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| Edited By: Shastri Ramachandaran |Source: DNA |Updated: May 26, 2018, 06:05 AM IST
In his four years as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s conduct of external affairs was marked by drive and energy. He is the most peripatetic Prime Minister India has ever had.
As of May 2018, with Sochi in Russia, Modi has visited at least 54 countries on 36 foreign trips across six continents. Besides state visits to the P-5 of the United States, China, Russia, the UK and France, Modi has attended a UN General Assembly session and taken active part in a number of multilateral forums. The latter includes summits of SAARC, BRICS, East Asia, G-20, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), ASEAN-India, CHOGM, India-European Union, World Economic Forum in Davos and the Nuclear Security Summit, apart from the UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris and the founding session of the International Solar Alliance, which was hosted in New Delhi in March.
By any reckoning, that is a lot of travel in 48 months, even if the Prime Minister is his own Foreign Minister, as Modi is. However, he has a competent External Affairs Minister in Sushma Swaraj who plays her assigned role with elan.
What sets apart Modi from his predecessors Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee is that he is neither timid like Singh appeared to be nor defensive as Vajpayee was in the conduct of foreign affairs especially when it came to dealing with the United States. Of course, Modi Sarkar’s policy has been no less US-centric than that of Manmohan Singh or Vajpayee. In fact, Modi went further than Singh did and signed the logistics agreement with the US, which had been hanging fire for nearly 10 years.
At the same time, Modi was bold in his dealings with Iran despite the US under President Donald Trump not viewing the exchanges between New Delhi and Tehran with disapproval if not suspicion. Similarly, Modi was not in the least deterred from going ahead with a business-as-usual approach when it came to his just-concluded informal summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in spite of Russia facing sanctions. Apart from sanctions against Russia, the US has also been actively putting off other countries from engaging with Moscow. There were noises from Washington against the Modi-Putin summit, with specific cautionary notes against weapons purchases, but Modi paid little heed to these; and, thus, quietly asserted that India’s dealings with other powers were India’s business to conduct in its own interests without being subject to uncalled for advice.
For all that, Modi did not let his government’s ties with the US be affected by the fact that he had been denied a visa because of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat when he was Chief Minister. This shows that Modi is capable of setting aside personal feelings in pursuit of larger goals. That may explain his getting US support by way of the “pivot” as well as for the concept of the Indo-Pacific, which melds with India’s Look East Policy that Modi recast as Act East Policy. There is more to these than terminology as evident in the strategic content of India’s relations with East Asian countries, particularly Vietnam which buys military equipment from India. The Act East policy has also led to the revival of the idea of quadrilateral interaction involving the US, Australia, Japan and India.
While giving utmost importance to the relationship with the US, Modi also gave top priority to the neighbourhood. Hence, his invitation to the SAARC heads of government for his swearing-in as Prime Minister. Although the gesture evoked positive responses, the goodwill generated was short-lived especially because of the way the India-Nepal relations played out in 2015-16.
After Nepalese Prime Minister KP Oli’s visit to India, Modi moved to make amends. During his recent visit to Nepal — the third in four years — Modi sought to put behind the bitterness of the past and offered to be a ‘sherpa’ to Nepal in its task of economic development. Elsewhere in the region, the results have been less than memorable though India is able to do what it wants to in Afghanistan.
As far as the extended neighbourhood of East Asia is concerned, Modi scored by getting all 10 heads of ASEAN governments as chief guests for the Republic Day this year.
The real test of India’s success in foreign policy would always be measured by its relations with China and Pakistan. But, the military stand-off in Doklam in mid-2017 undid everything and raised fresh tensions in the Sino-Indian relations. The recent Modi-Xi informal summit held in Wuhan has cleared the air in a big way and the atmosphere is now conducive to intensifying economic cooperation and taking the relationship forward.
Modi may have stuck to the tried and tested bipartisan consensus that prevails in India on foreign policy and national security but he has done so by taking some new initiatives.
In the year ahead, should Modi be able to achieve a breakthrough in the India-Pakistan ties, like Vajpayee did, it would be a crowning achievement. His sights are set on such a prospect but whether that happens depends on the situation in Pakistan including the election outcome. Any decisive turn in the India-Pakistan relations would transform the matrix of relations in the entire region and for the better. Like his predecessors, Modi, too, is said to be striving for that prize.
(The author is an independent political and foreign affairs commentator based in New Delhi)
