US hijacks Quad to Europe

MK Bhadrakumar

Former Ambassador

US State Department spokesman Ned Price has clarified that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s discussion with his Quad counterparts during the grouping’s ministerial at Canberra recently focused on the current US-Russia standoff. Price didn’t have to fling into public domain such discussions behind closed doors but he chose to, partly to clarify but mainly to pin India down. Price implied that there was ‘a strong consensus’ at the Quad ministerial to ‘reinforce the rules-based international order’ — namely, to condemn Russia.

Having become a sore point in India-China relations, Quad may sow seeds of distrust in Russia-India ties too.

Price insisted, ‘We know that our Indian partners are committed to that rules-based international order.’ EAM Jaishankar, of course, had been evasive and seemed to convey that Russia wasn’t the Quad ministerial’s business. However, Price stated that ‘rules-based order’ was a ‘core tenet that applies equally in the Indo-Pacific as it does in Europe, as it does anywhere else.’ Of course, both Price and Jaishankar cannot be right. Welcome to Blinken-Jaishankar tango.

Price’s definition of the Quad mantra of rules-based order causes worry. What is the guarantee that some day, it may not come to haunt India too — say, if the US chooses to apply the ‘core tenets’ to Nagaland or J&K? India may not always be fortunate to have Jaishankar’s services to temper the American moods. There are scores of case studies where the US had turned against its own allies. Remember the US’ brutal trade war with its Cold-War ally Japan in the 1980s? Japan couldn’t afford to get confrontational or take retaliatory measures (unlike today’s China) and instead went down on its knees to shift the accent of its foreign trade policy from ‘incentivising’ exports and restricting imports to ‘revitalise exports and free imports.’ But Washington forced Tokyo to capitulate on an array of American diktats such as a landmark agreement stipulating a permanent 20% market share for US semiconductor products in the Japanese market, and cranking open the flood gates for American agricultural products!

In fact, the US is only applying some norms selectively to Russia. Price’s basket excludes tenets such as multipolarity, cultural diversity, colour revolutions, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, equal rights of peoples to independently determine their development paths, the centrality of the UN-driven international architecture and so on. Evidently, Washington has a problem with the bulk of tenets that would meaningfully contribute to global and regional peace and stability. Its tenets are narrowly defined tools for imposing its global hegemony.

The US is whipping up war hysteria that Russia is about to ‘invade’ Ukraine, but in reality, profound issues of international security and the world order are playing out. The core issue is the invidious attempt by the US since the mid-1990s to expand NATO, contrary to the assurances it had given to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. NATO today is approaching Russia’s doorstep as it intends to give membership to Ukraine. Such an eventuality would mean that NATO missiles could be deployed in Ukraine, within 5 minutes’ striking distance of Moscow.

Russia will not compromise on its national defence or allow the US to dominate it. Moscow’s diplomacy is working on the European opinion, which is averse to war with Russia and is nervous about likelihood of massive refugee flow from Ukraine, the probable disruption in the supply of Russian gas supplies and the derailing of their post-pandemic economic recovery. There is disquiet within the European camp as to where all this US brinkmanship is leading. They know that US’ ‘sanctions from hell’ won’t deter Russia. Europe is seeking strategic autonomy. The present crisis has fuelled the latent frictions in the alliance system.

Last week, reports appeared that in a high-stakes diplomatic effort to shelve its ‘systemic rivalry’ with Beijing, in open defiance of the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy, the EU has scheduled a summit meeting with the Chinese leadership. French President Macron called up President Xi Jinping to compliment him on the Beijing Olympics and pledge that ‘France will make all-out efforts to advance the positive agenda between the EU and China’. They reached consensus on a six-point agenda. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly seeking high-level ministerial trade talks with Beijing for the first time since 2018, while his Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is working to bring back a major trade summit, the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue, which has not been held since 2019.

The Canberra ministerial is a wake-up call that should make us realise that by travelling on the Quad road paved by the UPA-1 in 2007, India finds itself in wilderness. The present government had the option to take a clean break but instead chose to revive the moribund Quad platform in 2017. Today, as the world order is on the cusp of a phenomenal transformation, Washington has unilaterally decided that Quad must be turned into a vehicle for the Biden administration’s dual containment strategy against China and Russia. The hidden agenda is that Quad, having become a sore point in India-China ties, holds potential to sow seeds of distrust in Russian-Indian relationship too, which would effectively destroy India’s strategic autonomy. EAM’s stony silence is shocking.

Now, what if US-Russian tensions subside as Washington runs out of options? What we are witnessing are the birth pangs of a new world order. Indians cannot behave like the lotus-eaters in Greek mythology, living on an island, who ate the lotus and forgot their home and loved ones, and only longed to stay with their fellow lotus-eaters.

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