Not a happy moment for Indian diplomacy, says former foreign secretary KC Singh

Dec 11, 2020
New Delhi: Former foreign secretary KC Singh sees the Indian diplomacy as passing through a phase of uncertainty and has said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, like several foreign ministers before, faces a situation where grand policy decisions are made by the Prime Minister and his is a secondary role.

“This is not a happy moment for Indian diplomacy”… “there is a lot of uncertainty, there is no clear direction”, Singh told Karan Thapar in an interview for the Wire this week.

The former foreign secretary said that as a former diplomat, Jaishankar “doesn’t have a grounding in politics”. Asked if this was his Achilles heel, he replied “that is obvious”.

Jaishankar was probably chosen as Foreign Minister because of his earlier expertise at handling China and the United States. However, K. C. Singh added, he hasn’t dealt with the Islamic world.

Singh, who is one of India’s most experienced former ambassadors and now a highly regarded commentator on foreign policy said : “We are at multiple inflection points and caught between them. In a few months we’ll know if we’re up to the mark or not”. At the moment, however, what prevails is uncertainty and lack of clear direction.”

Asked about the widespread newspaper reports that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been invited as chief guest for next year’s Republic Day, Singh said “normally you don’t want someone who causes controversy”. He said there’s every likelihood that between Covid and Brexit Johnson will “probably fall between two stools”.

Asked specifically by Karan Thapar whether Johnson, who faces rebellions in his own Tory ranks in the House of Commons and about whom speculation is growing that once the Brexit deal is concluded he might not continue as prime minister for very long, is the wrong sort of person to be invited as chief guest on Republic Day, K. C. Singh first said “yes” but then added unless this was a sign of solidarity between heads of government who have been close to President Donald Trump. “Are they holding hands?” he asked. “Is this a nervous holding of hands with the leader of the pack gone?”

Singh concurred that if the invitation to Boris Johnson is confirmed it would be the second time that India has invited a chief guest for Republic Day who is widely deemed to be inappropriate. The first was Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last year. Asked if Mr. Bolsonaro’s misogynistic and homophobic views clashed with an occasion when India celebrates the principles and values of its constitution, K. C. Singh said it was “a case of cocking a snook at those values”.

On the 23 members of the European Parliament, from a collection of European anti-muslim right wing parties, who were invited to visit Kashmir in October 2019 and thus became the first foreign politicians to visit the Valley after the August 2019 constitutional change, Singh said “South Block would have had its reservations”. He said the decision to invite the 23 was “driven from outside”, meaning the Prime Minister’s office.

Asked if one common strand that connects Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and the 23 European Parliament MPs was that they are all from the right of the political spectrum and whether this meant there was a political comfort level between them and Mr. Modi, Singh said “there’s no doubt about it”.

Speaking about the Foreign Minister’s recent visit to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two Arab countries that have broken ranks with the rest of the Arab world and recognized Israel, the veteran diplomat said this was a case of “picking up a preference Trump has created”. Whilst the intention could be “to wean these countries away from Pakistan” he is concerned that Iran could view it as “India going even deeper into the American corner”. He said this could make Iran more suspicious and wary in its relations with India.

At a time when Joe Biden, the US President-elect, is looking for ways to improve relations with Iran and, if possible, restore the nuclear deal, K. C. Singh told The Wire “we should have waited for Biden to roll out his policy” before the Foreign Minister visited these countries.

Finally, speaking about India’s China relations, the former foreign secretray said the belief that summit level meetings between the two heads of state could contain differences and perhaps even find a way to resolve them has fallen flat. He said summits should be the culmination of the process not the starting point.

He suggested that summit level diplomacy with China had been vigorously pursued because of the mistaken belief that the Indian Prime Minister could sway President Xi.

Asked how it could be that the Foreign Minister, a former foreign secretary and a former ambassador to China who served in Beijing for five years, had not cautioned the Prime Minister against putting so much emphasis on summit level diplomacy, K. C. Singh said that it is possible his advice was not accepted.

–INDIA NEWS STREAM