Brics: beyond Pakistan

Isolating Pakistan seems to have become the-ball-all-and-end-all of Indian foreign policy. While playing host at the recent Brics summit in Goa, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Pakistan as the ‘mothership’ of global terrorism. A few weeks ago, at the UNGA, New Delhi had dubbed Islamabad the ‘Ivy League of terrorism’.

A country which has the ambitions to become a world power must think high instead of being obsessed with having its smaller neighbour declared a pariah. Jingoism has seldom made a people great. In fact, such an ill-advised policy has immense opportunity cost entailing a shift from welfare to warfare, social spending to military expenditure, and peaceful conflict resolution to escalation of tensions. But then such is the stuff Modi is made of. He is nothing if not outright aggressive.

Coming back to the Brics summit, in an oblique rebuke to the Indian premier, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasised the need for seeking political solutions to the hotspots. Though he did not specifically mention Kashmir, the six-and-a-half decades long territorial dispute between Pakistan and India is one of the region’s most well-known hotspots. Xi also called for addressing both “symptoms and root causes” to global challenges like terrorism. The message was clear: instead of endlessly pointing the finger at Islamabad for sponsoring cross-border terrorism, New Delhi had better address the underlying causes.

Modi’s second speech at the summit, this time as head of the Indian delegation, was also replete with references to terrorism. “Our response to terrorism”, he stated, “must, therefore, be nothing less than comprehensive. And we need to act both individually and collectively. Selective approaches to terrorist individuals and organisations will not only be futile but also counter-productive. There must be no distinction based on artificial and self-serving grounds.”

India would like to have seen full denunciation of the Uri attack in the Goa Declaration. However, the Chinese opposition prevented incorporation of the Uri-specific language into the text. “We strongly condemn the recent several attacks against some Brics countries, including that in India”, the declaration read. And that’s not all. While calling for action against all UN designated militant outfits, the declaration, much to the hosts’ exasperation, specifically mentioned only Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, neither of which is perceived to be a direct threat to India.

The Indian press, which by and large has the reputation of toeing the government’s line when it comes to foreign policy, was also critical of its prime minister for the way he went all out against Pakistan. In the words of ‘The Indian Express’, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just been delivered an unhappy lesson at the just-concluded Brics summit in Goa: though nine-tenths of geopolitics is about bluff, the critical one-tenth is about knowing when to fold.” The same paper admits that        “less than a month after it began, the Prime Minister’s campaign to isolate Pakistan is not gaining momentum.”

On the occasion of the Brics summit, India employed another ploy to isolate Pakistan. This it did by initiating the Brics-Bimstech outreach. Bimstech stands for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation among India, Sri Lanka,     Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand. The association has assumed heightened significance in the eye of New Delhi in the wake of the India-induced postponement of the Saarc summit, which was to be hosted by Islamabad during the current year. Since Bimstech does not include Pakistan, India will try to prop up the association as an alternative to Saarc.

Few would gainsay that terrorism is a most potent regional as well as global threat needing collective attention and indiscriminate action. Likewise, it is hard to dispute that it is the foremost responsibility of a country to ensure that no state or non-state actors from its territory are involved in cross-border terrorism. That said, New Delhi seems to be interested more in slinging mud at Islamabad than engaging its neighbours in a serious dialogue. An isolated or weak Pakistan will not make India securer. Instead, it can be safely said that India has high stakes in its western neighbour’s stability and prosperity. But New Delhi is so much obsessed with Pakistan-bashing to accept this simple truth.

The Indian attempts to use the Brics forum to denigrate and isolate Pakistan overshadowed the deliberations made at the Goa summit as well as the envisaged role of the organisation – comprising five leading economies in the developing world – as an important association for south-south cooperation. Born in 2009, Brics aims at reforming global financial institutions, viz the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, collectively called the Bretton Woods institutions, primarily with a view to shoring up the role of the developing nations in multilateral economic decision making.

As an alternative to the World Bank and the IMF, Brics has put in place its own development and lending institutions, namely the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). The NDB has been entrusted with financing infrastructure and sustainable development projects with the initial capital of $50 billion ($10 billion contribution from each members), which over time will double; while the $100 billion CRA is to help members in financial crunch.

The Bretton Woods institutions are criticised, inter alia, for the way they make decisions. The common allegation is that these institutions are dominated by and serve the interests of the US and its West European allies at the expense of others, particularly developing countries.

For instance, in the IMF, the number of votes that a member has is proportionate to its contribution (called quota) to the Fund. The US being the largest contributor to the IMF has the largest share in the total votes, which is 17 percent. Not only that, the voting power does not truly reflect the economic size. For instance, China – whose economy is larger than any European country – has less voting strength than that of several European nations. Washington also holds the highest voting power in the World Bank for the same reason.

Doubts have been cast over the ability of the Brics institutions to do away with such shortcomings. Among the Brics economies, China occupies a pre-eminent position comparable to that of the US in the global economy since 1945. Hence, other Brics members, notably India, fear that Brics may end up being dominated by China. Such reservations aside, Brics does represent a credible attempt to advance the interests of the developing nations.

The writer is a graduate from a western European university.

E-mail: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com