By: W.P.S Sidhu
Hosting international summits inevitably offers a country the opportunity (if managed well) to lead the agenda and provide leadership to the meeting; enhance the role of the institution in serving its members and providing global public goods; and, in doing so also advance its own national, regional and global interests and standing. While India might have sought to achieve these objectives in hosting the 8th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Goa, the results are at best mixed and disappointing at worst.
First, India, under the marketing obsessed Narendra Modi government, could not
resist the temptation of coining a catchy but corny theme for the summit — “Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions”, which translates into the painfully obvious acronym BRICS. Additionally, and in keeping with the same management jargon fetish, India adopted the I4C (Institution building, Implementation, Integrating, Innovation and Continuity) approach. In reality, however, none of these were evident in the summit proceedings, which were inevitably overshadowed by one geopolitical agenda: how to isolate Pakistan.
Second, India, which registered the highest growth among all BRICS and indeed G20 members, was unable to leverage its contribution towards the global economic recovery into a greater leadership role of the institution. Instead, the summit declaration makes no mention of India’s singular contribution to the global economic recovery (albeit by default). The only noteworthy development of the BRICS in serving its member’s economic agenda are the achievements of the New Development Bank (NDB), which is providing a crucial impetus for renewable energy projects. Whether these projects and even the NDB can be sustained remains to be seen.
Third, instead of using the BRICS summit to push for greater economic growth (the original objective of the grouping) and a greater global governance role, New Delhi sought to use it more for the singular geopolitical objective of dealing with Pakistan by highlighting terrorism and by inviting BIMSTEC (The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand – for a mini-summit to stress India’s SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) minus one (Pakistan) approach.
In doing so New Delhi risks its global standing and national interests in three ways. First, while India’s frustration in dealing with Pakistan (especially its sponsoring of cross-border terrorism) is evident, venting it in every plurilateral and multilateral setting will invariably lead to a re-hyphenated relationship, which is detrimental to New Delhi’s goals.
Second, this approach also leaves India vulnerable to China’s veto (which predictably was expected to stand by its ‘all-weather’ ally Pakistan) and also highlights China’s growing economic and geopolitical influence in India’s immediate neighborhood. Unsurprisingly then, despite Modi’s desperate speech identifying Pakistan as the “mothership of terrorism,” China refused to allow any specific mention of state-sponsored terrorism or Pakistan in the declaration, which simply carried an anodyne reference to terrorism. It must be particularly irksome that Russia (despite the renewed bromance with India) demurely followed China’s lead on this subject.
Similarly, while the BRICS-BIMSTEC meetings might have been conceived by India as an alternative to the cancelled SAARC summit (which was to be hosted by Pakistan and was called off following its boycott by several member nations, including India), it ended up underlined that the BIMSTEC countries have closer economic ties and interests with China than India. One indication of this was Xi Jingping’s visit to Bangladesh before the Goa BRICS summit and the announcement of Chinese investment of about $40 billion (several times that of India) while another was the curious ‘coincidental’ meeting between China and Nepal, which India reportedly gatecrashed.
In fact, instead of host India, China appears to have benefitted the most and advanced its interest the furthest over the course of the Goa summit. Indeed, with a successful flight of two astronauts to the Chinese space station coinciding with the BRICS summit, Beijing was literally flying high. Moreover, the maiden visit of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to China and his announcement of the “separation” from the United States, as well as his decision not to pursue the ruling of the international permanent court of arbitration on the South China Seas, highlight the growing global strategic clout of Beijing. In this context it is very likely that unless China is effectively checked, the BRICS (like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) will become another vehicle to advance Beijing’s global agenda.
Against these developments India’s instinct might be to declare BRICS irrelevant and opt out (as it is doing with SAARC and the Non-Aligned Movement). However, this is unlikely to serve India’s long-term interests.
Opting out of existing groupings will simply allow China a free reign (even in those organizations where it is not a member but has loyal proxies, such as SAARC). Instead, it might be better for India to remain engaged and (along with others) to counter China where possible. For instance, at the Goa summit, India along with Brazil and South Africa were able to nix China’s proposal for a BRICS free trade agreement.
Clearly, India needs to remain engaged in existing institutions so as to balance China. Additionally, there is a need to revive the nearly forgotten India, Brazil, South Africa group (the three democratic BRICS nations that are not members of the UN Security Council) and, perhaps, enlarge it to include countries like Turkey, Indonesia and South Korea to develop alternatives to China-centric groupings.
Similarly, India also needs to invest more in building groups that bridge the north-south divide and help to counter China’s growing dominance. One such group is the G4 (Brazil, India, Germany and Japan) aspirants to the United Nations Security Council. Until now the group has focused solely on permanent membership of the Council. However, it might be time to enlarge the agenda to examine how these countries can work together to enhance global governance, which is not held hostage to the traditional east-west contestation and can, perhaps, balance China.
India’s hosting the 8th BRICS summit was a missed opportunity to advance New Delhi’s interest and to enhance the role of BRICS in global governance. It cannot afford to let parochial political interest jeopardize its strategic global future.
W.P.S. Sidhu is Visiting Clinical Associate Professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation.