Mainstream geopolitics and sociology are strange bedfellows. Global foreign policy or supranational agenda in most of the post-war era was largely developed in stealth, thereby maintaining a thick separation between domestic politics and foreign policy. Indian leadership in forging the recent G20 Delhi declaration under its presidency, privileging the agenda of international development and thus a voice of the global south; seems to have substantively reconfigured the global power balance. I argue that such reconfiguration is a direct result of an osmosis now plausible between domestic politics and foreign policy. And it is the global political sociology that has been instrumental in dismantling stealth, thereby being a harbinger of affecting the balance of power.
Isolated from most of the populace or mass politics, post-war years saw closely niched elite Second World War imperial victors forming the United Nations (UN). This was largely in the Westphalian tradition to primarily contain conflict amongst major international powers. Secondarily, the formulation was also reflective of the erstwhile global power differentials. Accordingly, the UN-directed supranational system was employed to streamline the flow of development aid to a very vast portion of the global populace. For most of the post-war period (and especially post the Cold War), the world thus primarily maintained the status quo and rested on the dominance and imperatives of U.S. military, political, and economic power.
Asymmetric globalisation
Unlike the post-war decades though, the global onset of economic liberalisation now led to tempering of the ‘old’ North-South divide as ‘structurally adjusted’ nations (read mainly China, and to some extent India – given their size) gradually embarked on a metamorphosis and transformed into ‘emerging markets.’ These turned out to be lucrative investment destinations for foreign and national capital. Such re-territorialising capital augured in a speculative world of mega infrastructure projects, pipelines and ports, special economic zones, as well as zones of abandonment; as capital rapidly moved in search of cheaper manufacturing and ever-new market territories (Kaur 2022).
The deeper horizons heralding a challenge to the global development agenda in this ‘new’ movement of capital are allegedly fuelled by an influx of migrants to the wider ‘West.’ This resulted in myriad anxieties ranging from loss of jobs to threats over cultural identity. Such asymmetric globalisation catalysed by increasingly niche dependence of mainly American and other Western markets on China for example led to a resurgence of revisionist populisms (read nationalisms) in the ‘West’ (Nikarge 2016). These populists formatively pinned the blame on elite technocrats and bureaucrats who constituted a part of the governing establishment’s coterie.
The onset of COVID-19, global inflation arising from economic backlash catalysed by COVID-19, and disrupted global supply chains due to the unfolding Ukraine crisis now further accentuated the spillover of populist crises onto global foreign policy space. China especially now forms the altered image for the ‘old’ Western power bloc, even as this bloc scrambles to affect a balance of power on the geostrategic chess board. Defence and security again form one of the major pivots to consolidate such balance, amongst climate and related myriad development concerns of the wider global populace. And India with its relatively burnished global democratic credentials, competitively offered a major decisive fulcrum to affect such balance on the smorgasbord of foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific.
Anarchy in the sphere of Global Foreign Policy
One shouldn’t be surprised that the view from Capitol Hill over the last decade has become bleak. In challenging the Western liberal order, both China and Russia are embroiled in territorial disputes. And the US itself is committed to Biden’s domestic agenda even while turning away from international institutions like the UN and World Trade Organization (WTO). Nationalist revisionism also manifests in the scepticism about free trade in the United States, the military build-up in once pacifist Japan, and the rearmament of Germany. Japan’s commitment to the principle of a free and open Indo-Pacific, the Quad (the initial Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a partnership with Australia, India, and the United States), and other initiatives arose from its anxieties of both China’s rise and the United States’ possible retrenchment.
UN, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, WTO, G20, and others failed to act on issues of development and, more urgently, the debt crisis plaguing the developing countries. Most countries in the South thereby started losing trust in the legitimacy and fairness of the international system. A ‘loose’ sense of anarchy began to creep into international relations. In the absence of a hegemon, many countries are unhappy with the world and seek to change it to their advantage. It is truly a world that is adrift (Menon 2022).
Indian Moment: Reconfiguring the global power balance
The disruption in the global foreign policy landscape (broadly catalysed by asymmetric and insouciant globalisation in the wider ‘West’) opened a space for sovereigns to manoeuvre the international landscape. It is under the horizon of such an offer that ruptured global foreign policy space cracked open an aperture for the Indian sovereign to embrace and expand its geostrategic influence. Indian sovereign over the last decade is itself plugged into a diet of majoritarian nationalism.
The foreign policy landscape is now increasingly catapulted by osmosis that harbingers the iterative potential for sovereign powers to marshal domestic mass politics to shape foreign policy ambitions and vice versa. It is thus in the midst of the negotiation of sovereigns catalysed by mass support now – that a space opens up to potentially shape the contours of the supranational governance agenda. And Indian Foreign Policy’s recourse around its G20 presidential year to ‘plurilateralism’ turned out both to be a characteristic and symptom of such an opening. While hedging multiple partnerships yet maintaining strategic autonomy, Indian ambition is to become Vishwaguru or a teacher to the world (Hall 2019: 83). And Indian diplomacy showcased exemplary leadership in recognising and seizing this political opportunity to effect a global consensus through its G20’s Delhi declaration.
The major hurdle for lack of a consensus on the declaration was the big gulf between those (mostly the powerful G7) who wanted a condemnation of the Russian war in Ukraine and those (including likes of Russia and China), who wanted no mention whatsoever of that subject. Others (like Indians) also maintained that several other salient issues like climate and development deserved the focus of the declaration. Indian diplomacy meant forging a ready formula to bridge the gap, and that was a significant achievement because when there is a Summit without a joint communique, it is always seen as a setback for the presidency.
After declaration
In bridging the fault lines across G20 and formulating a declaration, India has exhibited adroit diplomacy and accommodation. The final declaration in effect has something for everyone, and at the same time – it is cast across wider horizons that are tangentially enmeshed in both – bringing centrality to the global south’s international development agenda as well as denoting concerns over asymmetric globalisation. This is certainly a fillip to India’s already burnished democratic credentials.
Shashi Tharoor from the opposition ranks rightly lauded the New Delhi Declaration, saying that it “undoubtedly” represents “a diplomatic triumph for India.” He also mentioned that the spirit of accommodation that the Indian government ushered in its diplomatic external relations is sorely lacking in its internal engagements across the political and public sphere. Certainly, India’s G20 success – in embellishing its democratic credentials, has indeed enhanced the value of every Indian vote. Will the citizenry be vigilant enough now to carry this onus of upholding democracy not just within the national borders, but putatively for the globe?[i]
[i] Several democratic freedom indices like V-dem have been critical about declining democratic index in India. Government of India has variously termed these and other global indices (like on Press freedom, or the one put forth by US Commission on International Religious Freedom) as often biased, flawed, and methodologically poor. Occasionally, a dissenting note also mentions the need too develop indigenous indices. But one is yet to see any development in this regard.
References:
Hall, I. (2019). Modi and the reinvention of Indian foreign policy. Bristol University Press.
Kaur, R. (2023). The Ukraine question: How should the South respond? International Politics, 60(1), 264-268.
Nikarge, S. (2016). The Big Exit and Its Global Bricolage. Economic & Political Weekly, 51(33), 50-52.
Menon, S. (2022 Aug 3). Nobody Wants the Current World Order: How All the Major Powers-Even the United States-Became Revisionists.Foreign Affairshttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/nobody-wants-current-world-order
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Sacnik has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains.
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Standard disclaimers apply: Views expressed here are those of the author, and such research did not incur any funding..