The outcome of the virtual Quad meeting between Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Scott Morrison and Fumio Kishida wasn’t much. The only reference to Ukraine was an agreement to “a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific and provide a channel for communication”. Sounds like even the diplomats had trouble devising something to fill out the 166-word statement.
The Quad was held back by the unwillingness of the Indian leader to say anything to offend Russia. Modi has refused to criticise the Putin regime, on which he is heavily reliant for military equipment. So reliant, in fact, that the Biden administration is considering imposing sanctions on India to protect US military technology.
It’ll be more like a Trio Plus One than a Quad if that happens.
Australia, meanwhile, is happy to criticise China for failing to impose sanctions on Russia but is deathly silent on India’s failure to do so (it’s a similar line at The Australian, where Greg Sheridan pleaded for India not to be “hemmed in” or “bullied” on Russia). A similar hypocrisy exists in relation to Israel, which has also refused to impose sanctions — indeed, senior Israeli figures have lobbied the US to weaken sanctions. Even Israeli newspapers have ferociously condemned Israel’s failure to criticise the Putin regime.
Like apartheid Israel, however, India is not in a strong position to criticise Russia’s brutality. Lynchings, vigilantism, legalised discrimination and hate speech targeting Muslims are openly encouraged or practised by Modi’s own party (or even celebrated). There are now open calls for the genocide of Indian Muslims, leading to warnings of a real possibility such calls may be heeded.
Australia has had little to say about the Modi government’s failure to criticise hate speech and increasingly systematic violence against Indian Muslims, presumably for fear of alienating what we hope will be a powerful ally against China.
Such hypocrisy is an easy target for critics of the West who eagerly point out how selective we are in which atrocities we condemn, and what appears to be a bias towards people “like us” — whether Israeli or Indian (shared British heritage, cricket, etc) — even when they engage in policies of brutalisation of Muslims.
Foreign policy “realists” insist that that is perfectly acceptable: we should pursue whatever serves our interests, rather than let small matters like consistency or morality dictate our foreign policy actions. If that means condemning Russia for its brutality while avoiding mentioning that of the Bharatiya Janata PartyBJP in India, so be it. The fact that one set of victims is white and European and the other Muslim and brown is, they’d suggest, completely coincidental. It doesn’t do much for their credibility. Nor ours.
“Foreign policy “realists” insist that that is perfectly acceptable: we should pursue whatever serves our interests, rather than let small matters like consistency or morality dictate our foreign policy actions.”
There are strong precedents for this approach. In the 1930s many in Western countries insisted on ignoring disturbing actions taken by the German government and its threats to go much further because it was good to see it growing into a formidable opponent of the USSR. And didn’t that end well!
There are many more blood-stained dictators and kleptocrats around the world who have been given open-ended support using the same reasoning. It’s more or less standard operating procedure for our freedom-loving democracies.
“Foreign policy “realists” have never heard of the word hypocrite and are clueless as to what the Golden Rule means.
It was only just a couple of years ago that India annexed Kashmir and stripped it of its autonomy without a peep from the the west. Modi understands that it is in India’s short term interests to be aligned with the west against China but perhaps not to get too deep in the long term. He does not want India to became another captured democracy. Colonial scars and antipathy to overbearing western hegemony resonate strongly in India. Basically he does not trust the US and by extension Australia. What is also rarely mentioned about the Ukraine crisis is that most of the Global South and nonwhite counties are more sympathetic or neutral to Russia and China. They understand that Western hegemony prefers to keep them rooted in the Global South.
India is one of the most (arguably even the most) robust democracies in the world. And I agree that India will never be a “captured democracy”. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly “colonial scars”, as you say, but part of the reason, a greater part, in my view, is that India has a very long history, reaching back well before British rule and extending well beyond it, of regionalism extending both across the subcontinent and into different regions across the globe. It is a complex and powerful “effective history” that makes India not only profoundly resistant to Delhi-centric aspirations but also impossible to understand if one is looking for an answer to the question (a ridiculous question if we are attempting to understand geopolitical realities, as opposed to engaging in polemics) “whose side are you on”?
The only honest answer to that dumb question is “Ours“. It’s also the only sane one.
Countries should not have friends – too often their interests conflict which rarely ends well.
It was always a source of grim bemusement to hear Western demands that the Non-Aligned Movement (when it existed – note which the founders, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukarno, Josip Broz Tito, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, died in their beds) ..errr, align – against its designated Enemy.
Maybe the reason ‘most of the Global South and nonwhite countries are more sympathetic or neutral to Russia and China’ is that their governments behave similarly towards their citizens.
I can’t read this comment as anything but deeply racist, as well as ignorant. Here is a lens for you. In the wake of WW2, countries of the Global South that had newly gained their “independence”, as well as those still struggling to attain it through the 1950s and 60s, were variously and simultaneously being wooed and severely punished as the rival superpowers sought to determine, by whatever (mainly horrible) means available, which superpower they belonged to. Meanwhile, and ever since, peoples of the global south have been engaged in desperate and very often bloody struggles to resist and/or overthrow brutal regimes installed to serve the interests (both economic and geostrategic) of the same said superpowers.
Calm down. There is nothing racist about saying there are many despots in poorer countries.
Australia has been missing on India for a while now, and given our close ties you’d feel there’s grounds for speaking out (one commonwealth nation to another).
One thing I can see, though, if Australia ever calls out India, it’ll be dismissed as dog-whistling to racists – as much of China’s criticism is now.
Do you think India/Indians really like us?
What are you trying to establish with that question? I can’t see what relevance it has to the point I made.
They used to like us a lot, until our mainstream media started supplying them with good reasons not to. But Indian people are mostly exceedingly generous, and forgiving, and, yes, pragmatic to the core. ps they still like us a lot anyway when we are happy to talk about cricket 🙂
Cricket wouldn’t be the same without India and Pakistan, its boring flogging the Poms all the time. 🙂
Didn’t Dr. Johnson say ‘He who is tired of beating England is tired of life?’
Maybe not quite. But he should have.
Yes that’s a good call.
I think he said, “He who is tired of london”.
The Great Wen does weary.
ps scrolling through the condolence messages and tributes to Shane Warne (RIP) in twitter this am, unsurprised to see that 9 out of 10 are from Indians
“Depends on how we are cooked“.
Apols. to W.C. Fields, the well known admirer of precocious brats.
To Serve Man” Twilight Zone. Climb aboard buddy before the que gets too long.
¿Que?
Corrected … queue.
Is Orwell’s 1984 three super states becoming the new reality with a few border changes that reflect the world today.
Nah, that’s far too well orgnised.
The Babyn Yar memorial was not hit. The Russians attacked the TV tower nearby. This is likely more fake news.