Raisina Dialogue: Triumph of the fence-sitters

Last week, India hosted its premier geopolitical forum, the Raisina Dialogue, which provides an annual snapshot of how India understands its foreign policy and role in the world. Over ten years, the pageant has become more and more triumphal as India enters what it sees as its golden age.

This year, there was a certain element of smugness evident.

After the invasion of Ukraine, India was criticised for not taking a position on Ukraine. In 2022, Raisina was dominated by the European high representative plus leader after leader hectoring India over its refusal to condemn Russia. In 2023, it was criticised for providing a platform for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

India stood its ground. There were some practical reasons for this, such as military reliance on Russian hardware and the economic benefits of trading with a sanctioned Russia. But it wasn’t just that. As a country of the North, South, East and West that aspires to be friends to all, it genuinely did not want to take a position.

As the Russia-Ukraine conflict heads into its diplomatic phase, India now feels vindicated.

If you come from a country that does take positions – Australia’s Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell described the invasion as a clear violation of international law at Raisina 2023 – it’s worth trying to understand this point of view.

At this year’s dialogue, Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar explained that as India has navigated a world that is not always kind to it, it has developed a tactical skill – and a long view – that can be described as non-alignment. He defined this as a key part of India’s foreign policy outlook, along with its colonial experience, democracy and desire to become a leading power.

In another session, he elaborated. “Different countries will make decisions, that is their prerogative … I can’t tell some other country, ‘Don’t do this because it is not convenient to me’; that’s their call, not mine.”

His judgement was that the approach India has taken has stood the test of time.

The more judgemental warned of the dangers of this approach. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt reminded that the international system is built on respect for the territorial integrity of states. International Crisis Group’s Comfort Ero said if there is anything from the old era that should be taken into the new it is the prohibition on aggression and changing borders. Former Indonesian ambassador to the United States Dino Djalal took a position on Gaza and the violation of international law.

There were enough position-takers in the audience that the mood was sombre at the session with Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha. But neighbouring foreign minister Péter Szijjártó felt comfortable saying that Hungary’s approach had been vindicated, and former Indian ambassador DB Venkatesh Varma congratulated Raisina for being ahead of the curve in providing a platform for all points of view.

Opposition MP Shashi Tharoor – who had urged India to take a position on the inviolability of borders – described himself as having “egg on my face” now that “India has a prime minister who can hug both the president of Ukraine and the president in Moscow two weeks apart and be accepted in both places.”

Perhaps most revealing was how much this year’s dialogue forefronted the United Arab Emirates – another fence-sitter – and its peacemaker role, including in disputes between Ethiopia-Eritrea and India-Pakistan and in brokering the 2020 Abraham Accords.

Fiker Institute’s Dubai Abulhoul talked about UAE’s peacebuilding as based in its colonial experience: coming from a region where Western powers decided borders and governance models, UAE believes that sustainable peace can’t be imposed – and has legitimacy and credibility because of its experience. She sees multialignment “as a strategy, not a liability” in actively shaping the international order.

Diplomatic adviser to the UAE president Anwar Mohammed Gargash described UAE’s approach in detail. When there’s an international conflict – with push and pull in two directions – there will be the need to arrive somewhere in the middle. Key aspects of UAE’s model are being engaged, providing logistics, being dynamic, bringing ideas to the table, emphasising what’s common and focusing on economic gains to sell the benefits of peace in daily lives.

“We work with friends, we work with allies, we work with like-minded countries … we try to find commonalities among our friends and we don’t try to push our friends … Where your message is basically positive – it’s about de-escalation, it’s about communication, it’s about diplomacy, it’s about prosperity, it’s about technology, it’s about responsible climate policies – you find friends.”

He saw the UAE approach as having been very helpful to Ukraine and Russia and the international community.

He contested the idea that you always need to take a position, particularly as the world is changing: “The trajectory of the international system is that there are no permanent camps. As a result, why would you want to be part of a camp and suddenly find out that the goalposts have changed?” The international system is telling us that there is the need to be strategically autonomous: “You don’t take positions during a geopolitical earthquake.”

It’s an approach that may become more common.

Raisina’s theme this year was “Kālachakra”, or the wheel of time. This was explained by Observer Research Foundation Chairman Sunjoy Joshi as symbolising impermanence, cycles of decay and renewal, and the balance of mutually opposite forces. In such a cosmology, there is no arrow of time pointing towards progress or destiny. Instead, mistakes are repeated, best intents lead to unintended consequences and sometimes order descends into chaos. Time is eternal; change is constant; each thing contains its opposite.

Such an approach makes it hard to be judgmental.

The picture that emerged from this year’s global gathering is of a world that is fluid, churning, disordered, unmoored, shifting and chaotic.

Fence-sitters will do very well in such a world.

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