By granting Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar an extension for a year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a departure from the norm of a fixed two-year tenure for bureaucrats. However, the extension was widely expected, say External Affairs Ministry officials and Mr. Jaishankar’s predecessors.
“This was the general expectation. Both his competence and his proximity to the Prime Minister have been recognised, and within the service, too, there was no resistance,” former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal told The Hindu. “I think there would have actually been a great deal of surprise if he [Mr. Jaishankar] did not receive the extension.”
‘Change’ from the past
In the past two years, since Mr. Jaishankar was appointed just days short of his retirement, he has made a mark for not just carrying out the foreign policy of the Modi government but also articulating it.
At a book release in 2015, the Foreign Secretary made it clear that he spoke for Mr. Modi’s foreign policy as a ‘change’ from the past, and not, as has been the traditional way, of showing it as policy in continuity to the past. “Remember Barack Obama’s visit on January 26? Or the bonding with Shinzo Abe in Kyoto. Assess the recent response of Nepal and Bangladesh on long-standing issues. Look at Op. Rahat in Yemen and Op. Maitri in Nepal. Consider the integrated tours of Central Asia, East Asia, or the Indian Ocean. So let me ask you: does this look like diplomacy as usual,” Mr. Jaishankar had asked an audience in Delhi on India’s “new foreign policy”.
A few days later, he told an audience in Singapore about the Prime Minister’s meeting with Chinese Premier Li Kequiang,
“The mood today allows for frank and direct conversations between the leaderships. Their shared appearances — including the world’s most powerful selfie — and utterances would have been difficult to envisage a year ago.”
India-U.S ties
When it comes to actual policy, Mr. Jaishankar’s biggest success is the India-U.S. relationship that has gone from being one of a number of India’s strategic partnerships to its most important one.
The signing of the joint vision statement for Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, followed by the signing of the LEMOA military exchanges agreement, indenting a $15 billion in defence purchases and leading up to the U.S. Congressional ratification of India as a “Major Defence Partner”, can all be notched up to a large extent to Mr. Jaishankar’s squiring of the India-U.S. and Modi-Obama relationship as India’s Ambassador to Washington (2014-2015) and as Foreign Secretary.
Mr. Jaishankar will now be counted on to smooth the transition from President Obama to President Trump, and to ensure that Washington continues the Obama policy towards India: on support for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, keeping commitments on funding India’s climate change projects, on making allowances for Indian techies and H1B visa hopefuls to continue to work in the U.S., but most important, to remain an important presence in India’s neighbourhood to contain China’s transgressions.
Choppy waters ahead
“India doesn’t want an America that withdraws from the world at this point,” explained former NSA Shivshankar Menon during a discussion in Jaipur on Sunday. “China sees an opportunity both strategically and economically if that happens in the Trump era.”
In that sense, most diplomats and foreign policy analysts agree, Mr. Jaishankar’s challenges in the next year will be less about establishing India’s foreign policy as stable and solid, and more about dealing with the turbulence and unpredictability it may see from as a result of all the changes blowing through Beijing and Washington.
