G20: A summit under the shadow of a war

“I am confident that when the G20 leaders meet in the holy land of Bhagwan Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi next year, we will all agree to convey a strong message of peace to the world,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at Bali in Indonesia on November 15, 2022. He was speaking at the 17th G20 summit, which saw the United States and the rest of the West taking on Russia for its military aggression against Ukraine. The summit ended with the G20 adopting the ‘Bali Declaration’ after much wrangling over the paragraph on the war in Ukraine.

Ten months after he took over the G20 presidential gavel from President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, Modi is now set to host the leaders of the intergovernmental forum for its 18th summit at the newly inaugurated Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. The war is still raging in Ukraine. The geopolitical divide triggered by the conflict deepened over the past few months. The war had a profound impact on the economy and exacerbated food and energy insecurity around the world.

India has been drawing flak from the West for not joining the US and others in condemning Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. It refrained from criticising Moscow, apparently in view of its deep Cold War era ties with Russia, particularly its decades-old dependence on the former Soviet Union nation for defence equipment, including high-tech military hardware.

The prime minister’s state visit to the US and his meetings with President Joe Biden in the White House on June 22 added new momentum to the India-US ties. Modi, however, called up President Vladimir Putin a few days after returning from Washington DC – signalling that India would continue to maintain a strategic balance in its ties with Russia and the US.

India has been trying to push the Russia-Ukraine conflict down on the G20 agenda after taking over the presidency of the intergovernmental forum. It has been underlining that the priority for its presidency has been leading the premier forum for international economic cooperation to focus on developmental issues, inclusive and sustainable growth, gender equality, finances from multilateral institutions for accelerated development and transition to clean energy, mitigating the impact of climate change, reforming multilateral financial institutions and technological transformation.

But the first meeting of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Bengaluru from February 22-25 this year made it clear that the West would not allow the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war to be put on the back burner. The meeting ended without a consensus on the outcome document because the US and the rest of the West insisted on the inclusion of condemnation of Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine while Russia and China opposed it. India had to issue the chair’s summary after the meeting. The same happened in almost all the meetings held over the past few months.

The summit is just about a week away, but the consensus on the outcome document remains elusive. The G20 Sherpas will meet at Nuh in Haryana from Sunday to make a last attempt to iron out differences over the “Delhi Declaration”, proposed to be adopted by the leaders at the end of the summit. Moscow’s envoy to New Delhi, Denis Alipov, on Friday said that the references to Russia’s “special military operations” in Ukraine should be removed from the draft declaration. Even if Russia and China finally allow the inclusion of the paragraphs on the war in Ukraine in the declaration, they are likely to insist on reflection of their objections in the document, just as they had done in the case of the “Bali Declaration” adopted at the 2022 summit.

India has not included President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the list of the special invitees for the summit, notwithstanding nudges from the West. During a recent phone call with Zelenskyy, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, vowed to ‘strongly’ speak up for Ukraine at the summit in New Delhi. The US president too is expected to raise the social and economic impacts of “Putin’s war in Ukraine” at the conclave. So are the other leaders from the West. Russia is also likely to be criticised for withdrawing from the Black Sea grain deal.

Putin, himself, is giving the New Delhi summit a miss. His foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will lead the delegation from Moscow and will counter the West’s tirade against Russia.

Modi’s “today’s-era-is-not-of-war” message to Putin had found resonance at the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022. But, will the prime minister now be able to deliver on his promise and lead the G20 to send out a message of peace from New Delhi? One has to wait for the summit to get over to know.