Pursuing national interests, at the UN high table

Context: India’s quest of its goals at the UNSC must have a clear agenda and also reflect its material and geopolitical limitations.

• India deserves a permanent seat at the high table of the United Nations, the UN Security Council (UNSC), but is almost sure not to have it anytime soon.
• Therefore, its two-year non-permanent stint at the UNSC should be viewed as a once-in-a-decade opportunity to clearly identify and pursue its national interests regionally and globally, rather than chase chimerical goals such as a permanent membership or to issue please-all platitudes.
• The UNSC, unfortunately, is where the leading powers of the international system dictate terms, show less powerful countries their ‘rightful’ place, fight among themselves even as they negotiate deals outside the horseshoe-tabled room.

Timing of membership

• New Delhi’s entry into the UNSC coincides with the emergence of a new world order, one marked by systemic uncertainty, little care for global commons, absence of global leadership, the steady division of the world into rival blocs, and an age marked by unabashed pursuit of narrow national interests.
• Efforts by the newly-inaugurated administration in the United States, especially to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and, possibly, the Iran nuclear deal, may go on to ameliorate some of the harsh impact of earlier decisions.
• The UNSC has many a times failed to live up to its primary objective: “the maintenance of international peace and security”.
• Contemporary India is more self-confident, resolute and wants to be a shaper of geopolitics even though it lacks the material, economic heft, and domestic consensus, to action its ambitions.
• But at least its mindset has changed, from being satisfied on the margins to desiring to be at the centre stage.
• New Delhi’s pursuit of its interests at the UNSC reflects its material and geopolitical limitations, and its energies should be focused on a clearly identified agenda.

The China factor

• New Delhi’s tenure at the UNSC comes in the wake of its growing military rivalry with Beijing, the impact of which has already started to be felt at the UNSC meetings in New York.
• China’s opposition to having India chair the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) in 2022 was a precursor to the things to come on the high table.
• Greater Indian alignment with the West at the UNSC, an unavoidable outcome, could, however, widen the growing gulf between Moscow and New Delhi given Russia’s increasing dependence on Beijing in more ways than one.
• India’s seat at the UNSC is also significant vis-à-vis China because the next two years will be key to ensure checking further Chinese incursions along the Line of Actual Control and building up enough infrastructure and mobilizing sufficient forces in the forward areas.
• Our experience from Doklam to Ladakh to now Arunachal Pradesh points in one direction — that Chinese land grab attempts will continue unabated and in pushing Beijing back, we would need all the assistance we can get.

Focus on terror

• Terror is likely to be a major focus for India at the UNSC.
• At the UNSC Ministerial Meeting on the 20th Anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1373 and the establishment of the Counter Terrorism Committee has set the stage for New Delhi’s approach on the issue: “Terrorists are terrorists; there are no good and bad ones.
• New Delhi recently assumed the chair of the Taliban sanctions committee, which assumes significance given the fast-moving developments in Afghanistan and India’s new-found desire to engage with the Taliban.
• India must, however, formulate its policy towards terrorism with far more diplomatic finesse and political nuance especially given that it is chairing the Taliban sanctions committee while courting the very same Taliban.
• Yet another area New Delhi would want to focus on while seated at the high table would be to use the forum and its engagement there to build coalitions among like-minded states and set out its priorities for the next decade — from climate change to non-proliferation.
• New Delhi should use its bargaining power at the UNSC to pursue its national interests in other forums and domains as well.
• More significantly, New Delhi’s UNSC strategy should involve shaping the narrative and global policy engagement vis-à-vis perhaps one of the biggest grand strategic concepts of our time — the Indo-Pacific.
• Given India’s centrality in the Indo-Pacific region and the growing global interest in the concept, New Delhi would do well to take it upon itself to shape the narrative around it.

Think beyond reforms

• New Delhi’s pursuit of its national interest at and through the UNSC must also be tempered by the sobering fact that the UNSC is unlikely to admit new members any time soon, if ever at all.
• India’s past global engagements and efforts have often been contingent on the hope that it would one day be admitted to the UNSC given its irrefutable claim.
• So, New Delhi must focus its energies on what it can achieve during the short period that it would be in the UNSC rather than what it wishes happened.

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