United States president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin have buried the hatchet over Ukraine. The American is overjoyed. The Russian is circumspect. Vladimir Putin is a grandmaster who realises that Ukraine was a mistake. In the peace deal, he won’t cede territory. The American president may get the Nobel Peace Prize.
President Trump has announced that there is no need for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be at the table when the peace deal is negotiated. This is the icing on the cake for the Russians. Western Europe is absent too.
When earthshaking events like this unfold, the first thing I do is ask how my country will be affected. I believe the External Affairs Minister (EAM) will not only ride the tide with ease, but he will be among a handful of people who will lead new thinking globally once the dust has settled. More of this in a bit.
My piece makes three points. What the turmoil means internationally, how India will be affected, and finally, I have a few lines about the role of the media.
I am no expert on geopolitics and I don’t wish to be one. I have some forty years of media and policy work behind me, reporting from top line negotiations to battlefields, covering peace and trade talks from Geneva and international investigative journalism. I have met/interviewed heads of state and governments, developed skills to read the room and between the lines, and understand people and processes. I speak a few languages, read and listen to news in them. I understand silence. What we are witnessing in Europe are root and branch changes of the kind the world has not seen since the Second World War.
For several months now, it has been obvious that something major was going to happen. Words out of Russia were alarming. They resembled what Germany’s Adolf Hitler said after the First World War, especially his plans to overrun Europe. Nationalism and rabble rousing sentiments flew out of Moscow while the European Union (EU) held patronising meetings between themselves and armed Zelenskyy. They felt they were the keepers of morality and democracy on the continent. NATO and the administration were on their side—they felt invincible. Seasoned hands can tell you no one is invincible.
I was in Geneva when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in 1985—a historic meeting that led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. NATO lost its raison d’être when the wall fell and if it is looking powerless now, the decline began forty years ago.
There’s another problem. The Europeans buy their energy from Moscow while dissing Putin all the time as a ruthless dictator and a threat to democracy. You cannot ignore that Russia is a major power with a strong army, a nuclear state and a P5 nation. The Russian leader – a dictator, no doubt – was biding his time with Western leaders while strengthening his relationship with large developing countries, including India. His time has come.
What the peace deal means and how long it lasts, only time will tell but for now it is bad news for Europe. I say that with a heavy heart because half my family is European. I wish Europe had done more than huddle and complain and shown some spine when Russia walked into Ukraine three years ago instead of holding Zelenskyy’s hand and confusing emotions and threats to democracy with realpolitik. France and Germany, the two strong countries in the union, have far too many domestic problems to focus on building a bulwark against Russia. The smaller nations do not count. What I am saying is brutal, but it is a fact.
What does this mean for India? New Delhi is as much at home in Washington as it is in Moscow. French president Emmanuel Macron received Prime Minister Narendra Modi with high honours last month and India’s leadership role in the G20 is paying dividends. The foreign minister’s summit in South Africa shows India’s good relations with all. China and India have boots on the ground but the two foreign ministers were cordial in South Africa. In a first, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is leading a delegation of commissioners later this month to strengthen the EU's ties with India.
I follow India’s EAM on X, reading him and the room when he speaks, what he says and does not say. Mr Jaishankar has not only strengthened India’s presence in Europe and the Middle East, but he has also reached out to countries in South America and down under as an equal. Soft-spoken and firm, he bats for India firmly, including when they are rude. He has walked on eggshells during a tumultuous time in world history and managed to place India as a partner among top nations. With him, Indian foreign policy gravitas has a new home. It is one of confidence and realpolitik with a human face.
The media sees the world as black and white. They carry a good part of the blame in making the EU irrelevant, painting Putin as the devil and Biden as the saviour and large developing countries as bit players in this historic moment. If you go to the same people, you will get the same answers. They appear not to grasp that there’s a world out there with South Africa, India, China, and Brazil with their own ambitions and dreams, and they can sit around the table with China and Russia as foreign policy is more about interests and less about grandstanding. The Western media’s disregard for the BRICS family is shocking.
During an important think tank (Raisina) meeting in Delhi some years ago, a geopolitical expert from a Western country told me India buying Russian oil was a problem. ‘Problem for whom?’ I asked. He was surprised.
The point I am trying to make is that the assumption itself is arrogant.
(Note: Views expressed are the personal opinions of the author.)