Jaishankar and his journey

The most important cabinet appointment in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet is his choice of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar as India’s newest foreign minister. If India had tried to manufacture, in a laboratory, the ideal person to manage it’s relationships with other countries, it is hard to imagine how its scientists could do better than Jaishankar. His lineage, academic interests, work experience, language skills, and approach to Indian power all come together in a potent and coherent package that speaks to India’s aspirations as a global power. It is important for Pakistanis – hawkish, centrist or dovish – to understand the evolution and growth of Indian leaders like Jaishankar, in part because they represent the version of India that it desperately seeks to project, both within the South Asia region and beyond.

Jaishankar is the son of K Subramanyam, who passed away in 2011, but was widely credited as the leading figure in modern Indian strategic affairs. A legendary civil servant and think tank guru, K Subramanyam was the driving force behind the post-Kargil reframing of India’s strategic calculus. Long-arc, patient and deeply attuned to the political environment that they operate in, both father and son represent a continuum of exceptional service to their country. The principal driver of this service has been a capacity to identify weakness, define a path forward that tackles the drivers of weakness, and deliver an outcome that leaves the country stronger.

Jaishankar, like his father did at a strategic level, has been intimately involved in defining India’s role in the global nuclear community. Perhaps most importantly, Jaishankar has about as diverse a set of experiences in handling India’s place in the world as any has ever had. Three aspects of the Jaishankar appointment, and his career thus far make him a unique diplomatic asset.

First, Jaishankar has to his credit, stints as India’s ambassador to the United States and to China within the last decade. As the longest ever serving Indian representative to Beijing, Jaishankar oversaw the transformation of India’s links with China through the trade avenue. In 2001, total bilateral trade between India and China was less than $3 billion. When he landed in Beijing in 2009, it was roughly $20 billion – Jaishankar moved on in 2013. By 2016, China-India trade had grown to over $70 billion. Whilst this growth began prior to Jaishankar’s arrival in Beijing, it took on an entirely different dimension by the time his tenure in China came to a close.

In Washington DC, Jaishankar arrived well after the establishment of the strategic partnership between the United States and India. Despite this, when he was first elected PM Modi was not a popular figure in the US. But Jaishankar’s tenure in DC heralded the deepening of acceptance of Narendra Modi in American officialdom. The basis for this acceptance had less to do with America’s appetite for Hindutvadi politics, and more to do with the vision of India’s place in the world that Jaishankar, along with many other Indian officials, have helped sell to the US, the Western mass media, and the global community at large.

China and the United States are the two most important global relationships that India has today. Jaishankar has helped shape both of them as they exist today. The warmth and camaraderie between PM Modi, and President Xi Jinping or indeed President Donald Trump is informed by many factors – but Jaishankar has been at the intersection of their evolution.

Second, Jaishankar is a champion of India’s long-standing effort to 'Look East-Act East'. His experience as a diplomat in Singapore, Japan and China helped forge his network and understanding of region, but it has been the intransigence of the issues between India and Pakistan that helped drive Jaishankar and his generation of Indian strategists to shift India’s regional attention away from Saarc and toward BIMSTEC.

In part, the core idea behind this eastward shift is no shift at all – it is instead about de-coupling India from Pakistan. Jaishankar leads a growing and powerful segment of opinion in New Delhi that sees India as being capable of simply leaving behind Pakistan and the issues India has with the country, in favour of moving forward with its various other relationships. Of course, this notion is problematic and has several important challengers from within the Indian system – not to mention how unseemly it is for responsible and senior Indians officials to pretend that they themselves do not obsess over Pakistan. Nevertheless, with Jaishankar as foreign minister, the likelihood increases that an important voice near PM Modi will be advocating isolation and the use of regional and global fora to take punitive postures toward Pakistan.

Third, Jaishankar marks a very different kind of appointment for India. India has had professionals and technical experts in various fields join politics, but it is relatively rare for this to happen so swiftly as it has for him. Usually, as in the case of Natwar Singh, or Baijyant Panda, or Shashi Tharoor, Indians that have starred in other aspects of life must first prove their ability to participate in electoral contests, before they are given key offices. Even then, newcomers tend to start small and build upwards. Of course, there is the occasional Manmohan Singh, but for the most part technocrats don’t get rewarded for their expertise with political office without a bit of slog.

Jaishankar is not only a major exception, but he may, down the road, prove to be the pivot point that helped shape a new rule. India is increasingly finding it difficult to bridge the hype around brand India with the brutal realness of India India: still extremely poor, still with a military whose preparedness can be exposed (as it was in the aftermath, and some may say, even during its Balakot strike), and still without a hope of catching China in the race to be a superpower to reckon with. Jaishankar has a PhD in international relations, and speaks at least four languages, possibly five, quite fluently. When deployed as foreign secretary, he was a formidable counterpart, but as foreign minister he could be positively dominant – at least when it comes to jostling with some of the countries with which India has some key issues. Chief among them will be handling the Indian dynamic with the US, which is growing increasingly hostile to the very globalisation it helped seed across the world over the last half century. This newfound focus in India on competence for holders of public office could be more than a one-off. It may indicate PM Modi and India Version 2019’s appetite for less politics and more policy.

All of this is likely to have profound implications for Pakistan. For decades, China has tried to convince Pakistan’s leaders that the existence of key international (Kashmir) and bilateral (Siachen, Sir Creek etc) disputes with India must not prevent Pakistan from growing its trade relationship with India. Almost every signal from Rawalpindi since General Qamar Javed Bajwa became chief of army staff suggests that the core message of a trade-centric national ethos is one that the army can get behind. Prime Minister Imran Khan has been consistently pro-normalisation, with a sustained series of symbolic and substantive gestures – most crucially his decision to hand over captured Wing Commander Abhinandan Verthaman to India. It is clear to any fair observer that Pakistan has a clear intent to re-orient its relationship in the direction of normalisation – which is centred, as it should be, around trade, and religious tourism.

The problem for Pakistan, as it tends to be so often when it deals with the outside world, is not of the right spirit, or self-belief, or good intentions. The problem for Pakistan is competence. There is no one in PM Khan’s cabinet, no matter whether we include those that have been amputated from elsewhere into it, or those that have been with the Great Khan since 1996, that can deal with India’s Jaishankar at the level he is capable of operating at.

Pakistan’s choices, with respect to cabinet appointments made thus far – both in terms of additions and subtractions – do not inspire the kind of confidence that PM Modi clearly has in S Jaishankar. The nearly ten months of lost opportunities for reform under this government are gone. Our strategists in Pakistan should examine how coherent and consistent a path to excellence both K Subrahmanyam and his son S Jaishankar were afforded by their country. Perhaps some reflection will yield improved decision-making in the longer run.

A very happy Eid to all.

The writer is an analyst and commentator.