Did India fail or succeed in its 2-year UNSC stint?

by Rajeev Sharma India’s latest stint at United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member (from 1 January 2011 to 31 December  2012) was seen as an apprenticeship to the high table of the world as a permanent member. Is India’s ultimate target of climbing up the ladder to become a full fledged permanent member of the UNSC with full veto rights any nearer after its seventh tenure at the world’s high table? Significantly, India’s presence in the UNSC this time witnessed for the first time the simultaneous presence of all BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China ) and IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) countries, and three of the four G4 countries (India, Brazil and Germany) that are striving to become permanent members. [caption id=“attachment_593673” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s permanent representative to the UN. AFP.[/caption] Here is an assessment based on hard facts. The conclusions are to be determined on the basis of these facts. It is for the readers to determine how India has fared. First let us talk about India’s failure. The UN has for years been trying to cobble up a convention on terrorism which would decide how to deal with the menace of terrorism and the nitty-gritty of an international mechanism to deal with terrorism. The world remained as much divided on the issue of terrorism as it was at the end of India’s latest stint at the UNSC, particularly after India’s proactive interest in the measure. The spanner in the works of this international mechanism, which remained elusive, was the usual bane: that the world could not arrive at a unanimously agreed definition of terrorism. The reason: many states, particularly the Islamic states, reasoned that one county’s terrorist is another country’s freedom fighter. However, to India’s credit, three of the five meetings for the Convention that have been held thus far were held during India’s latest two-year tenure. India entered the UNSC on 1 January 2011 after a long gap of 18 years. As a non-permanent member, no nation state is expected to shape the nature of critically important and evolving debates on issues spanning global hotspots like Libya, Syria and Sudan to maritime piracy. India managed to do precisely that. In addition, it also influenced the outcomes of the Security Council on each of these issues. Syria was a big challenge. Before India started its UNSC assignment, voices were raised that India would be on test as to how it conducts itself on the US-led international community’s three international hotspots – Syria, Iran and North Korea. The idea was that the West may “consider” an Indian candidature for the UNSC permanent seat if it were to attune its foreign policy in line with the West on these major issues. However, India navigated these challenges without ceding an inch of its strategic autonomy. India not only acted as ‘bridgebuilder’ but also at times donned the role of being a builder of ‘burnt bridges’. Syria is an important case in point. The first and only outcome document of the Security Council on Syria was a Presidential Statement (PRST) that was adopted during India’s presidency in August 2011. India remembered its friendly neighbours like Nepal and Maldives during its stint at the UNSC and nullified the international community’s interventionist tendencies. India ensured the timely and expeditious winding down of the UN Mission in Nepal, right in the very first month of its entry (January 2011). It was because of India’s intervention that the transfer of all equipment from the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) went to the government of Nepal. During subsequent discussions on Nepal, India ensured that there is no scope for any special role for the UNSC in Nepal’s transition to an inclusive multi-party democracy. India’s long-held stand is that this is a process best decided and determined by the people and government of Nepal. India prevailed at the UNSC in spite of some members’ attempt to the contrary. On Maldives, India ensured that the UN is not able to intervene in the severest political crisis in Maldives in recent times. In the case of Afghanistan, India ensured that the counter-terrorism focus of resolutions 1988 and 1989 was not diluted and the critical issue of the linkage between al-Qaeda and Taliban was maintained, even as the sanctions regime was split.  In fact, it was under India’s chairmanship that the Counter Terrorism Committee introduced and adopted the concept of ‘zero tolerance’ against terrorism in the UNSC lexicon and India got the CTC to focus its actions on prevention and suppression of terrorist financing. India actually stood up to the Americans to ward off the US’s efforts to get a comprehensive PRST (presidential statement) on nuclear non-proliferation based on the primacy of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India puts its foot down on the issue and ensured that the PRST was restricted to nuclear security issues only. At a time when Indo-Pak tensions are high, the common perception is that Pakistan beats India hollow when it comes to scoring brownie points at the UN. A very important achievement of India during its UNSC stint is that not a single matter of bilateral concern was brought by Pakistan to the UNSC during 2012. India used its latest tenure at the UNSC to bat for the long overdue reforms. Much of these efforts have remained away from the media glare. A senior Indian diplomat who is well versed in India’s role at the UN remarked thus on condition of anonymity: “India has not spared any effort in engineering reforms at the UN. When that materialises can be conjectured and speculated. What we have been able to achieve on the question of reforms of the UNSC in the last two years is much more than what we achieved in the last 20! We are now at a critically defining cusp of action, which is likely to unfold soon, perhaps in a month or so, but that is a separate debate and work in progress.” However, the most important achievement of India during its just concluded UNSC stint (along with a tiny dot of a country like Togo) is none of the above. It was simply that India itself did not become an item on the UNSC’s menu! *The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist-author and a strategic analyst who can be reached at bhootnath004@yahoo.com.