Wednesday, April 25, 2012

BRICS vs Summit of the Americas


Summit diplomacy has become the coin of the realm. More and more key global and regional issues are thrashed out among heads of state and government, skipping the intermediaries. Professional diplomats don't like summits. Yet, given the urgent tasks, the crowded international agenda, and the increased tempo of diplomacy, there isn't much choice: summits are here to stay. This is particularly true of serial summits — that is, the institutionalised, regularly scheduled meetings at the top, like the G20, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or India Brazil, South Africa (IBSA).

Not all of them succeed. Performance varies. Some are better prepared than others. At first, APEC grew in leaps and bounds. Its summits drew enormous attention. Yet, now they are stuck in neutral. The G7 summit was for many years the most powerful. Now it plays second fiddle to G20. Sometimes we get two back-to-back summits whose radically different outcomes illustrate not just the varying capabilities of summit management, the work of the sherpas (i.e. the top aides to the heads), and the leadership abilities of the heads, but also underlying trends in world politics.

Success & fiasco

This was the case of the recent BRICS summit (in New Delhi on March 30-31) and the Summit of the Americas (in Cartagena, Colombia, April 14-15). The outcomes could not have been more different — one a resounding success, the other a remarkable fiasco. The BRICS group is dismissed by some as nothing more than an acronym in search of a role, a “solution in search of a problem”. A first line of criticism is that the five member states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have little in common. As a group formed by democracies and non-democracies hailing from four different continents, of very different size and economic performance, of varying economic interests, they would have no business even in meeting together, let alone in developing common agendas, or, God forbid, joint policy initiatives. Given that, notwithstanding these objections, the meetings are nonetheless taking place — this one was the fourth annual gathering — and the group has expanded with the addition of South Africa in 2010.


Russia's presence is irksome to others. The standard line is that Russia should not be rubbing shoulders with “emerging powers”, since Mother Russia herself is no such thing. Russia, according to this argument, is the ultimate “declining power” — demographically, economically and politically. Given this condition, what Moscow should do, presumably, would be to search for other such declining powers in the world (Greece? Japan? Mali?) and join them as “like-minded” nations, rather than doing so with the Chinas and Indias of this world. That is why many prefer to talk of “BICS”, leaving out Russia altogether and conforming, in their imagination, a fictional group more palatable to the taste of Western observers.

All of this is nonsense. Russia's per capita income has quadrupled since the late 1990s. International politics is not reducible to similarities and differences in political economy, though intragroup trade has grown at 28 per cent a year since 2000, reached $230 billion in 2010 and is planned to reach $ 500 billion in 2015. Agency also plays a role. And the proof is in the pudding. Far from attempting to dissolve their alleged differences into empty platitudes, the heads of the BRICS countries, most of them significant world leaders in their own right — from Brazil's Dilma Rousseff to India's Manmohan Singh — came up with a substantial, extensive, 50-paragraph communiqué after their Delhi deliberations. The latter does not stick solely to economic issues, but ranges much more widely. It addresses key questions on the international agenda, such as the crisis in Syria, the stand-off with Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In all of them, it takes stands that vary quite significantly from the perspective of Western powers.

Cartagena summit

Fast forward to Cartagena. The Summit of the Americas has been around since 1994, much longer than BRICS; it brings together a much larger group of countries (34, when they all attend); they all come from the same part of the world, the Western Hemisphere, and all of them are “market democracies” of one kind or another. It also meets once every three years, allowing plenty of time for preparing and agreeing on a common agenda. Under such circumstances, one would expect considerable room for consensus and forward movement, for joint ventures to take on challenges like the drug trade, the escalating murder rate in Central America or the issue of immigration to the United States, which have been clamouring for solutions for years, to no avail. The fact that South America has been undergoing an economic boom, fuelled by world-wide demand for commodities, would seem to help. The U.S., bent on doubling its exports in five years, as per President Obama's commitment, is in need of Latin markets. Already, the U.S. exports more to Latin America than to Europe.

Latin America's rise

The fact that the meeting was held in Colombia is testimony to how far Latin America has come in the past decade. Ten, even five years ago, this would have been unthinkable, given the country's internal conflicts, driven by insurgent guerrilla groups like FARC and the ELN and drug cartels like those of Cali and Medellin. In fact, Mr. Obama is the first U.S. President to spend three days in Colombia. Under the able leadership of Presidents Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and now Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia has scaled down the violence and returned to the international arena. President Santos performed a key role in this in his previous responsibilities as Minister of Defense. As President, he has surprised many by his pragmatic approach to problem-solving, overcoming long-standing differences with Venezuela, and stepping up to the plate in offering to work with Central American nations on curbing the drug trade.

President Obama, very popular in Latin America, with a 62 per cent approval rating in 2009 according to Gallup (he is now down to 47 per cent), had raised high expectations. In many ways, today's Latin America offers an ideal testing ground for the type of multilateralism many expected Mr. Obama would engage in, in marked contrast to the unilateralism of his predecessor. At least some of the perception of U.S. ‘declinism' so prevalent in much of the world after the fiasco of Iraq, the disaster of the U.S.-triggered Great Recession, and the looming defeat in Afghanistan, could be counteracted by working hand in hand with its Western Hemisphere neighbours, at a time when Latin America is undergoing a veritable renaissance.

No final communiqué

Yet, the Sixth Summit of the Americas was a fiasco. There was no final communiqué, a minimum threshold to measure any such meeting's success. The biggest news to come out of the summit concerned the shenanigans of U.S. Secret Service agents, which came to light because they did not pay for services solicited (there is a metaphor here for the state of U.S.-Latin American relations, for all those who want to see it). Moreover, Washington can hardly allege that any emerging summit consensus was blocked by Latin America's leftist leaders: Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua were not in attendance. President Raul Castro of Cuba was banned from doing so, which became part of the problem. The issue of Cuba's exclusion was not the only one standing in the way. That of the Falklands/Malvinas was another, pitting the English-speaking North versus the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking South. The Panamerican idea has been tested and found wanting.

The paradox is only too apparent. The BRICS summit, dismissed by some as a mere talk-shop with no basis in common interests, is going from strength to strength. The Summit of the Americas, representing the largest gathering of market democracies anywhere, led by the world's leading power, is on its last throes, and may not reconvene again. That this takes place a scarce 30 months after the Honduras crisis should have taught Washington the lesson that Latin American political cooperation and collective diplomacy is alive and well, and that the region will no longer let herself be kicked around for the sake of satisfying Washington's parochial domestic preoccupations.

U.S. and India


Multilateralism is a game the U.S. and India can play

The promising U.S.-India partnership that New Delhi and Washington have fostered over more than a decade has sometimes seemed less apparent in the two nations' relationship at the United Nations. Rather, multilateral diplomacy has often highlighted the diverging, not the converging, world views of India and the United States. President Barack Obama's dramatic announcement in New Delhi in November 2010 that the U.S. supports India as an eventual permanent member of the Security Council was a crucial step, but did not of itself narrow the gap between the two in New York. However, there are recent encouraging signs of more convergence; these need to be built upon carefully by both sides to forge a more enduring partnership.

Voting record

The U.S. keeps statistics on coincidence of voting in the General Assembly, and India — like many other countries in the G-77 group — gets low marks on certain issues of high importance to the U.S., especially on Israel and the Middle East, human rights reports, and the embargo on Cuba. In 2010 and 2011, India voted similarly to the U.S. on about 25 and 33 per cent of all recorded votes in the General Assembly, respectively. When the more common consensus votes are included, the U.S. and India are together 85 per cent of the time. During India's current tenure as a rotating, non-permanent member of the Security Council (since January 2011), the two countries' differing perspectives have sometimes been in sharp focus. From a U.S. perspective, India identified itself more with two other contenders for permanent membership — Brazil and South Africa — and, even more troublesome for the U.S., seemed to vote with Russia and China over the U.S./Britain/France bloc on contentious votes. India, like Russia and China, abstained on the March 2010 resolution authorising a no-fly zone over Libya and, like them, believed that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) exceeded the Council's mandate in the following months.

On Syria, though, the record has been mixed. When members of the Council in January 2012 sought to condemn the Syrian regime's attack on its domestic opposition, India pursued the middle ground of abstention and watched Russia and China veto the effort. India then worked to find a compromise, supporting a resolution in early February that, while ruling out foreign military intervention, aligned itself with the West and the Arab League; even that fell to Chinese and Russian vetoes.

Four points of view

The U.S. and India need to work together intensively at the U.N., befitting the “strategic partnership” the two countries are forging. They are already doing so in the Security Council on issues ranging from counterterrorism to anti-piracy policy, to Afghanistan. Improving cooperation on other issues should be achievable, but it will require some creative thinking by both sides, and a willingness to take each other's views into account.

First, the U.S. needs to acknowledge the importance to India of its “strategic autonomy.” The U.S. and India will always have different interests reflecting their geographic, economic, and strategic realities. This will translate into different voting patterns. India wants to hear why it is in its own interest to vote with the Western “bloc.”

Second, the U.S. and India need to communicate regularly in New York. “No surprises” should be the rule. The practice of the Security Council's five permanent members to consult among themselves can mean decisions are made before an issue is discussed with other members of the Council.

Third, multilateral topics should be on the table when our leaders meet in New Delhi and Washington. This June's third meeting of the U.S.-India “Strategic Dialogue,” led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, offers an early opportunity to do just that.

Finally, the U.S. and India need to consult more closely on Security Council reform — and not just because the U.S. now supports India's bid for permanent membership.

An expanded Council needs to be large enough to be more representative, but small enough to do business. India, the U.S. and the U.N. would all gain from this outcome.

That said, the U.S. and India both need to take a pragmatic view of Security Council reform. The odds are against this rising to the top of the U.N.'s agenda any time soon. This is no reflection on India. Rather, it is a realisation that Security Council expansion is a Pandora's box that many countries would prefer to keep closed for now. Among the many unresolved issues: China's opposition to Japan's entry as a permanent member, Africa's demand for two permanent seats, dramatic over-representation of Europe if Germany were to achieve its goal of permanent membership, and the role of the veto.

But delay for India certainly does not mean never. As the recently released Non-Alignment 2.0 study by eight Indian foreign policy analysts rightly points out: “India should recognise that time is on its side in this matter. As the structure of global power shifts, India's case inevitably becomes stronger. But India will also, in the interim, have to demonstrate a leadership capacity to propose solutions to and artfully handle some of the difficult challenges facing the world.”