EDITORIAL ANALYSIS: Words from Bandung to relive in Bali and Delhi

 Source: The Hindu

• Prelims: Current events of international importance, NATO, BRICS, G20, G7 etc.
• Mains GS Paper II: Significance of G20 for India, Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements involving India or affecting India’s interests.

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

• Three back to back summits in the past fortnight have helped settle the stand, where on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: the BRICS, followed by the G7 Summit, and then the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit in Madrid.
• Prime Minister of India attended the BRICS summit virtually, and then traveled to Germany for the G7 outreach between the seven “most industrialized nations.
• The special invitees this year, namely, Argentina,Indonesia, India, Senegal andSouth Africa.
• India was not a part of the NATO summit, which included an outreach to the United States’s IndoPacific treaty allies, i.e Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Context

Group of Seven (G7):

• It is an intergovernmental organization that was formed in 1975.
• The bloc meets annually to discuss issues of common interest like global economic governance, international security and energy policy.
• The G7 countries are the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.
• All the G7 countries and India are a part of G20.
• The G7 does not have a formal constitution or a fixed headquarters.
• The decisions taken by leaders during annual summits are non-binding.

Major purpose of the G-7:

• It is to discuss and deliberate on international economic issues.
• It sometimes acts in concert to help resolve other global problems, with a special focus on economic issues.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

• Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium.
• It is a military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) of April, 1949, by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
• There are currently 30 member states.
• NATO’s essential and enduring purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means.
• NATO has an integrated military command structure but very few forces or assets are exclusively its own.

BRICS:

• It is the group composed of the five major emerging countries –Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
• It together represents about 42% of the population, 23% of GDP, 30% of the territory and 18% of the global trade.
• In 2011, with South Africa joining the group, the BRICS reached its final composition, incorporating a country from the African continent.
• During the Sixth BRICS Summit in Fortaleza (Brazil) in 2014, the leaders signed the Agreement establishing the New Development Bank (NDB – Shanghai, China).
• They also signed the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement to provide short-term liquidity support to the members.

BRICS-G7-NATO:

In BRICS summit:

• The BRICS Summit hosted by the Chinese President in virtual format was the first such multilateral grouping Russian President Vladimir Putin attended since February24, 2022 (the day Ukraine was invaded).
• China and Russia took aim at the unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.
• The BRICS Beijing Declaration was a consensus document, as each member cited differing “National Positions” on the Ukraine issue.
• BRICS economic initiatives lauded by India:
  • BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), has approved about 17 loans totalling $5 billion for Russian energy and infrastructure projects.
  • Contingent Reserve Arrangement(CRA).
  • BRICS Payments Task Force (BPTF) for coordination between their central banks for an alternative to the SWIFT payment system.
• Russia also proposed building a global reserve currency based on a “basket of currencies”and trading in local currencies.
• Russia will be providing more oil and coal supplies to BRICS countries, which will no doubt raise red flags in the West.
• The possible admission of countries such as Argentina and Iran that have applied to the BRICS mechanism.

In G7 meet:

• In a number of statements,the G7 and the European Union targeted Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s economic aggression.
• However its outreach documents on “Resilient Democracies and Clean and Just Transitions towards Climate Neutrality, the only ones that India And other invitees signed onto, were devoid of any mentions of Russian aggression.

In NATO summit:

• At the NATO meeting, the S, Canada and European countries committed to more NATO actions against “Russian aggression”.
• For The first time,a reference to “systemic competition” from China as a challenge to NATO “interests, security and values”.
• The launch of another Indo Pacific coalition of “Partners in the Blue Pacific” (PBP), i.e., the U.S. , the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Japan, in addition to last year’s Australia, U.K and U.S. (AUKUS).
• The leaders of the five countries that have applied to join NATO, i.e., Finland, Georgia, Sweden, Ukraine, and Bosnia Herzegovina.

India’s stand:

• Global grouping: The outcome of all three summits points to a growing polarization,even battle lines being drawn, between the Western Atlantic Pacific axis and the Russia-China combine.
• Neutral stand: India is committed to a singular strategy, a defensive one, that does not condone Russia for its attacks on Ukraine, but one that does not criticize it either.
• Joining of global economies of China: India has joined China as global economies that have most increased their intake of Russian oil, and where India continues to source fertilizer, cement and other commodities from Russia using different means, including even paying in the Chinese Yuan to circumvent sanctions.
• Diversifying its defense purchase: India is working to diversify its defense purchases from Russia, hostilities with China are high, and a strategic tilt towards the U.S. and Quad partners in the Indo-Pacific is growing.
• Neutral stand on multilateral stage: On the multilateral stage too, India remains a balancing voice along with Brazil and South Africa.
  • India ensured that the BRICS Beijing declaration did not carry the Russian position on the Ukraine war or any criticism of the West
  • Making certain with other partners of the global South that the G7 outreach documents carried no criticism of Russia and China.

Way Forward

• It is time for India to seize the moment for leadership in a world that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the growing polarization and the disruption due to the Ukraine war.
• As the next President of the G20, India also must shoulder the burden of ensuring that the G20 stays together, and reassuring those worried by the brinkmanship of the West on one side and Russia and China on the other.
• Only 40 countries joined the U.S. and Europe led sanctions regime against Russia.
  • This represents a large pool of independently minded countries that do not see it in their own national interest to blindly choose one side over another.
  • India’s National interests would be better served by building a community of those like minded countries (from South America to Africa, the Gulf to South Asia and to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), who cannot afford the hostilities and want to avoid the possibility of global war at all costs.
• In 1955, it was in such a similar moment that India took leadership of(along with countries such as Indonesia and Egypt at the Asian African Conference of 29 newly independent nations, at Bandung), a conference that eventually led to the Non Aligned Movement(NAM).
• This is the time to rethink India’s role in “growing the unaligned area” and bringing the“objective and balanced” outlook Nehru spoke of, to the forefront of India’s strategic policy, by channeling that thought from Bandung to Bali and Delhi this year.

 QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

The USA is facing an existential threat in the form of China, that is much more challenging than the erstwhile Soviet Union.” Explain( UPSC 2021)

(200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)