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The G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi was a tense affair this week, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov requesting that the Ukraine conflict be set aside. Lavrov argued that during past conflicts, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, the G-20 did not get involved in geopolitics. He even apologized for the fracas over Ukraine which prevented the meeting from issuing a joint statement. Lavrov’s comments played well in India and other non-aligned developing economies with ties to Moscow.
Last year, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar criticized the West for allowing rhetoric over Ukraine to overshadow the developing world’s broader economic concerns. India hoped that Ukraine would not overshadow its agenda this year and that it could be positioned as a consensus-builder. However, this approach proved to be naïve and has not yielded any dividends. Europe sees Putin as a real existential threat, and India’s disregard toward Ukraine is understandably unacceptable.
Avoiding the Ukraine problem also paradoxically waters down the global development agenda that India claims to want to champion. Jaishankar mentioned the costs of fuel, food, and fertilizer at the G-20 briefing, which are “very damaging for us.” But he made no mention of the invasion that caused these problems in the first place. India’s reluctance to engage with the Ukraine issue was made even starker this week by the fact that Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart to register his protest over Chinese incursions across the Himalayas.
The challenge for India at the G-20 is to find ways to talk about Ukraine responsibly. For months, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to use his country’s presidency of the G-20 as a means to establish his credentials as a global statesman. But that demands a more proactive approach toward the war in Ukraine. If India does not find a way to steer the debate over Ukraine at the G-20, it will likely find its presidency rendered irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.
If the West is anxious about winning support from the developing world, it ought to lend its ear more eagerly to their problems. The war in Ukraine is as much an economic crisis as it is a geopolitical one. The G-20 needs to recognize the fact that the Ukraine conflict has far-reaching economic implications and needs to be addressed by all stakeholders, including developing countries. It is essential to find a way to move the conversation forward in a constructive manner, rather than letting it devolve into a contentious and unproductive dispute.
