Pursuing National Interests, at the UN High Table

Context: India’s election to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member provides a once-in-a-decade opportunity to clearly identify and pursue its national interests regionally and globally.

Challenges before UNSC:

• Moral and ethical considerations: are not adhered to while pursuing vested interests, and the leading powers dictate their terms to enhance their influence.
• Emergence of a new world: order marked by -
  • Systemic uncertainty, Little care for global commons and absence of global leadership;
  • The steady division of the world into rival blocs, and an age marked by the unabashed pursuit of narrow national interests.
• Poor performance in its primary objective of maintenance of international peace and security.
• Permanent membership of UNSC: is not representative of changing global order.

Challenges to India at the UNSC:

• Compromised implementation of its ambition: due to lack of material wherewithal, economic heft, and domestic consensus.
• Issues with Hard realism, which is not just a foreign policy attribute but reflective of and stems from domestic political dynamics.
• The China factor:
  • Ongoing military rivalry: the impact of which can be seen in China’s opposition to having India chair the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) in 2022.
  • India’s growing closeness with the west: might push Russia, a time-tested ally of India, towards China.

Significance of India at the UNSC: Contemporary India is more self-confident, resolute, realistic about the world order and wants to be a shaper of geopolitics

• Key to ensuring Chinese incursions: along the Line of Actual Control and building up enough infrastructure and mobilising sufficient forces in the forward areas.
• Focus on Terrorism:
  • “Terrorists are terrorists; there are no good and bad ones. Those who propagate this distinction have an agenda. And those who cover up for them are just as culpable”. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at the UNSC Ministerial Meeting on the 20th Anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1373.
  • India has assumed the chair of Taliban sanction committee: holds significance in the backdrop of India’s new-found desire to engage with the Taliban.

Way forward:

• Formulate a terrorism policy: with far more diplomatic finesse and political nuance especially given that it is chairing the Taliban sanctions committee.
• Build coalitions among like­minded states: priorities for the next decade — from climate change to non­- proliferation.
• Securing National Interests: should use its bargaining power at the UNSC to pursue its national interests in other forums and domains.
• Building upon the Indo-Pacific: by shaping the narrative by itself and assuaging the opposers' concerns (like Russia) through the UNSC platform.