There’s one thing that received very little objective attention: foreign policy since 2014. Let’s start with the latest development and ask: Why did Prime Minister Modi go to Ukraine to meet President Zelenskyy?

Nearly a week after the visit has been over there are no convincing answers. Such high level visits happen after careful preparation but this one seems to have been within about a month. Nor has anything of note emerged from it. Modi made the usual remarks but Zelenskyy appears to have been downright rude.

As a former foreign secretary, with visible sympathy for the BJP noted in a tweet “Taking a swipe at our PM’s expense when he is visiting Ukraine on a peace mission is cheap and immature politics.” This led a former IAS officer who is now a member of an opposition party to say “Modi’s Ukraine visit was a diplomatic disaster where Modi got shunted repeatedly by Zelensky! Sad that our PM gets into such terrible embarrassment. The world laughs at us!”

Apart from these indignant reactions by partisan observers, experts in the field of foreign policy have been trying to make sense of the visit. There are many theories doing the rounds, ranging from India looking to get aircraft engines for the IAF transport fleet to warship repair to greater economic cooperation to peace building between Russia and Ukraine to placating the West which is annoyed that India is so friendly with Russia. Maybe it is all of these and maybe it’s none of these or maybe it’s some of these. There’s no way of knowing and only time will tell what, if anything, was achieved.

Peacemaker or interloper?

It must, however, be noted that Modi is the only ‘friend’ of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President who invaded Ukraine in 2022 and who has invited the wrath of the West, to visit Zelenskyy. Other friends like Xi Jingping of China and Victor Orban of Hungary have avoided going to Ukraine.

Regardless of the immediate outcomes, that alone makes the visit worth paying attention to. Since there’s no way of knowing what happened behind the scenes it can legitimately be asked if India is indeed playing a worthwhile intermediary role between Ukraine and Russia.

It is worth recalling that India had refused to sign the document that emerged from the meeting of the anti-Russia countries in Switzerland last June. This has annoyed Zelenskyy who thinks India is not neutral. But he may well be waiting for the outcome of the presidential election in the US in November to decide on how to proceed.

Meanwhile, it is now clear that the war has worn out everyone. The Ukrainians have stopped the Russian army with US material help but the US is fiscally exhausted now.

The next government will therefore have to take a call helping Ukraine — how far and at what cost. This will make a difference to the Ukrainian decision but only next year. The pieces will fall into place in the next 15 months. We have to wait and see what role India plays.

Modi and foreign policy

After 10 years in office two opposing views have emerged regarding the Modi government’s foreign policies. One is that it is wildly successful. The other is that it is entirely unsuccessful. It’s polarisation with knobs on.

The sensible view is that its outcome is unclear. If you look at South Asia it’s been spectacularly unsuccessful. But if you look beyond it’s been the opposite. We seem to get along splendidly with everyone except our neighbours, whereas it should be the other way round. But is this unusual? No big country with a very large economy is loved by its smaller neighbours. The US, Russia, China, Germany, France etc all have a similar problem. Their neighbours detest them.

But they don’t have active hostility aided and abetted by an even larger neighbour, like China in our case. That basically means it’s impossible to delink our South Asia policy from our China policy. This lies at the heart of the Modi government’s foreign policy.

There are signs that Modi 3.0 is considering offering China some carrots in the form of more liberal investment rules for Chinese companies. It will be interesting to see how China responds.

As to the West, it’s always been a fraught relationship that characterises genuinely representative democracies. They tend to get on each other’s nerves but don’t break apart.

The Modi years have not seen any dramatic change in the overall texture of this aspect of the relationship with the West, including Russia. The basic understanding is there and that’s what really matters. We agree to disagree.