Third-worldly wise

India’s record on high stakes multilateral diplomatic campaigns has been, to use the kind of understatement beloved of all foreign office communiques, mixed. Two obvious recent examples are the official ownership of Shashi Tharoor’s unsuccessful campaign to become the UN secretary general and the long-standing, and not-going-anywhere campaign to make India a member of the UN Security Council. The strange burst of romanticism that informed India’s direct involvement in elections for the UN chief is now deservedly a very small footnote. But it still enjoys some relevance because similar tactical vulnerabilities are seen in India’s UNSC campaign.

As this newspaper reported on Sunday, India’s two neighbours have cleverly done the un-neighbourly thing of making earlier UNSC campaigns difficult. The question to ask is not why China and Pakistan would do this but rather how tactically hard-headed India has been in anticipating this counter campaign. Has the official assumption been that China is amenable to some form of non-Western solidarity? Those who claim to see China’s goodwill towards India have found a voice in the current political context. But diplomacy needs to look at cold realities. And maybe the cold reality is that, first, China isn’t thrilled at the idea of India being at the UN high table — Beijing has at best been open-ended on the issue, even after Japan’s UNSC claim, which China reportedly opposes, got de-linked from India’s campaign. Second, India isn’t and/or doesn’t want to be in a position where it takes on Chinese opposition in what will be a fairly brutal game of realpolitik, inevitably requiring America’s support.

That leads to another question: If India won’t and/or can’t play hardball right now, shouldn’t it also ask whether it wants to be at the UNSC? Fuzzy and quasi third-worldly diplomacy defines India’s take on big issues as much as it defines its UN campaign. That kind of diplomacy is contra-indicated for a high table member. Better perhaps that India sorts out its big foreign policy attitudes before aiming for the UNSC. And what does it lose materially in remaining an ordinary UN member? Global reassessment of India is predicated on its economy. Indeed, its diplomacy has failed to take advantage of opportunities that economic growth has presented. That’s not a good advertisement for an aspiring UNSC member.