Winds of change most apparent today in Indo-Pacific: EAM at 2nd Atal Bihari Vajpayee Memorial Lecture

New Delhi, Dec 24 (Agency) The Indo-Pacific today is witnessing both multipolarity and rebalancing, with orthodox politics including territorial differences in sharper play, alongside currencies of power like connectivity and technology, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday. In his opening remarks at the Second Atal Bihari Vajpayee Memorial Lecture, the EAM said that no other landscape illustrates better the widening of our definition of national security than the Indo-Pacific. He said the objective of the AB Memorial lecture is to focus on Vajpayee’s particular contribution to Foreign Policy that he made over many decades, as a parliamentarian, as a foreign minister and as a PM. The essence of former PM Vajpayee’s approach to international relations focuses on responding effectively to global changes. And that is what he sought to do in respect of key relationships and issues, and this factor is important to appreciate as foreign policy debates often tend to become dogmatic and cliché ridden, the EAM said.

With regard to US, Vajpayee introduced policy corrections that reflected the end of the cold war and the new global balance, and at the same time he kept India’s course steady vis a vis Russia, despite the turbulence of the era. With China whether as foreign minister or as PM he sought a modus vivendi that was based on mutual respect as on mutual interest. “With Pakistan, he strenuously tried to dissuade them from their path of sponsoring cross border terrorism,” he said. “All this was underpinned by his belief that India must develop deeper strengths at home. This found expression in the exercise of the nuclear option as it did in the economic modernisation that he presided over.” “Today, the winds of change are most apparent in the Indo-Pacific. It is there that the diplomatic creativity which Prime Minister Vajpayee inspires should be most strongly applied. We are looking at a complex set of transformations that are simultaneously underway. The Indo-Pacific is witnessing both multipolarity and rebalancing. It is seeing great power competition as well as ‘middle power plus’ activities.

Orthodox politics including territorial differences are in sharper play, side-by-side with currencies of power like connectivity and technology,” he said. Dr. Michael Fullilove, the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute in Sydney, who delivered the Memorial Lecture this year on the topic “Australia, India and the Indo-Pacific: The need for strategic imagination”, used cricket analogy to describe foreign policy. He said the game of cricket is similar to the great game of foreign relations. Cricket is a long game, which requires Intelligence, skill, patience, toughness and imagination, and the most successful captains are the imaginative ones. “Imagination is key, the weather conditions and the state of the pitch are also important,” he said. According to Fullilove, wealth and power are shifting eastwards towards India and Australia. He said there is tremendous opportunity for Australia in Asia, and added that while “the economic outlook for us is positive the security outlook is not”. “We are heading towards a prolonged period of bipolar competition in the Indo-Pacific.” He said both the US and China have exhibited “troubling behaviour” over the past decades. According to Fullilove, under Donald Trump the US was poorly governed, weak and “left all of us open to malign actors”, and while Joe Biden is not a perfect president, “but we can say he is a decent person which was not the case for 4 years”.

He said that Beijing’s foreign policy has been “consistent and increasingly concerning”, adding that since the ascension of Xi Jinping in 2012 “China has become much more aggressive in its waters to the east and west and in its relations to other states. Australia is an extreme case”. The relations between Australia and China have become so embittered, that seven years ago when Xi Jinping addressed the Australian parliament there was loud bipartisan applause “and now the two countries are at daggers drawn”. “In my view, the reason is because China has changed, its foreign policy has hardened; the constraints on people within China have tightened, its willingness to accept criticism has disappeared,” he said. He said that Australia has taken steps to protect its sovereignty, including by banning Huawei and other high risk vendors from participating in its 5G rollout and introducing new foreign interference laws. China considered Australia’s calling for investigation into the origins of the Wuhan virus as a provocation. “All our actions are just reactions to Chinese moves,” he said. “China has had Australia in the diplomatic deep freeze for some time” and has imposed sanctions on many Australian products, including beef, wine, cotton, coal, he added. “Indians have also been familiar with China’s new-found assertiveness, for which Indian soldiers have paid with their lives,” he said, referring to the clash between the Indian and Chinese armies in the Galwan valley last year.