India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar titled his talk at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) last Thursday (Sept. 12) “Global Tectonics: The Indian View of a World in Churn.” His remarks, answering questions posed by French former Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, now President of the GCSP Foundation, are of great interest, given India’s weight in world affairs today. Here, we single out two of the most pressing of the subjects covered: the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the BRICS.
Jaishankar reported on India’s efforts to provide its good offices to both parties to the conflict. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held “a very, very detailed discussion” with President Putin when he was in Moscow this past July; “many things were said and understood,” he noted. In a discussion afterwards, the Russian side was open to sharing some of this discussion with the Ukrainian side. Modi visited Kyiv in August, to discuss with President Zelenskyy and his core team, and “in a sense, some of what we discussed here, we shared there, and the other way around.” India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval then visited Moscow Sept. 12, “to loop Russia back in on whatever was discussed in Ukraine.”
Jaishankar specified: The conflict in Europe did not begin in 2022, since there were a whole set of events which had led into it. However, India firmly believes disputes between neighbors in this era should not be settled through war and violence, and now that no party can win a decisive victory on the battlefield. That means there have to be negotiations, which he said emphatically, have to involve all parties, rather than one party and all its supporters meeting without the other party in the room.
