Neighbourhood concerns

Assertive self-interest may weaken India's SCO presidency

Although little was expected at the Council of Foreign Ministers, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), in Goa on Friday, the events that transpired do not raise much hope for India’s presidency of this important regional political organisation. The principal objective of the Goa meeting was to prepare for the upcoming SCO Heads of State summit in July. The agenda is a consequential one, taking place in the second year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, counter-terrorism concerns, especially in Afghanistan, and settling trade in national currencies, which is a critical development, given growing western sanctions on Russian crude oil. The SCO presidency is also important for India because it underlines the adroit diplomatic balancing act it maintains between its US-led alliance, continuing purchases of Russian crude oil, and its membership of a body that is perceived as the eastern equivalent of the National Atlantic Treaty Organization. From that standpoint, the SCO presidency was expected to enhance India’s regional and global status. The Goa meet had acquired an added dimension when Pakistan’s Bilawal Bhutto Zardari agreed to attend, becoming the first Pakistan foreign minister to visit since 2011. But any expectations of a productive discussion were overwhelmed by the visible verbal hostilities between India, Pakistan, and China, which underlined starkly the regional fault lines.

With Pakistan, there was no bilateral meeting with the Indian foreign minister. But the two traded barbs before the SCO delegates with India’s external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, seeking to focus on issues of particular interest to India – terrorism by non-state actors, terror financing, and the need to respect territorial integrity, including the construction of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which violates India’s sovereignty by cutting through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the territory India claims as its own. These are valid issues for India, not least because Mr Zardari’s visit coincided with a terrorist attack in Rajouri in which five Indian soldiers were killed. But a bilateral meeting would have been the more appropriate forum to air these grievances. Indeed, the barbs aimed at Pakistan in an open meeting provided the Pakistan foreign minister an opportunity for a crude riposte at a press conference, provoking another response from his Indian counterpart, accusing Mr Zardari of being a “promoter, justifier and … and spokesman of a terrorism industry which is the mainstay of Pakistan”. This is hardly the stuff of reasoned high-table diplomacy.

With China, Mr Jaishankar spoke of a “frank discussion” with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang over the border issue. This meeting was held within the discretion of a bilateral meeting. But the foreign minister’s observation that “India-China relations are not normal and cannot be normal if peace and tranquillity in the border areas are disturbed” may not be considered helpful. It stands in contrast to a once settled practical position that India and China would separate the boundary issue from other more substantive issues such as economic relations. The upshot of such diplomatic assertiveness is that Pakistan and China have chosen to double down on their alliance. A day after India questioned its validity, the Chinese and Pakistan foreign ministers addressed a joint press conference in Islamabad and it spoke of the utility of the CPEC. In choosing to assert its self-interest within a regional rubric, India may have weakened its stature as a mature interlocutor on the global stage.