What China, Russia want & India wishes | Expert Views

Your TV channels make it seem like the most consequential gathering of world leaders after the 2023 G20 is once again taking place in New Delhi. There’s also an extra edge to the josh this time. 

See those exaggerated pictures with bright-coloured backgrounds and warlike drumroll showing Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin together. The barely understated message is, the trinity has joined hands against the “evil West”. Or to put Donald Trump “in his place”. 

All governments, especially strongmen-led, use summiteering for image-building. The Modi government has turned it into an art form. However, with Brics, the elements don’t come together given its composition, balance, and contradictions. 

 

The three strongmen in this breathless buildup share more contradictions than congruence. Each has a different worldview, as also a different adversary. One (Russia) is another’s ally — dependent, too, to some extent. Another (India) treats the third as an existential adversary. And the third sees the other two as so weak that it can determine the rules of the game, and be the umpire; first, second and third. 

The rude fact is that, of all such groupings, Brics is the most irrelevant. We know what Nato stands for, or at least is supposed to. You can count others. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is the closest one would come to Brics. But here, Chinese domination is almost formal. The SCO is China’s multilateral organisation. That’s why we say even the SCO has a purpose, whether we like it or not. Even something as inconsequential as the 57-nation OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) has at least one glue, Islam. 

Of course, you haven’t seen it weighing in on so many crises and wars within the Islamic world, the ongoing Gulf Arab states versus Iran and so on. 

What’s common among the members of Brics? Is it a joint front against Donald Trump or “evil America”? Far from it. Mr Putin and Mr Trump are a mutual admiration society. Mr Xi will soon be in the US, ironing out the creases in their ties. He’d also encourage Mr Trump to persist with his strategic shift inwards. America first and last. Forget Taiwan. 

Let’s list some contradictions and cross-connections. For Mr Xi, Mr Trump is the greatest news. He’s weakening America’s alliances. Some of these countries might turn to China to lower threat levels. 

Beijing will then collect concessions. Others, weaker and smaller, especially in the often fancied (only in India, so touchingly) Global South have already begun to see China as the new hegemon and salaam it. At least Mr Xi won’t humiliate you in public like Mr Trump. 

For Mr Xi, Russia is a giant he shares borders with, with the most nukes in the world, secure source of pipelined energy, and a strategic asset. India falls in a completely different category. There’s the border issue and live militarisation there. He needs stability for the trade to grow. And the India-China trade, as we know, is one-sided. At this point, at $112 billion, India accounts for just over 10 per cent of all of China’s trade surplus. Surpluses with the US declining, Mr Xi wants alternatives. And like it or not, India has stepped in. Now, with its demographic debacle and crashing domestic demand, China needs those trade surpluses even more. That’s why Mr Xi has taken a time-out on the border with India. In 1988, Deng Xiaoping had famously told Rajiv Gandhi in Beijing that since “our generations probably don’t have the wisdom to resolve the border, let’s leave it to a wiser generation in the future”. 

For Mr Xi, that future hasn’t arrived yet. He’d rather buy more time until, the gap between China and India widens further. Meanwhile, he’s got Pakistan to keep India off-balance. 

Mr Putin, like Mr Xi rejoices at the weakening of Nato. He either thinks he will get a deal on Ukraine and declare victory, or carry on fighting as the US aid to Kyiv declines and Europe squirms. In short, neither is Mr Xi rallying the world against Washington, nor is Mr Putin joining such an adventure. 

Unlike Mr Xi, Mr Putin has no troubles with India. His first interest, however, is no different from Mr Xi’s: A one-sided trade relationship. India is willing to buy more oil than any other country except China and say thank you for it. 

India also remains, by far, the biggest current, and prospective buyer of Russian weaponry, particularly if the sanctions are lifted. Helped along by oil, Russia also enjoys a trade surplus of about $45 billion with India. 

Russia, however, is a relatively benign trade partner and willing to part with some defence technologies nobody would give India. Beyond this, if you think Mr Putin counts India as a peer or in the same class as Russia or China, you need to think again.

These equations form the backdrop of this Brics summit. India isn’t the party with the strongest hand here, however brilliant its hospitality. It’s a terrible thing to say but the truth must be spoken. Today, India looks like a modern day trade colony of China and Russia. It’s compelled to run huge deficits because it is only buying what it desperately needs. 

A lot of India’s exports, for example, would come to a standstill if the components, ingredients or bulk chemicals did not come from China. It’s a funny thing, but the Indian business and industry is the biggest lobby for imports from China. Plus, India needs the calm on the Line of Actual Control. It desperately needs these coming five years to rebuild its military muscle. This twin import dependence greatly weakens India’s hand. Even at the top, at the level of the power trio being flaunted on TV screens, India isn’t in the big league. The Trump era has been brutal on the middle powers and swing states. 

Some of the excitement in sections of the Indian commentariat and also influential pro-establishment voices on social media comes from those nursing deep anti-Americanism. They nurse fantasies of America’s inevitable decline and de-dollarisation. It’s a powerful constituency and it’s so knee-jerked by this ad hominem anti-Americanism that it sees hope in joining hands with Mr Xi to fix the “evil” West. Will they concede China’s boundary demands? I’m not sure. 

Enemy’s enemy can be your friend is more stupid than simplistic. China doesn’t treat America as enemy but an equal. Nor is America India’s enemy. Three successive Indian Prime Ministers have hailed India-US ties as a natural strategy partnership. Mr Modi has used the line more often than Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee together. What blood-feud mindset fires this anti-Americanism at any cost, will need a much smarter mind to write a book. All I can say is that the Modi government has no such notions, illusions or needs. 

And de-dollarisation? What happens if the dollar vapourises? What comes in its place? That joke called the Brics currency? Check some figures. Ten of the Brics countries together have aggregate GDP about $6 trillion less than China alone: $14.33 trillion against China’s $20.85 trillion. 

If you just count the original members, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa together are less than half of China, at $9.29 trillion. If you wish for the end of the dollar, are you willing to live in the yuan era? The dollar will not be replaced by the rupee. Not in the next many decades at least. Or the rouble. It is just as well that S Jaishankar repeatedly keeps countering this fantasy. 

I am sorry to be a party-pooper in the middle of this big summit. Summits serve a purpose, most of all, for providing a forum for leaders to get together despite their bilateral differences. To expect anything more is a dangerous illusion. This one, if anything, reminds us of India’s weaknesses, not strengths. It should sober us down to the task of building ahead.

 

By special arrangement with ThePrint