Kenneth I. Juster: Hey, thank you very much, Mike. Welcome, everyone and delighted to have with us Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar. You have his bio in front of you. He’s been the Minister of External Affairs since May of 2019, and before that was the Foreign Secretary from 2015 to 2018. And, I believe, the only individual in India who has held both positions, as both Foreign Secretary and Foreign Minister. You have the rest of his bio.
Let me begin by picking up where Mike left off, on the array of intensive activities that have occurred in the last year—bilateral trips to meetings with the United States with Egypt, France. You’ve been to the ASEAN Summit, the East Asian Summit, and the BRICS Summit. You chaired a very successful G20 summit meeting in which one of the major announcements was the Middle East corridor. You had a meeting on the margins of BRICS with President Xi of China. You’ll be chairing—or, hosting the Quad leadership meeting next year. When you step back and look at all of these activities, what is the vision and strategy that shapes the way India approaches all of this? Not only in terms of the groupings it’s dealing with, but bilaterally when it also does not wish to enter into any alliance?
EAM, Dr. S. Jaishankar: Well, Ken, let me first of all, begin by saying it’s a real pleasure to be back at CFR. And thank you, Ambassador Froman. Thank you, Ken.
You know when I step back and look at it, or one part of it, from the way you presented it as well, is quantitative. I mean, you look at the number of meetings, the number of visits, just the frequency of what is happening, and that’s partly because now, you know, we are the fifth-largest economy in the world. Obviously, your interests are more, your responsibilities are more, your contributions are more. You have many more countries and regions with which you’re linked. So one part of it, I would say, really flows from the growth, from the rise of India. So, if you look even at relative, you know, parts of the world where historically we have not been that present or that, in a way, connected—like Latin America, or the Pacific, or the Nordics, maybe a little different. So you actually see an India today whose footprint is more, whose interests and activities are more. So that’s one part of it.
The second is really the structure of the world itself. We have seen, particularly over the last maybe four or five years, in many ways more openings. You know, the nature of world politics has changed. The issues have changed. You know, the technology issues, energy issues. So, I wouldn’t be uni-causal about it. You know, I think there are a variety of issues which are driving, what is clearly a heightened Indian activity. And, in a way, we are also planning ahead, you know? Today, Prime Minister Modi speaks about planning for the next quarter of a century. So we have a particular Indian term for it. And the goal is really a quarter-century from now we should strive to be a developed country. And now, that’s the goal at home. But if you look at the consequences of that, it will be logical that we would also seek to be a global power. And if you’re going to have global interests and a global footprint, then it takes time to prepare it. You know, you’re not going to turn on a switch and suddenly become global.
So a lot of what we are trying to do—I mean, we are trying to do today’s interests, maybe the next decade, but also the next quarter of a century all at the same time. And what you spoke about, in a way, refers to all of that. Now, given the contradictions of the world, one of the contradictions—and it was very visible at the G20—you will have a much sharper East-West polarization, whose immediate but not only cause is the conflict in Ukraine. You have—particularly because of the COVID but, again, not only because of the COVID, a very deep North-South divide. And I would say we are one of the few countries who have that ability to actually bridge both these issues. So that too is a factor for or a lot of the activity that that we speak about.
Again, you know, it’s interesting, if you look at the last decade we have become members of more organizations. I mean, the Quad itself after 2008 was revived in 2017. It’s been upgraded steadily. It has become at the level of the President/PM in 2021. The most recent is the IMEEC. We have a grouping of the I2U2, which involves India, Israel, the United States, and the UAE. We joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at that time. We have a few other organizations of a more local, proximate nature. There are initiatives which we have actually fashioned, like the International Solar Alliance, or there’s the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. So there are things happening. You know, world politics, international order is changing. And we are very much at the cutting edge of that.
Kenneth I. Juster: And you see yourselves as trying to be positioned as the bridge between the North and the South and the East and the West?
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: To a considerable extent, yes. But in a way, I’m simplifying it because, you know, it’s not always possible, it’s not always desirable to necessarily stay in the middle. There will be issues where you would want to do that. There would be other issues where it may not be feasible to do that. So depending on the issue in question, the positioning would adjust to that. I would say, if you take a domain like technology today, it’s hard to be in the middle because I think there are sharp choices in the field of technology. And but there would be, often, you know, there would be other issues where maybe that’s more feasible.
Kenneth I. Juster: Let me turn to China. You served as Indian Ambassador from 2013 to 2015. So you know that country well. When I was ambassador, it seemed that despite the difficulties at times in the relationship, it had reached certain equilibrium. There were informal summit meetings between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi. And then suddenly, in 2020, I think everyone was caught by surprise when China crossed over the Line of Actual Control, amassed fifty to sixty thousand troops there with heavy artillery, and was building an infrastructure. Has it ever become clear as to exactly what their objective was and is? And how do you see the realistic India-China relationship going forward? And what impact has China’s behaviour had on India’s activities in the region?
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: Well, Ken, you know, one of the pleasures of dealing with China is that they never quite tell you why they do things. So you often end up trying to figure it out. And it’s always, there’s a certain ambiguity out there. What had happened? You know, I was ambassador from 2009, immediately after the global financial crisis, till 2013. So I saw the change of guard in China, and then I came to the U.S. after that.
