New Delhi: As PM Modi made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel a few days ago, India seeks a peace where terror is absent, and will be available should both sides desire an end to the conflict.
Since 2014, when Narendra Modi replaced Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister of India, the country has been termed non-aligned by several policymakers in Washington and as aligned to the US by Beijing. In actuality, what has been done since then is to pursue a policy of alignment with the national interest of India. As a consequence the policy of alignment with the interests of India that has been followed for the past ten years, is being repeated in the third term of Prime Minister Modi. Earlier in his term, the four foundation agreements underpinning defence ties with the US have been signed. These are LSA (Logistics Support Agreement), GSOMIA (General Security of Military Information Agreement), BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Intelligence) and CISMOA (Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement). At the same time, under the triumvirate of Shinzo Abe, Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has been expanded and deepened, such that India, Japan, Australia and the US have emerged as the preeminent security providers in the region, ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. Simultaneously, India has retained its historically close relationship with Russia, while in 2023, as Chair of the G-20, PM Modi was able to include the African Union (AU) into the fold, making it the G-21. Plurilateral, bilateral, unilateral, multilateral, each such grouping is adopted depending on the national interests of India.
Since 2014, India has been anchored to a consistent policy of alignment with the national interest of the world’s most populous country, which has moreover been a democracy since the country won freedom from the British Raj in 1947. As a consequence, South Block has a collaborative relationship with both Ukraine as well as Russia, as also with both Iran as well as Israel. In Washington, where as a consequence of the slack witnessed in the oversight of the White House, different departments go their own ways. Under President Biden, the State Department and its affiliates have often sought to bait and provoke New Delhi. Such pinpricks have mostly been met with polite indifference by PM Modi, and with a witty riposte by EAM Jaishankar.
Overall, the Government of India has repeatedly made it clear that the country would not swerve from its policies to enter the policy orbit fixed for it by any other capital. In a situation where every other major power has taken sides, India stands alone in picking the path which, if followed, would lead to peace. It would need to be a peace without terror, and without efforts at coercion of a country by an expansionist superpower. After Russian forces entered Ukraine in 2022, Switzerland abandoned its longstanding policy of being an honest broker between different sides by plumping for the NATO alliance, leaving India as the only country which can play such a role in a situation of escalating confrontation and conflict that is being witnessed now.
A peacemaker can enter the ring only when both sides favour peace over continued conflict. In the case of Ukraine, while Russia was open to suggestions by PM Modi of a ceasefire even in 2022, Kiev believed that it was only a matter of a few weeks, if not months, before NATO entered the battlefield against Russia on its side. Now, with the conflict in the Middle East drowning out the previously profuse mention of the Ukraine war in western media, such an expectation in Kiev appears to have been dampened. Hopefully, possibly through a change of leadership from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to an individual more open to accepting the reality that the more the fighting continues, the greater will be the territorial losses as well as the human costs of the Ukraine war. Once such a stance becomes accepted in Kiev, PM Modi has positioned India to serve as a facilitator for talks between the two countries that are essential in any serious peace talks, Russia and Ukraine. As for Israel being in conflict with Iran and its proxies, Prime Minister Netanyahu is intent on securing what he has wanted since the 1980s, which is the collapse of the clerical regime in Iran. Setbacks by Iran on the battlefield would, in his calculation, dent the public standing of the clerics who have been running Iran since 1979. This would open the door to an elected leadership that would accept the right of Israel and the Jewish people to live a peaceful and prosperous life in a way that has been dismissed by Iran and its proxies since 1979.
As PM Modi made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel just days ago, India seeks a peace where terror is absent, and will be available should both sides desire an end to a conflict that has weakened Iran since the country adopted a policy of denial of the right of Israel and (implicitly in the case of Iran but explicitly in the case of proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas) the Jewish people to exist. Iran would do well to follow the course adopted by the GCC countries, which is to regard terrorism as a threat to stability rather than as an instrument of policy. GCC countries such as the UAE have behaved as responsible global citizens, including by recognizing the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, a policy fully congruent with mutual social stability and economic progress. Harnessing the technological and other capabilities of Israel and the GCC would bring closer the day when the economies of the latter would no longer be dependent on fossil fuels. Both sides would benefit, as indeed would the Iranian people, were Israel and Iran to work together in the way that they did before the Khomeinist takeover of the country in 1979. In 2023, PM Modi as Chair of the G-20 stressed the importance of seeing the world as a family, a logical view given that all human beings irrespective of faith are children of the Almighty. When both sides in the present conflict between Israel and Iran accept that “it is the time for peace”, India will be ready to assist in the securing of such an outcome.
In what appears to be a rush towards a wider war, India stands uniquely positioned to serve as the peacemaker and the bridge bringing together the two sides of the two conflicts that are raging in Europe and the Middle East, between Russia and Ukraine and between Iran and Israel. It is such a positioning that has made the India-aligned (and in that way equally World-aligned) policy of Prime Minister Modi a speed-breaker that could eventually succeed in replacing the flames of war in Europe and the Middle East, replacing them with the cool winds of peace sans terror.
The ability of India to ensure peace hinges substantially on its strength. In order to ensure deterrence against fresh efforts by a predatory superpower to chip away at the sovereignty and rights of countries in the Indo-Pacific, the time has come for an Indo-Pacific Cooperation for Peace Treaty that would initially bind together India, Japan, the US, Australia and other countries at risk of aggression that front the Indo-Pacific. They would combine forces and capabilities in an alliance designed to unitedly confront challenges to any one of the members. Prime Minister Ishiba of Japan has spoken of the need for an Asian NATO, but given less than stellar record of NATO within the Indo-Pacific, any mention of the word NATO in many parts of Asia is unwelcome. Instead, what is needed is a treaty designed specifically for the provision of security in the Indo-Pacific in the manner that NATO was created to provide security in those parts of Europe that remained outside the control of the USSR after the 1939-45 war. India has signed treaties in the past, such as the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed by both sides in 1971. Since PM Modi took over, four Foundation Defence Agreements with the US have been signed. Given the deterioration in the security environment in the Indo-Pacific, it is time for a relook at a policy of rejecting any treaty or alliance. An alliance underpinned by a formal treaty will ensure a strong deterrent against the efforts of a nearby predatory superpower which is eager to dominate the Indo-Pacific to the detriment of the rights and sovereignty of the other countries in the region.