Recently, I happened to attend the 6th Indian Ocean conference ,2023 in Dhaka which was organized by the India Foundation in collaboration with Ministry of External Affairs of India and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh among others
In the wake of unprecedented developments in West Asia especially the demarche and rapprochement by major Gulf powers in recent times, the meeting of National Security Advisers of USA (Jake Sullivan), India (Ajit Doval), and UAE (Sheikh Tahnoun) in Riyadh with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was highly significant for more than one reason.
What should India get out of its G20 presidency, apart, of course, from countless dos all over the country to remind people, with their pomp, posters and streams of visitors from abroad, of India’s global leadership role?
In our current interconnected, interdependent world, coordination of national policies and actions is a must, to ensure mutual interaction results in productive coherence for the world at large rather than conflict. This calls for global platforms where leaders of the countries that matter can get together and agree on some things. G20 is the most important and most representative of such platforms.
The Ukraine crisis has entered a dangerous new phase. Both sides have escalated their rhetoric as new attempts are made to reconfigure the information battlespace.
On 28 April, New Delhi hosted a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member countries’ defence ministers conclave to discuss regional peace and security, counterterrorism efforts and effective multilateralism. The conclave, chaired by India’s defence minister Rajnath Singh, saw the in-person participation of his counterparts from Russia, China, Iran, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The special defence advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan joined virtually.
Earlier, on March 2, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang, who came to attend the G20 foreign ministerial meeting, that the state of India-China relations is “abnormal”