That relates to the not-yet-announced, but, nevertheless, being actively discussed possible visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow this month. Same relates to meetings on the margins of SCO, namely, yet another Russia-China summit or the talks of Vladimir Putin with his Turkish colleague Recep Erdogan, also in Astana.
Diplomacy may look a dull and tedious business, but that business helps us see the changes in the world in general, affecting next to everybody. So let me try, first, to find words about what the devil goes on in this crazy world right now.
Simply speaking, we have already entered a new, post-war world, which is hard to see, since the losers of the previous era are still very vocal, or better say, furious. But, still, they lose, and the nations that were grimly or cautiously silent before, start to press their points of view.
That certainly relates to the SCO summit. Kazakhstan has been holding the SCO chairmanship for the previous year, and that means that this Central Asian nation was proposing the program and ideas for the organization, which, originally, was meant only to coordinate Central Asian development and security with all the neighboring countries, India definitely not the last among them.
So, one of the ideas of Kassym-Jomart Tokaev, the President of Kazakhstan, was that the weight and importance of mid-sized nations is getting bigger these days. And it looks like he was, and is, very right, since a lot of bigger powers are currently short of breath and low on optimism. So they have a good chance of listening to Kazakhstan and other Asian nations, conferring in Astana. There will be a political declaration signed there, and also a lot of other news coming out of that wonder-city in the middle of Asia steppes.
Will anybody listen? At the looks of it, the major Western nations have other things to worry about. Simply speaking, they are losing a hybrid war with Russia, with ensuing collapse of their own political structures.
The big Western idea was containment. You create an anti-Russia in Ukraine, arm it to the teeth and provoke Moscow into whatever it could be provoked. You create an anti-China in, say, Taiwan and do the same to Beijing. You create an anti-India, at the very least in that bloated mediasphere of our world, and see what happens.
But what really happens as a result is a political and electoral disaster, first, in the US, and I don’t need to tell you about the relevant details. There was another disaster in the recent European Parliament election, then France followed suit, tomorrow it will assuredly be the UK with its snap election. Then, highly likely, Germany will follow suit. The problem is, the public of the West doesn’t like economic upheavals and the general feeling of a coming global disaster. The leaders of yesterday are, at the very least, losing ground, and may be replaced very soon.
So, what’s next? What exactly are the looks of the post-war era that is stumbling in? That will be diplomacy, painstaking work by leaders of (relatively) stable big, and medium, and small nations to rein the madness in.
Here I’d like to quote one of the commentaries on the meaning of Narendra Modi’s possible visit to Moscow this month, with a possible signing of a Reciprocal Exchange Logistics Agreement, enabling mutual logistical support to each other’s military during joint operations and long-distance missions. Says Ms. Monica Verma, based in Delhi: ‘Interestingly, the decision to visit Russia as the first choice of foreign visit by PM Modi as well as this logistics agreement are both laced with a larger message to the global audience’.
And that message is balance, she thinks, since Moscow has always wanted India to play a balancing role in the Central Asia, while ‘the upcoming visit by PM Modi as well as the logistics agreement seem to be an extension of it’. So, all in all, ‘In Modi 1.0, India had shed the non-aligned hangover to sign similar agreements with US. In Modi 2.0, India had started showing strong signs of balancing China both internally as well as externally. Modi 3.0 has come after a long effort by the Western interference machinery to unseat a strong government in New Delhi. Few days into power and the Khalistan factor is still going strong, bringing irritants on a daily basis into India’s relationship with the West. Hence the task cut out for Modi 3.0 is to leverage whatever space is available to build its own strengths without getting totally dependent on any one actor’.
Not that I agree with each and every idea of the lady’s column. In fact, I disagree with many of them. But, still, balance is a much better way to maintain the world in order, than risky containment of this or that power.
And balance is what the Central Asians and their neighbors are striving to achieve in their Astana summit, watching changes and often trying to keep low profile. What’s important, with or without that profile being low, Central Asia has become a zone of high growth. The war of the West against Russia and China has raised the regional trade figures, with Russia it went up 15 per cent in 2022 and some more in 2023, to 44 billion US dollars. With China it’s, naturally, higher, climbing close to 90 billion. It’s easy to see that the region is essentially profiting on the East-West tensions, losing nothing in the process.
So the general interest in the region is high. Up to 10 thousand delegates are attending today’s summit, and they not only from members of SCO. Outreach comprises also top-level guests from Belorussia, Turkey, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Emirates and Turkmenia.
There is something similar here to what happens in and around another grouping with Indian membership, namely BRICS. A veritable crowd of top-level diplomats are willing to attend its meetings, dozens of nations want to become members. Nations from almost the same list are attending the SCO top-level meeting, too. Simply speaking, while the West is shaking in its boots, others are eager to explore possibilities and maybe arrange for new deals in the new world.
That world, very naturally, wants to leave behind the previous era, with its animosities and sanctions against competitors. So President Tokaev of Kazakhstan has pushed SCO to announce a new initiative, called 'Global Unity for Just World’. Just or not very just today or tomorrow, that world is seeing a steady process of forging new understanding and making new deals in the regions, that used to be secondary to the former global center.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com