Indians won’t mind an animated suspension of foreign policy

Foreign policy takes a back seat in India’s election cycle. That reflects the nation's priorities and is in sync with what the Germans call zeitgeist — the spirit of current history — as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

This wasn’t how it seemed prior to the announcement of the general elections, when foreign policy issues surged in the media. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unceremoniously brought to the centre-stage fiery controversies such as Katchatheevu, diplomatic spats with Germany and the United States, and India-China tensions. The nadir was reached when India extended its “heartfelt congratulations" to Taiwan following the victory of the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] candidate in the recent elections, with just over 40 per cent of votes. The DPP was thrilled. 

What India found momentous in the Taiwan election results remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Was it that Beijing’s manifest desire to see a more conciliatory party win the election did not materialise? Or, that Beijing can take some solace in the fact that the DPP candidate did not win an outright majority and that his presidency will be constrained by the party’s loss of the legislature? Or, because India has some Philistine consideration like piggy-riding Taiwan’s chip industry? There are no easy answers.

A plausible explanation could be that the BJP was testing the waters of electoral politics and found that opposition parties are not to be distracted from their focus on the salacious issues on the platter such as Arvind Kejriwal’s detention, electoral bonds, price rise, the grave agrarian crisis, etc. which many Indians feel in the blood and feel along the heart. 

Arguably, though, it paid to inject India-China tensions into the campaign circuit to highlight a muscular diplomacy towards two superpowers out of three in the global arena, as the display of a confident India being increasingly assertive, unlike under the Congress’ rule. Beijing of course took the charade in its stride. Indeed, when Modi made a course correction in the Newsweek interview, Beijing was only too eager for fence-mending, pinning hopes, perhaps, that in a third term in power, Modi might well seek a historic foreign policy legacy devolving upon normalisation of relations with China. To be sure, such a turn is also entirely conceivable, since Modi has an uncanny sense of China’s rise, as viewed all the way from the vantage point of Gandhinagar, which no ‘China expert’ can claim to have. Curiously, Modi also defiantly chose a flag carrier of the US establishment to message his overture. 

Isn’t it a good thing that foreign policy is on autopilot and the focus is on domestic issues for the nearly 1 billion Indians eligible to vote who are agonising over whether to give Modi a record-equalling third straight term? After all, the three cataclysmic events defining world politics today — in Eurasia, West Asia, and the Asia-Pacific — will be in a state of suspended animation between now and November, giving that gut-wrenching feeling that you cannot do anything because you are waiting for something to happen.

The Ukraine war can end only in a Russian victory, but the Western mindset still refuses to accept the reality that such a settlement will have to be on Moscow’s terms. Thus, the trajectory of the nascent Russian offensive is going to be fateful in the coming months till rasputitsa sets in — ‘season of bad roads’ in Russian — which has repeatedly affected wars in Eastern Europe by causing military vehicles and artillery pieces to become mired in the autumnal mud and encumbered the military campaigns of Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany during Operation Barbarossa.

When it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict, Israel will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiating table to discuss a two-state solution, and the chances of US President Joe Biden being willing or able to handle that daunting challenge are almost zero; while on the other hand, a Donald Trump victory may mean all bets are off. 

In Asia-Pacific, Biden is seeking a stable, predictable interim with China as he prepares to make his desperate re-election bid, during which lines of communication between Washington and Beijing must remain open to responsibly manage competition and prevent unintended conflict. 

India is not in a position to influence any of these events fraught with variables, where ‘the moving finger writes, and having written, moves on’, as Omar Khayyam once wrote.

(M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.