Now, you know, it’s never been an easy relationship. It’s always had its share of problems. It’s had a war in 1962. It’s had military incidents after that. But after 1975, there was actually, there’s never been a loss of life, there’s never been a military, a combat fatality on the border. 1975 was the last time.
In 1988, we, in a sense, normalized the relationship more when Rajiv Gandhi, who was then the Prime Minister, went to China. In 1993 and 1996, we did two agreements with China to stabilize the boundary. And the boundary, by the way, is disputed. You know, so there’s a negotiation going on. So the line of actual control, it was agreed that neither of us would actually mass troops there. And if you brought more than a certain number of troops, we would inform the other side. So it was pretty explicit the way it was laid out. There have been subsequent agreements after that, one in 2005 and one in 2012. So it was actually in many ways, a very unique situation because what would happen in the boundary areas is troops on either side would step out from their military bases. They had designated bases where they were. They would do their patrolling, come back to the bases. If they happen to intersect somewhere, they were very clear rules about how they would conduct themselves, and use of firearms was prohibited.
So this is how it was really till 2020. Now in 2020, when we were in the middle of our COVID lockdown, at that time China actually had managed to get the first wave of COVID behind them. We saw that Chinese troops in very large numbers were moving towards the Line of Actual Control. And you know, normally, I am guessing now here, that it would have been very difficult when you are in the middle of a COVID lockdown, because our COVID lockdown was complete. I mean, you know, the country—it was like a ghost city or cities. You know, the airports were shut down, the railways were shut down. So in the middle of all of that, we actually had to mobilize and counter-deploy, which we did.
And then we had a situation where we were, understandably, worried that the troops are now much too close. And we cautioned the Chinese that such a situation could create problems. And, sure enough, in middle of June in 2020, it did. So we had a clash in which twenty of our soldiers died. They claim that four of their soldiers died. So that’s again, one of the things we will never know. But the fact is that since during that period, actually, before that, during that, after that, I have been in regular touch with my counterparts, other colleagues have spoken to their counterparts. At various points of time, the Chinese have given us different explanations. None of them are really tenable. And since then, we have been trying to disengage, because both of us have a forward deployment ahead of our regular military bases.
We have been partially successful, out of whatever, maybe, let’s say ten places, we would have resolved seven, eight of these forward deployments. There are still some we’ve been discussing. But the basic problem, which is a very large number of troops are amassed on the border in violation of agreements, continues. Now what it has done is it has completely, in a way, impacted the relationship because, you know, it’s very hard to try to be normal with a country which has broken agreements, and which has done what it has done. So if you look at the last three years, it’s a very abnormal state. The contacts have been disrupted. Visits are not taking place. We have, of course, this high level of military tension.
It has also impacted the perception of China, in India. You know, this perception was not positive in the 1960s and ’70s, because of the war we had in ’62, but we had started to put that behind us when this has happened. So I think there’s both an immediate issue, as well as a medium-term issue, possibly longer than medium-term issue, out there. And if you have really the two biggest countries of Asia, of the world, with that degree of tension between them, it has consequences for everybody else.
Kenneth I. Juster: Yeah. By the way, sorry, I had dates for your Ambassadorship when you were in the U.S. rather than China.
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: Oh, no, no.
Kenneth I. Juster: Let me turn to China and Russia. As you know, in February of 2022, Putin and Xi issued a joint statement in which they said their relationship went beyond a traditional alliance and has no limits. Russia shortly thereafter invaded Ukraine. And the difficulties it’s had in Ukraine, along with the economic sanctions, have created severe problems for the Russians, and seem to make it increasingly dependent on China for political and economic support. What do you see as the realistic future for Russia? And how might this impact New Delhi’s relationship with Moscow?
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: Well, I think in a way, you know, Russia has historically seen itself as a European power, even though it’s spread across both Europe and Asia. My expectation would be that the turn of events, you know, since 2022, and because its relationship with Europe and with the West has been so severely disrupted that Russia would, is, actually, turning to Asia. And to other parts of the world, but primarily to Asia because that’s where a lot of economic activity is. And it is also an Asian power, even though it has not always seen itself primarily as that. So I would actually predict that Russia would make very strenuous efforts to build alternative relationships, a lot of which would be in Asia.
And this would reflect itself in economics, in trade, possibly in other domains as well. Now, I know that, you know, Russia-China would have particular profile, a particular salience in this. But I would also say that, you know, our own relationship with Russia has been extremely steady, you know, since the mid-’50s. And it’s interesting, if you look at the last about seventy years of world politics, U.S.-Russia, Russia-China, Europe-Russia, almost every one of these relationships has had very big ups and downs. I mean, there have been very bad periods in that relationship and there have been good periods in that relationship. Ours has actually, the India-Russia relationship has actually held very, very steady.
So we’ve had the, you know, the Soviet period, the post-Soviet period, and part of it is that I think there is an understanding in both countries that as, you know, big powers in the Asian continent, there is a kind of a structural basis for having to get along, wanting to get along. And so we take great care to make sure the relationship is working.
