Between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Byline: Syeda Tahreem Bukhari

INDIA is holding the G-20 Presidency of top twenty diplomats of the world's top biggest economies from December, 2022 to November, 2023. India is hosting the global diplomacy, the current geopolitical scenario seems to be a grand test of India's diplomacy. With ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine whether India will be able to bring consensus between the allies and the arch rivals. India's G-20 presidency in the current geo-strategic environment has put India between the devil and the deep blue sea. Till now, India has arranged two meetings under the G-20 presidency. The first meeting was in Bangalore of Finance Ministers of G-20 countries which ended with no consensus. The fate of the second meeting of Foreign Ministers in New Delhi was also the same, India failed to develop consensus among the G-20 countries as no joint statement was issued.

The Indian President highlighted the failure of the global governance system in preventing global wars and international cooperation. The difference over the Ukraine war seems India would also fail in bringing international cooperation through the G-20 presidency. India's G-20 agenda highlights the urgent need to deal with climate change, the increasing burden of debt, digital transformation, rising inflation, and food and energy security. These issues impact every government and their citizens. The G-20 summit could have done to build consensus on these issues but war in Ukraine has come in the way. The G-20 failed to look beyond the conflict. It is also evident from the fact that there is no family photo of the G-20 meeting.

A family photo is when all the leaders attending the meeting come together for a click but the leaders of G-7 the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan were not on board. India diplomatically failed to bring them in sharing frame with Russians. This was the second time, there was no photo session in the Bali meet last year either. The failure of Indian diplomacy is also evident as most of the participants did not attend the inaugural...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT