Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Russia shortly after assuming office has drawn criticism in the West, particularly within foreign policy and media circles. Some voices in India also argue that Russia is now a declining power increasingly aligned with and reliant on China. They, therefore, suggest that India should opt decisively for a stronger partnership with the West.
There is no reason for these critics in the West to throw tantrums over Modi's visit. This visit follows logically from the position India has taken on preserving its long-standing ties with Russia, notwithstanding Western pressures to dilute them in the wake of the latter's military intervention in Ukraine. The resumption of summit-level contacts with Russia, interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's pre-occupation in the Ukraine conflict, was important, and a delay would have been interpreted as a cooling-off of ties.
The G7 Summit
Modi, despite his preoccupations at home following the general elections that produced unexpected results for him and his party, decided to attend the G7 summit as a priority as it provided an occasion to interact with key Western partners and confidently signal a continuity in foreign policy in his third term. He followed this up with a visit to Russia, again on a priority basis, as it was important to resume the tradition of summit-level dialogue between the two countries, especially as the international landscape has become more alarming with the emergence of a new Cold War-like divisive atmosphere, which is also impacting India-Russia bilateral exchanges and the Global South in general.
That the West has felt frustrated by India's "neutrality" on the Ukraine conflict is a reality. This frustration has bubbled over with Modi's visit to Russia to the point of diplomatic, intellectual and geopolitical pettiness. Modi's embrace of Putin has elicited much disparagement, even though it is well-known that this is Modi's signature greeting style.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's outburst has been particularly intemperate. He has chided Modi as the leader of the world's largest democracy for hugging a bloody criminal in Moscow and has ludicrously claimed that this had inflicted a devastating blow to peace efforts in Ukraine. This is ironic in view of the position he and his Western supporters have taken against any dialogue with Putin, of demonising him, and believing that peace will come only with an upper hand on the battlefield.
Zelenskyy's Own Position
Zelenskyy forgot that Modi had embraced him too at the G7 summit, even though the two have not had a history of close personal contacts that Modi has had with Putin. More pertinently, by postponing elections, banning the opposition and imposing censorship, Zelenskyy's democratic credentials and that of Ukraine have been widely called into question. Russia, too, describes his regime as a criminal one, but that did not deter Modi from embracing Zelenskyy.
Some media commentators in India have also questioned the diplomatic wisdom of embracing Putin, especially in light of the bombing of a children's hospital in Kyiv during his visit to Moscow (though the facts surrounding this incident are disputed). They seem to forget that had Modi not done so, it would have sparked widespread speculation about the significance of such a snub, potentially risking the atmosphere of the visit and the warmth of personal relations with Putin. The purpose of the visit was to underscore India's commitment to its ties with Russia, which would have been undermined.
Furthermore, critics should be aware of the fact that Ukraine, too, has caused civilian casualties in Russia, such as the bombing of beach-goers in Crimea with NATO-supplied long-range weapons. Russia has raised these issues of Ukraine targeting civilians in the UN Security Council.
Modi Bats For Peace
Modi chose a different way to address the issue of the Kyiv bombing occurring while he was in Moscow. With his remark to Putin at Samarkand during the SCO summit that "today was not an era of war" in mind, which played diplomatically to our advantage as it was seen in the West as a rebuke to Putin, Modi in his public remarks in Moscow, with Putin at his side, said that he had had a detailed discussion with him on the issue of deaths of innocent children in war, conflict, or terrorist attacks and that these were "very painful" and "heart-wrenching". Solutions, he said, "are not possible on battlegrounds" and that peace had to be found "only through talks". Modi was artful in making a generalised statement that could be interpreted more narrowly or widely as one chooses, either as referring to the Kyiv attack, or, earlier, Ukrainian attacks, whether in Crimea or elsewhere inside Russian border areas.
The West has been fully aware of India's position on the conflict in Ukraine. India has refused to take sides, has abstained on UN resolutions, and has resisted US pressure to dilute ties with Russia. By this time, Western circles should have internalised this reality in its dealings with India and accepted it as a point of disagreement. India is preserving its ties with Russia not to spite the West but to safeguard its broader national interests.
