Sooner than later, India will have to make a choice where it stands. Perhaps more important, what India stands for.
The Narendra Modi government’s policy of multi-alignment brought good results for the country’s foreign policy for most of Modi’s time as prime minister. But with Donald Trump acting like a bull in the china shop of world order, multi-alignment, at its best, has exhausted all possibilities. It was inventive while it lasted.
India needs a new foreign policy. Exposed to the scorching heat of Trump’s assaults on the existing order, the old policy is now like wine that tastes of wet cardboard. It emits an aroma similar to spoilt vinegar. The existing policy is no longer sustainable.
Repackaging it in shimmering new Bohemian crystal will not make the old wine any better. It will not be potable, although the new bottle may draw praise. The old policy must be discarded. Or else, South Block will be stranded by the receding tide of history.
In six months, Trump has decisively pulled the world away from multilateralism or even from plurilateral ways of advancing foreign policy. This may change if Trump does not complete his term for any reason, or if the next US president is either a Republican in the conventional mould or a Democrat. But India cannot wait for that. The challenge of adapting the country’s foreign policy to the new global realities is urgent. Every single day’s delay entails opportunity costs for 1.4 billion Indians whose aspirations, no longer circumscribed by the nation’s borders, are at stake.
India’s biggest contribution at the recent BRICS summit in the enchanting city of Rio de Janeiro was to propose a new expansion of that acronym. As India prepares to succeed Brazil as BRICS chair, Modi told his co-leaders at the summit: “Our goal will be to redefine BRICS as Building Resilience and Innovation for Cooperation and Sustainability.” That means BRICS will no longer be Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa. But in the Trump era, it falls short of hard bargains and transactional foreign policy. Modi is obsessed with catchy acronyms—his administration is peppered with them.
