G20 Presidency for India is an opportunity, a challenge
There have been several photo ops from the G20 leaders’ meet in Bali, Indonesia, which will stay relevant for any follower of international geopolitical order for some time to come. The first face-to-face, three hours long bilateral meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, has already sent ripples in the diplomatic stretch from the US, Europe, Eurasia, Russia to the most significant Indo Pacific. This was the first time both leaders were meeting in person since President Biden took over in 2020.
The geopolitical equations have been recalibrated since 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic throwing normal trade and bilateral meetings in disarray, exacerbated now by Russia’s ill timed “special military operations in Ukraine”, threatening to push several millions in developing countries on the brink of food scarcity in the 21st century, and reducing the purchasing power of those in developed economies stoked by historic record high inflation.
This is also the time when China and Russia got into their tightest embrace in modern history, vouching for a “no limits, no barriers friendship”. The US-China relations have suffered a huge tailspin, and most of the US foreign policy in the past two years has been about controlling the growing heft of a non-transparent China in the world order.
Key themes emerging from the US-China bilateral suggest both leaders, Joe Biden (after a better than expected performance of the Democrats in the US midterms) and Xi Jinping, after robustly securing presidency for the third time, are now in a better place to politically sell to their domestic audiences, a couple of steps backward (if need be), relented to each other. This was apparent in the no cold war, no military conflict with each other, discourse reflected in their respective statements after the meeting. China made it clear to the US that the red line in the relationship was Taiwan, on which China had made several aggressive statements in the recently concluded National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
The gnawing war in Ukraine has pushed energy and food prices to all-time highs around the globe and the US and western allies are staring at high inflationary pressures.
China, meanwhile, is facing one of the worst slowdowns (mainly due to a sluggish real estate sector) in nearly two decades, and post Brexit the UK has already lost its position to India as the world’s fifth largest economy. The meeting between the top leadership of the US and China took place in Bali in the backdrop of the G20 summit, which makes it even more significant.
Through photo op the US made it clear that the Indo Pacific region will remain as key theme of its foreign policy. Towards this the National security Strategy released by the US last month has underscored the centrality of the Indo Pacific and called for closer cooperation with its European allies as well.
India takes on the presidency immediately after the Bali summit and will host the leadership summit in September next year. This presidency for India is both an opportunity and a challenge to manage a splintered world almost staring at a second Cold War. It also comes at a time when India hopes to tackle complicated global finance architecture and digital transformation standards and issues through the most relevant platform G20. To move ahead with its stated goals, India has to bring the bickering partners together and persuade them to agree to some common basic frameworks for world prosperity
(The author is a foreign affairs commentator)
