It’s an irony of sorts!
What India failed to achieve on home turf, during the previous Brics summit in Goa last year, it realised that in far off Xiamen, China.
On Monday, the second day of the ongoing Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, the bloc came up with a joint declaration against terrorism, naming, for the first time, extremist outfits that have harmed Indian interests time and again, along with a host of other subversive entities.
Expressing its resolve to jointly fight terror in all forms, the Brics statement issued on Monday named Jaesh-e-Mohammad (JeM), Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Taliban, Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), Al Qaida and its associates, including Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani network and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir in a list of terror outfits that the bloc considered as constituting a potent threat to global security and stability.
Consensus
A lack of consensus among the Brics members, primarily at the behest of Beijing, saw the joint statement in Goa steer clear of naming any specific terrorist outfit or organisation.
New Delhi’s frantic attempts to have terror organisations named in the Brics Declaration came to a naught as Beijing stymied the move to hedge support for its strategic alliance in South Asia.
In that sense, Monday’s joint declaration is significant as it not only marks a huge tactical victory for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but also underscores, for the first time, China’s decisive and very definitive move to share and acknowledge India’s security concerns.
And that is not without reason.
As Beijing counters a growing threat of extremism within its own borders, primarily in the form of the Uighurs, some of its major commercial and financial interests involved in rebuilding infrastructure in Afghanistan also face increasing extremist threat.
The joint declaration acquires a new dimension, given the fact that Beijing has, in the past, thwarted New Delhi’s initiative to have the United Nations stamp its approval on designating JeM chief Masoud Azhar as an international terrorist.
From blocking India’s push for a permanent membership at the UN Security Council (UNSC) to throwing a spanner in the works of the Modi-led dispensation to secure New Delhi’s seat at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), Beijing’s resolve to keep its Asian arch-rival at bay has been pronounced over the last several years.
As China sought to economic muscle-flexing through its robust implementation of a geo-strategic behemoth called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the recent border dispute in Doklam between the two countries only created further distrust and an avoidable diplomatic and military pow-wow.
Coming close on the heels of the just-resolved standoff in Doklam, Beijing’s acceptance of New Delhi’s demands to name terror outfits that are detrimental to India’s interests, in particular, is indeed part of a confidence-building measure that is likely to have a far-reaching impact on Sino-India relations.
At the same time, it is also a public acknowledgement on the part of the world’s second-largest economy that there can be no discrimination so far as identification of extremist and subversive elements is concerned. Terror in any form and in any part of the globe is reprehensible.
Secondly, what this Xiamen Declaration has also done is to proclaim in the most definitive terms, since the inception of the five-member bloc, that no amount of economic cooperation and trade pact can produce their desired results unless there is a consensus among all Brics members to fight the scourge of terrorism.
A face-saver
Right from initiating a multi-nation trade and commerce pact spanning across three continents, in the form of BRI, to augmenting People’s Liberation Army’s presence at the China-Bhutan border in Doklam, Chinese President Xi Jinping has never let a single opportunity go unutilised to keep India on tenterhooks.
From that perspective, the mutual decision by China and India to withdraw troops from Doklam offered a face-saver to both Beijing and New Delhi without a shot being fired.
Interestingly, right through the 40-day Doklam standoff, it was the Chinese government machinery and its media that kept firing the salvos at India.
New Delhi, in its turn, after the initial jingoistic bravado by a section of the government, displayed fair bit of restraint as the two armies were tantalisingly close to engaging each other in a bloody skirmish.
In that sense, Beijing — after its initial no-holds-barred approach to the crisis — agreeing to withdraw troops from Doklam without insisting on any major concessions on the part of India is in itself a significant tactical victory for New Delhi.
For once, India’s Track 2 diplomacy, with Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar holding meetings with Chinese officials as part of a low-key but more result-oriented outreach, bore rich dividends for Modi.
What also helped augment South Block’s bargaining chip with the Chinese mandarins was the Brics summit in Xiamen from September 3. Xi certainly would have had a tough time keeping a straight face as the summit host, with the world’s second and third-largest armies facing off at the border!
The Brics Declaration on terror is a reaffirmation of the bloc’s commitment to ensure the safety and security of not just its own citizens, but the global community at large.
Only time will tell whether Beijing will be ready to use this declaration as a stepping stone towards further confidence-building measures to assuage India’s concerns and support New Delhi’s NSG bid or its claim for a permanent membership at the UNSC.
Likewise, the jury is still out on whether New Delhi will be ready to board the ship that Xi is ready to captain as part of his ambitious BRI initiative.
But what Monday’s joint declaration has achieved is to at least push geopolitical brinkmanship to the back burner for now and create an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation to show that on countering the festering issue of terror, two of the world’s biggest economies and military powers are indeed on the same page.
And that’s a big plus for not just the five members of the bloc, but for the global community in general — that this Brics is certainly not without mortar!
— You can follow Sanjib Kumar Das on Twitter: @moumiayush
