeathed by our freedom struggle, even while safeguarding national interests. A famous quote from English poet John Donne’s sermons is relevant here — ‘No man is an island entire of itself.’

Therefore, the big question is, how does India prepare the G20 for the incoming new Cold War? In geopolitical terms, the G20 correlates with the decline of the West. The financial crisis in 2007 turned out to be a pivotal moment for the international order, when it could no longer be hidden that the US — and the G7 — had ceased to be the locomotive of the world economy. Most certainly, it was a rude awakening that China weathered the crisis on its own steam and helped Asian countries, too.

The G20 summitry was Barack Obama’s brainwave to promote the semblance of a more legitimate international system. Obama’s cerebral mind understood that the G7’s legitimacy was best shored up through a ‘coalition of the willing’ by selectively co-opting a clutch of developing countries hankering for a ‘say’ in matters of global governance. In reality though, the fulcrum never really changed. In fact, today, the US has found renewed use for the G7 and its military tool, NATO, to reimpose the rules-based order in the new conditions of multipolarity, as the current proxy war with Russia testifies.

India has its dual task cut out for it — to steer G20 discourse and collective action to advance global economic stability, and, secondly, to speak up for the Global South at a time when the world economic outlook remains bleak. The IMF and other international agencies have scaled back a number of G20 country forecasts. There is no question that the focus of the September summit should be on arresting the fragmentation of the world economy and pushing back the creation of geopolitical blocs and shifting the narrative back toward economic cooperation and globalisation.

Plainly put, while India keeps saying that war has no place in today’s world, it blithely overlooks that there are wars of many kinds which also include the West’s trade and technology wars and its weaponisation of sanctions for geopolitical purposes. War ensues when the door gets shut against dialogue and the non-western world is denied the space to safeguard their legitimate security interests and strategic autonomy. It is in this respect that India’s selective ‘neutrality’ vis-a-vis the US’ proxy war in Ukraine becomes unsustainable, in comparison with China’s holistic outlook.

The bottom line is that on the one hand, the crusading spirit behind rules-based order led to wars — Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya (and the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine) — while on the other hand, accelerating globalisation has created new dynamics in economic and political terms which need to be assimilated peacefully. In institutional terms, too, there is unfinished business. The G20 is overstuffed with rich western countries, most of them erstwhile colonial powers. Brigandage and mercantilism come naturally to them as a way of life. What is the rules-based order we are talking about when a sovereign country’s assets could be frozen by the western banking system arbitrarily — be it of Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela or Russia? What emerges is that, fundamentally, so long as the American dollar remains the ‘world currency’, things will remain just the same. How can G20 make a difference?

India, the poorest G20 member, is obliged to speak up for the Global South. But make no mistake, the West has its own priorities — Russia’s resurgence and China as a ‘peer competitor’. While the optics of the G20 Summit is guaranteed, India will be called upon to play second fiddle to the western demand for rules-based order.