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That Modi's visit coincided with the NATO summit in Washington DC was used as a point of criticism shows how much this feeling of not getting its way is exasperating for Western circles. India does not have to adjust the calendar of Modi's visits abroad to that of NATO's meetings. India has very good ties with individual NATO members; Modi had already met the core of NATO members at the G7 meeting in Italy. NATO is already deeply involved in Ukraine; the meeting in Washington D.C. is a continuation of that involvement, but the agenda of the summit was not Ukraine alone, as it included the Western Pacific too, as signified by the presence of Japan and South Korea.
NATO's Behaviour
Any independent foreign policy or any notion of strategic autonomy cannot be reduced to this level of changing the dates of the Prime Minister's external visits to cater to the perceived sensitivities of others. There is no instance of NATO countries showing that degree of concern for India's sensitivities.
The US has officially commented on Modi's visit. In a sense, it was inevitable because of the nature of US press briefings, at which it pronounces on virtually everything happening in the world. This is part of its imperial oversight over global affairs. It has reiterated its position that ties with Russia are part of the frank dialogue it has with India, and that it spoke to the Indian side while Modi was undertaking his Moscow visit, and that it expected India to support efforts to realise a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. Furthermore, given its longstanding relationship with Russia, India could urge Putin to end his "brutal and unprovoked war". All this is not new and India could take it in its stride, even if this approach of interfering in our ties with Russia does not help in strategic trust-building.
Apart from the State Department and the White House spokespersons, the US National Security Adviser has also pronounced on India-Russia relations following Modi's visit in questionable terms. He advised India not to "bet" on Russia in the longer term as a reliable partner and asserted that Russia would always choose China over India "any time of the week" in any India-China conflict. He has subsequently spoken to Ajit Doval, India's NSA, with the Indian side projecting a forward-looking tone of the conversation. The US ambassador in India has also cautioned India about pursuing "strategic autonomy".
One can take all this as part of political differences that even allies have and remain unflustered, keep the overall picture in mind and not be distracted too much by perceptions of a discord in how national interest is interpreted by each country. Nevertheless, the US needs to better understand India's understanding of its national interest.
Russia And China
The focal point of Modi's visit to Russia was essentially to resume the summit-level dialogue, take stock of the ties, how to give more impetus to them, overcome the hurdles created by the draconian sanctions on Russia, particularly on the financial front, and ways to consolidate the recent gains in bilateral trade and simultaneously address the highly skewed and unsustainable trade balance against India.
The geopolitical situation has become more complex, with Russia and China pitted against the West in a revival of Cold War-type tensions, the West seeking to preserve its dominant position in the international order created by them after 1945, and Russia and China, to different degrees and with different motives, seeking a more multipolar world, and countries like India straddling this divide and increasing their room for manoeuvre. Assessing how Putin views Russia's ties with China, how he places India in this triangular equation would have been important for Modi.
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Russia has a vision of BRICS as a counter to the West's hegemony and views its expansion as boosting multipolarity. It is chairing the BRICS summit this year. For India, a consensus on the criteria for expansion would be important and the defining basis should not be geopolitical rivalry. Exploring Putin's thinking on this subject would have been important for Modi.
Putin's perspectives on the end game in the Ukraine conflict would have been of particular interest. The outlook for peace seems bleak with NATO increasingly committing itself to the proxy war and Russia determined to defend itself against what it sees as an existential threat from the West. India and Russia found a common language on the very sensitive issue of Ukraine, as neither side would have wanted any nuance in it that could give rise to unwanted commentary, and they succeeded in this.
Russia-India Ties: A Sea Change
Modi received great personal attention from Putin, which reflects a change in equations between the two countries. He was received at the airport by the First Deputy Prime Minister, a distinct change from the time when I was Foreign Secretary and later ambassador to Russia. Putin spent four-and-a-half hours with him over dinner at his private residence, the one-on-one official meeting lasted two and a half hours, and Putin accompanied him to a technology exhibition for an hour and they drove back together afterwards. They had ample time to have a detailed discussion on issues of shared interest. Modi was also given Russia's highest civilian state award, The Order of Saint Andrews the Apostle.
The joint statement is no doubt thin on concrete outcomes, but that was not the central purpose of the visit. It is a document that lists what needs to be done to bolster ties. The document recognises the necessity to actively explore new avenues for cooperation to forge a contemporary, balanced, mutually beneficial, sustainable and long-term partnership while further strengthening cooperation in the traditional areas.
(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
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