Kenneth I. Juster: Let me turn to the U.S.-India relationship which, as you know, has been on an upward trajectory for the last twenty-plus years. The prime minister had a very positive state visit to the United States with new initiatives in defence cooperation, technology exchange, people-to-people relations, and otherwise. And yet, one has to remember that India and the United States are not allies. They are strategic partners. India has, I think, a slightly different vision of a multipolar world than the US vision for world order. In addition, you have some in the United States that are concerned about domestic developments in India relating to religious freedom and other issues, and some in India who are concerned about the reliability of United States overall. What do you see as the limits of the U.S.-India partnership or are there no limits?
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: You know, what did they call it? A limitless friendship? Yes, So, rather than limits, I would put it as possibilities. Let’s take a sort of more optimistic view of how relationships work. Look, my sense is that actually today the United States is also fundamentally readjusting to the world. It’s doing so partly—you know, part of it is the long-term consequences of Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s one part of it. But I think that’s only one part of it. It’s also, if you, you know, look at the dominance of the United States in the world, and its relative power vis-à-vis others, that has also changed in the last decade. And it’s logical, because as actually the world has become, in a way, more democratic, if opportunities are available more universally, then it’s natural that other centres of production and consumption would come about and there would be a redistribution of power in the world. And that has happened.
So I would actually suggest to you, Ken, that, in a way, the United States—while it may not use that term—is adjusting to a multipolar world. In fact, the United States is actively seeking to shape, you know, what would be the poles, and what would be the weights of the poles, in a manner in which it would benefit the United States. And there’s nothing wrong with that. So we will actually be looking at a world—probably we’ve already entered that world—where the United States is no longer, in a way, saying, ‘Okay, I basically work only with my allies’. And the Quad itself is a demonstration of that. The fact that you have a country like India, which is not an allied country, that the other two partners are treaty-based allies, that, in fact, I think we should credit U.S. policymakers with that imagination and with that overt planning. That they have already started getting into this new, much more fluid, much more dispersed sort of centres of power, very often much more regional, with sometimes different issues and different theatres producing their own combinations.
So we are looking at, you know, it’s no longer such a clean cut, black and white, or three axis solutions. I think it’s far more messy, in a way. It’s much more anarchic, in a way. But I think all of us are trying to adjust to that and find a way of working with each other. Now, where India and U.S. are concerned, if you look today at the role that we could play in enhancing each other’s interests, I think there’s a recognition that this has enormous possibilities. That if the U.S. looks at the world and says, Okay, what is the competition and where are, you know, the partners’ real potential, and we do the same, I think you will find that, you know, the convergences today far, far outweigh the divergences.
So, for me, you know, I’m really no longer prepared to think of it as where are the limits? I would say, really, where all are the opportunities? And, you know, how much can we step on the gas? How much can we take it forward? And just look at the last, not even decade. Look at the last five years. I mean, you know, our security relationship has changed and our political relationship has changed. Look at the economic side. You know, when Prime Minister Modi was here you had so many, you know, there were some really important technology agreements which were made. Look at the, you know, the human linkages between our societies. So I think we got a lot going for us.
Kenneth I. Juster: Let me ask one last question, then I want to open it up to the audience. I wondered if you had any comment on the recent allegations by Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau that agents of India, the government of India, are linked to the shooting, of the fatal shooting of a Canadian Sikh activist.
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: Yes, I do have a comment.
Kenneth I. Juster: And can you share them with us?
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: Sure, I’ll share with you very, very frankly what we told the Canadians. One, we told the Canadians that this is not the Government of India’s policy. Two, we told the Canadians saying that, look, if you have something specific, if you have something relevant, you know, let us know. We are open to looking at it. So but to,you know, to understand the context of it in a way, you know, because the picture is not complete without the context, in a way, you also have to appreciate then that in the last few years Canada actually has seen a lot of organized crime, you know, relating to, you know, the secessionist forces. Organized crime, violence, extremism. They’re all very, very deeply mixed up.
So, in fact, we have been, you know, talking about specifics and information. We have actually been badgering the Canadians. We have given them a lot of information about organized crime leadership, which operates out of Canada. There are a large number of extradition requests. There are terrorist leaders who have been identified. So do understand that there is an environment out there. So that is important, in a way, to factor in, if you have to understand what is going on out there. And our concern is that, you know, it’s really been very permissive, because of political reasons. So we have a situation where actually our diplomats are threatened, our Consulates have been attacked. And, you know, often comments are made about, you know, there’s interference in our politics. And, you know, a lot of this is often justified as saying, well, that’s how democracies work.
Kenneth I. Juster: But if there are specific pieces of evidence that they provide, the government of India will cooperate with them in terms of following up?
EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar: I mean, look, if somebody gives me something specific, it doesn’t have to be restricted to Canada, but if there’s any incident, which, you know, is an issue, and somebody gives me something specific, as a government, I would look at it. Of course I would look at it.
Kenneth I. Juster: Okay, let me open it up to the floor for questions, both here and for those online. If you could state your name and affiliation when asked, that would be great.