The new diplomacy

The NDA government has had a very eventful foreign policy agenda in its first three months in office. The Government’s foreign policy has largely remained the same but it is the style — the way diplomacy is conducted — that has changed in these initial weeks of the Government.

During the poll campaign, BJP leaders had spoken about the need for a strong government with a muscular foreign policy. The Government hit the ground running in its dealings with foreign powers on its very first day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the leaders of the Saarc countries and Mauritius.

Prime Minister Modi has had a record number of meetings with foreign leaders, both in India and abroad — as part of a ‘proactive’ foreign policy. Improving relations with the neighbours, expanding the Look East policy and the ties with the Gulf region remain a priority for the NDA just as they were during the previous government. But the Government has sent out three strong messages during these three months, according to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

The Modi government has been more outspoken, even blunt, in its responses to foreign governments. Swaraj listed three countries to which the strong messages had been directed — China, the US and Pakistan.

When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Swaraj, she gave an inkling of the new diplomatic style. She told the Chinese leader that India accepted the ‘One China policy’, in the same manner China should accept the One India policy. “When the Chinese side raise the issue of Tibet and Taiwan we understand their sensitivities, they should accept our sensitivities with respect to Arunachal Pradesh,” she said. It was a forthright message that the Chinese should put an end to their policy of giving them stapled visas.

Another message was to the US that snooping on political leaders in India was “unacceptable”. The UPA government, which was in office when reports of US spying on Indian leaders surfaced, had taken the attitude that these things happen. But when US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Delhi for the fifth India-US Strategic Dialogue, Swaraj conveyed the Modi government’s response to spying on BJP leaders, saying: “You call us your friend, but you spy on us. This is unacceptable.”

The Government cancelled a meeting of the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan over the Pakistani High Commissioner’s well publicised meeting with the Hurriyat leaders in Delhi just before the bilateral dialogue was to be resumed. The meeting of the foreign secretaries had been scheduled after the meeting of Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Delhi. “Either you talk to them (the separatists) or you talk to us,” was the unequivocal message to the Pakistan government.

In another instance of plainspeak, during his recent visit to Japan, Modi criticised those with 18th-century-type expansionist ideas, continuing with encroachments, intruding in other’s waters and capturing territory. Though Modi had not named China in his remarks, they were taken as alluding to China which has maritime territorial disputes with its neighbours. However, Swaraj was at pains to point out that Modi had not referred to any country and it was media speculation that concluded they were meant for China.

The Modi government’s has had a hectic foreign affairs calendar and it has indicated its intention to be more forthright in its engagement with its key foreign interlocutors.

The writer is a senior journalist