Going beyond Jaishankar’s new mantra of ‘reformed multilateralism’

Shorn of details, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s multiple calls for ‘reformed multilateralism’ and ‘decentralised globalisation’, while he was at the UN through the past week, read more like a new phraseology that on the face of it could prove to be chaotic, if left and unguided. The question is who would define it, and who would play the guide. That is because the self-anointed leaders from the end of the Second World War have failed themselves and the world at large in every sphere — namely, political, diplomatic, economy and security, both traditional and non-traditional, the latter again a coinage of the intervening period.

By the phrase ‘reformed multilateralism’ Jaishankar was referring only to reforms to the UN scheme, starting with the UN Security Council (UNSC), on which India has set its sight for a permanent seat. In one of his outings, rather outpourings in New York, the minister said that the question was not about India wanting a permanent seat with veto-power or would settle for or accept one without veto. It was more basic, he implied, adding that most UN members from the Global South were ‘angry’ at the doings and undoings of the existing leadership(s) and guides of what has already become a ‘unilateral global order’, at times on a bilateral track, but never multilateral.

Before Jaishankar this time, both he and his predecessor EAMs, and also Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his own predecessors, have been demanding ‘UN reforms’, including ‘UNSC reforms’. When the voices from the Orient hit the roof years before Jaishankar became EAM but was still a senior member of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), the Occident was forced to concede the idea of UN reforms, but not in the way the Global South wanted. Or, even some from the West too desired.

He who pays the piper…

The West, especially the three P-5 members from among them, namely, the US and the UK, and France to a lesser extent, especially talked everything about reforms than where it mattered the most — namely, the UNSC and other decision-making mechanisms of multiple UN affiliates and processes. They offered red herrings in the form of administrative reforms in the UN Secretariat, fiscal/contributions reforms, implying their continued support for the maxim, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’.

Effectively, they scuttled all talks of reforms, all at one go. In his time, US President Donald Trump even pulled out of the UNHRC-Geneva, saying that voting rights for members should be based not on nationality and sovereignty but on annual contributions.

This was the West’s formula for the Brenton Woods institutions for multilateral financial aid and cooperation, namely, the IMF and the World Bank, at inception in the late 1940s. If today, China says it will back crisis-ridden Sri Lanka’s plea for an aid-package in the IMF, it cites the six-per cent voting-share it holds now.

Thankfully, after becoming the US President, incumbent Joe Biden returned his nation to the UNHRC, where Washington continues to tell the world, which nation is a wrong-doer, and which is not (according to its own yardstick of political convenience). The world also witnessed how Russia, through its single veto-vote, inherent to its permanent membership of the UNSC, ensured that a series of majority votes on the Ukraine War became ineffectual. Another P-5 member in China and elected member, India, abstained.

Leading by the nose

But you cannot expect anything better – or, worse? – years after the US and its West European allies led the UN by its nose on the question of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in the hands of then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. No one, including the UNHRC, has held the US adequately accountable for the death of millions of Iraqi civilians (and those from Afghanistan, the latter over a 20-year period), nor has any international court ordered Washington and its NATO allies to pay reparations.

It is another matter that no quantum of reparations would be adequate in any which way, as there were no real battles in Afghanistan and Iraq joined, unlike during the two Great Wars of the previous century. To a greater or lesser degree, both China and Russia, two of the other three five veto-members of the UN, the latter in its twin avatars, the previous one being the forgotten Soviet Union, have done it, both inside and outside their own boundaries.

India has been navigating this path very carefully in diplomatic terms, including economic diplomacy, for long, but it cannot be said to be so in ‘political’ terms, both domestic and otherwise. Much of it is in the name of security and self-preservation, but it also involves strategic considerations vis a vis China, without any direct religious connotation whatsoever.

Decentralised globalisation

If all of it goes for ‘reformed multilateralism’, on ‘decentralised globalisation’, India needs to decide, and early, what it means by the term and what it hopes to achieve over the medium and long terms. The world is not working in silos, yes, and post-Cold War failures have led to formation of multiple regional and global groupings, whose purpose and relevance are still not clear.

In the beginning, globalised decentralisation was thought to provide grooves for West European allies of the US, and also nations like India and China, Australia and Japan, to grow and spread their politico-economic out-reach and strategic impact, mutually dependent or independent of each other. The birth and spread of the euro was said to be aimed also at strengthening Europe’s global power vis-à-vis the American green-pack, but its inability to stand up to the US dollar, which was a product of the post-War American designs, may have been a contributing factor to what is still an evolving re-thinking and re-designing.

From an Indian perspective, New Delhi’s none-too-distant proposition of being the ‘net-provider of security’ in the region had found a more definite expression when it rushed help and aid as the ‘Asian tsunami’ struck neighbouring Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia (the last one too is an Ocean neighbour, when looked at from the Anadamans).

Under Prime Minister Modi’s better-defined and equally well-executed ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, India took the lead first at the height of the Covid pandemic, and more recently, when Sri Lanka all but went under. In both cases, India became — and is also being acknowledged both by the beneficiaries and also by the world as the ‘Rescuer of first instance’.

Centrality of India

Yet, it is more about regionalism, and India taking lead and responsibility in and for South Asia, even if only up to a point. On ‘decentralised globalisation’, India is a member of multiple fora involving different regional and global players, though only tie-ups with the US and/or its allies alone get adequate and systematic news coverage and analyses. The Quad and Indo-Pacific are the prime examples.

But India is also a member of the SCO, G-20-G-4, L-69, NAM and many more organisations, big and small, both effective and not-so-effective. In 2023, New Delhi will be hosting the G-20 and SCO Summits in the same year, both, as also other groupings in which too it is a member, underscores the centrality of India to the idea and application of ‘globalised decentralisation’.

Here again, questions remain. On the face of it, many of these groupings run parallel to each other, and at times in circles. There are also in-built ideological contradictions, where numbers have the potential to tilt the ‘consensus’ or dilute the same — like, for instance, between G-20 and SCO. Many of these groupings also run in circles, where a meeting-point can never be visualised, in the near term or faraway term.

For the uninitiated, making sense out of them, particularly in the context of collective productivity for global good, seems unrealistic and at times sur-realistic. For those in the thick of these things, still, ensuring that the parallel circles do not run in the opposite directions, throwing up centripetal forces, in the place of centrifugal forces that they were supposed to generate, can prove problematic. That is what India should be concerned about – and work towards avoiding, now and later.

In doing so, India needs to prioritise the groupings for its own good through the medium and long terms. Else, others would take decisions that would affect and afflict India. This happened in the past, when the nation got itself caught between the Global South where it belonged and which it led collectively with a few other post-colonial nations, and its legitimate aspirations to reach the other side, and be there, to be able to lift all those whom it had left behind.

It is not only a tall order but can also be misunderstood and acted upon by the rest of ‘em all. Isolation is the name of the game, and India cannot afford to go wrong a second time and in such a short gap in the nation’s history!

The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst & commentator. Views expressed are personal.

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