India Picks Career Diplomat as Foreign Minister Amid Trade War
Narendra Modi’s surprise choice for the post of external affairs minister: a career diplomat.
(Bloomberg) -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise choice for the post of foreign minister: a career diplomat.
The position is usually reserved for a seasoned leader of the ruling party, but Modi overlooked other candidates to choose Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who has served as the country’s top diplomat and has deep experience with both China and the U.S. They’re hardly strangers, either: Jaishankar helped steer Modi’s government through several foreign policy challenges in the prime minister’s first term, including a stand-off with China.
“Jaishankar is hands-down the best explicator of India’s international ambitions and its slow shift to becoming a leading power, defining its own terms and not simply reacting to world events,” said Alyssa Ayres, a former U.S. diplomat and senior fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
As the foreign minister, Jaishankar faces the challenge of navigating India’s relations with both the U.S. and China at a time when the two nations are locked in a trade war. Even though New Delhi shares strategic ties with Washington on the back of closer military co-operation in recent years, Modi is also trying to rebuild relations with Beijing that were strained due to a series of long-simmering border disputes.
Under Modi, Jaishankar has ensured New Delhi takes a bigger and more assertive role in a global order that is increasingly being reshaped by the rise of India and China. “India engages the world with greater confidence and assurance,” he told a crowd in Singapore back in 2015. “Asia will no doubt go through some uncertainties before arriving at a new equilibrium.”
He was the foreign secretary when Indian and Chinese forces faced off in a tense dispute high in the Himalayas near Bhutan in 2017. As the country’s top diplomat, he was part of the team that was responsible for Modi’s meeting with President Xi Jinping for an informal summit in the Chinese city of Wuhan in April last year, an event that was viewed as a strategic reset to reduce tensions between the world’s most-populous countries.
During his tenure in the foreign service, Jaishankar has served as India’s ambassador to U.S. after having been the Indian envoy to China. He has also worked in Moscow, Tokyo and Singapore.
Experience aside, Jaishankar -- who had left government for a senior role at Indian conglomerate Tata Sons -- is also viewed as being close to Modi. The newly-reelected prime minister’s comfort with the diplomat is likely one of the most important factors in his appointment, along with his familiarity with Indian strategic partners Japan and the U.S., said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in New Delhi.
Another priority for the new foreign minister will be to clear pending defense agreements with the United States and other equipment suppliers, as India continues to try and modernize its aging military hardware amid border tensions with Pakistan. India has also been building its weapons capability with an eye on China, evident in the recent launch of its indigenously-designed, anti-satellite missile.
“Even if the forces decide on the defense technology, Jaishankar would be at the center of decisions about where to buy equipment from and the balancing of relations with various supplier nations,” Richard Rossow, senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic International Studies.
To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in New Delhi at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Archana Chaudhary in New Delhi at achaudhary2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net, Unni Krishnan, Abhay Singh
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