Experts discuss challenges, opportunities in world today

New Delhi: The world has been witnessing unprecedented challenges in recent times. The world witnessed unprecedented deaths, devastation, disruptions and despair caused by Covid-19 pandemic and survived the accompanying atmosphere of doom and gloom. We have seen most disturbing scenes at the time of the takeover of Kabul by Taliban. Cities have been reduced to rubble and millions of people have had to flee their homes and become refugees, thanks to Russian invasion of Ukraine. Faced with extreme shortage of petrol and other essentials, ordinary people protested against their President in Sri Lanka and made him flee the country. Tensions are rising in the Strait of Taiwan resulting from naked brinkmanship by the US and China. The US and her European allies are trying to cripple the Russian economy with a most stringent regime of sanctions. Russia cutting off supplies of gas to Europe has led to high inflation and a steep spike in energy prices, with scores of countries experiencing shortages of food grains and fertilizers. Also, climate change has been causing heat waves and flood as never before in different parts of the globe. One wonders where is this world headed for, who are its driving engines and what objectives and goals motivate them and what’s in store for the people at large. To wrestle with these complex questions and to analyse and decipher current developments and put some markers for the future, IAFA had organized recently a discussion on “World Today” with the former NSA, Shivshankar Menon, well-known columnist and a Senior Fellow of Asia Society Policy Institute, Raja Mohan, and Sunjoy Joshi, Chairman, ORF, on the panel. Amb. Maharajakrishna Rasgotra, the senior most living diplomat of India, chaired the discussion.
Raja Mohan felt that a vast majority of nations have to deal with the shift in great power alignment as they set the rules of engagement and interaction. These powers include major Western economies led by the US. The Russian President Vladimir Putin, in tandem with China, wants to shape the non-Western world.
Gazing the trajectory of their relations, Rasgotra feels that thanks to their global ambitions and divergent long term national interests, a clash between Russia and China in the next 25 years looks inevitable, especially between the navies of the two countries. President XI Jinping’s open expression, for the first time, of concerns regarding the ongoing Russian campaign in Ukraine at the recently held SCO Summit vindicate his analysis.
In Raja Mohan’s opinion, India’s international clout has gone up and is likely to go up further. India is now a near US$ 3 trillion economy that has overtaken the UK as the 5th largest economy. During the debilitating Covid crises, India has fared far better than many other countries and has helped over 100 countries with vaccine and other medicare means of addressing the pandemic.
Raja Mohan feels that India must strengthen its ties with immediate neighbours where China, currently the 2nd largest economy and the second largest military power, is making deep inroads. In Raja Mohan’s opinion, with its economy on the move and global foot prints of its diaspora, India, no more, wants to run around the side lines of a football field; it wants to be in the centre of the field and leverage the world to its advantage.
According to Sunjoy Joshi, the world is witnessing collision of crises today. There is so much of distrust among major players; they don’t talk to each other but talk at each other through twitter. The Ukraine crisis has unraveled the insecurities and paranoia of both sides. The US and the West are using the economic and financial sanctions to punish Russia and contain China. Ironically, the Western approach is bringing Russia and China nearer. Russia is exploiting the European dependence on its gas supplies as an escape route. Surprisingly, China’s import of LNG has gone up three times; media reports allege that a lot of it lands up in spot market where the western countries buy it at ten times more price.
Countries not directly involved in Ukraine conflict too suffer the consequences: disruption of supplies of food grains, fertilizers, oil and gas.
Understandably, they are hedging their bets. Sadly, political objectives are overriding economic decisions. As globalization is contested, we witness more ungoverned space. Disruption of economies is forcing global attention away from crucial issues like the climate change.
India can’t ride two tigers together; offer subsidies and also grant loan waivers. It isn’t sound economics. For the former NSA, Shankar Menon, we are living in a world which is: adrift between orders. Great power rivalry is a norm, but we are facing this norm without an order. Countries are looking for new ways, new alignments, new groupings, but it isn’t nonalignment or multi-alignment. While this world without order is full of challenges, it also offers huge opportunities if we are quick to react and take advantage. India can grab some of these opportunities.
As many as 35 developing countries are on the verge of defaulting to the IMF; five of them are from South Asia alone. India has a chance of deepening ties with South Asia by opening up her markets and extending help to these countries to overcome their current economic crises. India has become a strategic asset to the US thanks to China. The US not only provides strategic depth to India but is an essential power for her domestic transformation; it’s a source of investment, trade, business and cutting edge technology. Besides, closer relations with the US open up opportunities world over.
China is passing through serious economic crises and is facing hostile Western world .In these vulnerable times; she might be more amenable to mend relations with India as she did 1999.It worth testing. India ought to find new modus vivendi of engaging with countries of South East Asia and Indo-Pacific. Not being a part of RCEP and Indo-Pacific Economic Forum might not serve economic interest of India.
Discussion’s Convener, Surendra Kumar, likened today’s world to the world of Mahabharata which offered the philosophical gem of Bhagavad Gita, but was characterized by deceit, deception, falsehood, and collapse of moral and ethical values. He felt that Strategic Hypocrisy should be added to the list of Strategic Autonomy, Strategic Wait and Strategic Ambiguity as world leaders give sermons about virtues of democracy and human rights, but help the installation of a government of terrorists in Kabul. They flag their commitment to uphold sovereignty and territorial integrity and human rights everywhere, but give a blind eye when Russia violates all of them.