Coping with a World Adrift: Anchoring Foreign Policy

Mr. Nitin Pai, Co-Founder & Director, The Takshashila Institution, participated in a discussion on ‘Coping with a World Adrift: Anchoring Foreign Policy’ with Ambassador Shivshankar Menon, former National Security Advisor, on Friday, September 17, 2022 at the Bangalore International Centre. The discussion was moderated by Ambassador Latha Reddy, former Deputy National Security Advisor to India.

The discussion focused on prescriptions for countries, nations, and firms to cope with rising uncertainty and higher geopolitical risk in the international system, which is adrift between competing global orders.

In his opening remarks, Ambassador Menon said that the post-Cold War unipolarity in world order has effectively ended and that nations today find themselves in between world orders. There is no agreement on the emergence of a new international order.

Mr. Pai traced the anxiety of the modern age to four broad trends - geopolitical uncertainty due to lack of established international order, breakdown of geo-economic consensus over liberalisation and free trade, radical politics enabled by Information Age and topical challenges such as climate change. These four trends have not only made the world adrift but have also left individuals adrift in the world and are causing serious downstream political consequences.

To Amb. Reddy’s question on whether India's participation at international groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) represents multi-alignment, strategy autonomy or indecisiveness, Amb. Menon stressed that in the absence of a structured international order, Indian foreign policy needs to work towards furthering India’s interests at every available forum. However, Mr. Pai was critical of India’s participation in forums like the SCO as there are diplomatic costs of being associated with such groupings, when bilateral relationships offer a better alternative to engage with these nations.

On the issue of China’s rise and challenges arising from an assertive China, Amb. Menon said that India’s external balancing is not the best solution to counter China. India must focus on growing economically and militarily to alter the relative balance of power in her favour. The external debt crisis brewing in other subcontinental nations could also provide an opportunity for India to raise its influence. Mr. Pai made the case for shifting India’s confrontation with China from the Himalayan borders to the maritime and trade domain in the Indo-Pacific region.

Addressing the next theme of Russia-Ukraine conflict, Mr. Menon characterised it as a battle for European order and added that regardless of the outcome of Russian invasion of Ukraine, the turmoil in Europe is likely to continue. Mr. Pai stressed on the need for India to remain on the winning side of the conflict and given that an overwhelming majority of India’s trade partners have condemned Russia’s actions, it is clear where India’s strategic objective must lie.

Responding to the concern of Indian foreign policy increasingly becoming a politically contested issue domestically, both the speakers viewed this as democratisation of foreign policy. They agreed that it is a positive development since the decisions of policymakers have a bearing on the lives of common people. Mr. Pai added that it is expected of the Indian media to provide the citizenry with objective analysis of India’s foreign policy and assessment of its performance, in order to cultivate constructive public discourse on the issue.

The discussion was followed by a Q&A session, where the speakers answered various questions on topics such as widening India’ trade engagements, structural weaknesses of the Chinese economy, international consensus on the battle against climate change, perceived decline of the United States, military lessons from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and political consequences of globalisation.