Prime Minister Modi emerges as a peacemaker in the race for world war

New Delhi: As Prime Minister Modi made clear to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a few days ago, India seeks a peace where terror is absent and will be available if both sides wish to end the conflict.

Since 2014, when Narendra Modi replaced Manmohan Singh as India's prime minister, the country has been described as non-aligned by several policymakers in Washington and aligned with the United States by Beijing. In reality, what has been done since then is to pursue a policy of alignment with India's national interest. As a result, the policy of alignment with India's interests, followed for ten years, is being repeated during Prime Minister Modi's third term. Earlier in his tenure, the four founding agreements that underpin defense ties with the United States were signed. These are the LSA (Logistics Support Agreement), the GSOMIA (General Military Information Security Agreement), the BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Intelligence) and the CISMOA (Memorandum of Understanding). on communications and information security). At the same time, under the triumvirate of Shinzo Abe, Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, the quadrilateral security dialogue has been expanded and deepened, such that India, Japan, Australia and the United States have become the leading security providers in the region, ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. At the same time, India retained its historically close relations with Russia, while in 2023, as chair of the G-20, Prime Minister Modi was able to include the African Union (AU) in his fold , making the G-21. Plurilateral, bilateral, unilateral, multilateral, each of these groupings is adopted based on the national interests of India.

Since 2014, India has been anchored in a coherent policy of aligning with the national interests of the world's most populous country, which has otherwise been a democracy since it broke free from the British Raj in 1947. As a result, The Southern bloc has a collaborative relationship with Ukraine and Russia, as well as Iran and Israel. In Washington, where, due to lack of control from the White House, different departments go their own way. Under President Biden, the State Department and its affiliates have often sought to bait and provoke New Delhi. Such pinpricks were mostly met with polite indifference from PM Modi and a witty riposte from EAM Jaishankar.

Overall, the Indian government has repeatedly made it clear that the country will not deviate from its policies to enter the political orbit set for it by any other capital. In a situation where all other major powers have taken sides, India is alone in choosing the path which, if followed, would lead to peace. There should be a peace without terror and without efforts to coerce a country by an expansionist superpower. After Russian forces entered Ukraine in 2022, Switzerland abandoned its long-standing policy of being an honest broker between different parties by opting for the NATO alliance, leaving India as the only country capable of playing such a role in a situation of escalating confrontation and conflict. being a witness now.

A peacemaker can only enter the ring when both sides value peace over continued conflict. In the case of Ukraine, while Russia was open to Prime Minister Modi's suggestions for a ceasefire even in 2022, kyiv believed it was only a matter of weeks or even months, before NATO entered the battlefield alongside him against Russia. Today, as conflict in the Middle East drowns out once-abundant mentions of the war in Ukraine in Western media, such expectation in kyiv appears to have been met. Hopefully this involves a change in leadership from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to someone more willing to accept the reality that the longer the fighting continues, the greater the territorial losses as well as the human costs of the war in Ukraine. Once such a position is accepted in kyiv, Prime Minister Modi has positioned India to serve as a facilitator for talks between the two countries essential to any serious peace talks, Russia and Ukraine. As for the conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies, Prime Minister Netanyahu intends to achieve what he has wanted since the 1980s, namely the collapse of the mullahs' regime in Iran. Iran's setbacks on the battlefield would, it calculates, damage the public reputation of the clerics who have ruled Iran since 1979. It would open the door to an elected leadership that accepts the right of Israel and the Jewish people to live a peaceful and prosperous life in a way that has been rejected by Iran and its proxies since 1979.

As Prime Minister Modi made clear to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a few days ago, India seeks peace where terror is absent, and it will be available if both sides wish to end a conflict that has weakened Iran since the country adopted a policy of denial of the agreement. the right of Israel and (implicitly in the case of Iran but explicitly in the case of proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas) the Jewish people to exist. Iran would do well to follow the path taken by the GCC countries of viewing terrorism as a threat to stability rather than a political instrument. GCC countries such as the UAE have behaved as responsible global citizens, including recognizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, a policy fully consistent with mutual social stability and economic progress. Harnessing the technological and other capabilities of Israel and the GCC would bring closer the day when the latter’s economies would no longer depend on fossil fuels. Both sides would benefit, as would the Iranian people, from Israel and Iran working together as they did before the country's Khomeinist takeover in 1979. In 2023, Prime Minister Modi, as President of the G20, stressed the importance of cooperation between Israel and Iran. to see the world as a family, a logical view given that all human beings, regardless of their faith, are children of the Almighty. When both sides in the current conflict between Israel and Iran recognize that the time has come for peace, India will be ready to help achieve such an outcome.
In what appears to be a rush toward a wider war, India is uniquely positioned to serve as a peacemaker and a bridge connecting the two sides in the two conflicts raging in Europe and the Middle East, between Russia and Ukraine and between Iran. and Israel. It is such positioning that has made Prime Minister Modi's India-aligned (and, thereby, also globally aligned) policy a drag on the speed that could eventually succeed in dousing the flames of war in Europe and the Middle East, replacing them. with the fresh winds of peace without terror.

India's ability to secure peace depends to a large extent on its strength. To provide deterrence against further efforts by a predatory superpower to undermine the sovereignty and rights of Indo-Pacific countries, now is the time to conclude an Indo-Pacific Peace Cooperation Treaty which would initially link India, Japan, the United States, Australia and other countries risk being attacked in the Indo-Pacific. They would combine their strengths and capabilities in an alliance designed to jointly address the challenges each of its members would face. Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba has spoken of the need for an Asian NATO, but given NATO's poor record in the Indo-Pacific region, any mention of the word NATO in many parts of Asia is not welcome. Instead, what is needed is a treaty designed specifically to provide security in the Indo-Pacific region, in the same way that NATO was created to provide security in the regions of the Europe which remained outside the control of the USSR after the war of 1939-45. India has signed treaties in the past, such as the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed by both sides in 1971. Since the arrival of Prime Minister Modi, four defense agreements of the Foundation with the United States were signed. Given the deteriorating security environment in the Indo-Pacific region, it is time to revisit a policy of rejecting any treaty or alliance. An alliance backed by a formal treaty will provide a strong deterrent against the efforts of a nearby predatory superpower intent on dominating the Indo-Pacific at the expense of the rights and sovereignty of other countries in the region.