為什麼要歡迎印度崛起:世界更安全

threatens to tip world’s fragile balance of power

Ben Wright

12 hours ago

Prime Minister Modi’s alliance with Putin complicates any co-operation with the West - AP Photo/Press Trust of India

Deciding the agenda for the recent G20 meeting of finance chiefs was always going to be a little tricky. The US and its allies wanted to discuss new sanctions against Russia and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Moscow and Beijing preferred to criticise Western “blackmail and threats”.

Indian officials hosting the meeting of the world’s largest economies in Bengaluru were busily working behind the scenes to try and avoid using the word “war” in any joint statement. Ajay Seth of India’s finance ministry had even suggested Russia’s attack on Ukraine was beyond the mandate of finance ministers and central bank governors.

Other attendees pointed out it was quite hard to argue Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of a neighbouring country almost exactly a year ago hadn’t had an impact on the global economy. It was probably, therefore, worth at least a passing mention.

In the end, they agreed to disagree: no joint communique was issued.

The world will probably find a way to survive without the usual bland diplomatic tropes and empty verbiage. But India’s discomfit is emblematic of how the war in Ukraine is driving a wedge between the world’s most powerful economies.

In a motion at the United Nations General Assembly earlier this month calling for an end to the fighting and Moscow’s immediate withdrawal from Ukraine, Russia voted against, while China, India and South Africa abstained. Everyone else was in favour.

But, whereas Beijing has repeatedly been called out for its tacit support of Moscow, New Delhi, which has increased its imports of Russian crude oil by 33 times since the war started, has avoided censure.

That’s because, in the increasingly complicated three-dimensional chess of global geopolitics, India is seen by Western governments as an important potential bulwark to Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

As an increasingly muscular Chinaprompts businesses to rethink their reliance on the country’s factories, and as defence policies are redrawn around the world in the face of a bellicose Russia, India is becoming increasingly important politically, economically and militarily on the world stage.

It probably helps that the country boasted the second fastest growing large economy behind only Saudi Arabia last year. For years, countries around the world were more or less forced to hitch their wagons to the Chinese engine of global growth or risk being left behind.

But Covid, an increasingly authoritarian regime in Beijing and retreating globalisation have all led to a recalibration of the political and economic calculus.

There are two other reasons that leaders are rethinking their approach to China to the benefit of India, though they are less likely to be mentioned out loud by Western diplomats: ongoing efforts to ensure that Beijing continues to struggle in its attempts to achieve technological parity with the US; and the fact that China’s own economic growth appears to be plateauing.

These trends are all fast reshaping the world’s approach to relations with Beijing.

Hawks in the West have long argued that China policy should be shaped by the character of the regime rather than economic self-interest. It is much easier to make their case when growth is in the low single digits.

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