Saeed Naqvi | Will absence of Xi, Putin hover over G-20 like Banquo's ghost?

Trust a journalist to crow, but it feels nice to be proved right. I evaluated last week that Xi Jinping, for reasons other those which held Vladimir Putin back, will not attend this G-20. The absence of two statesmen may diminish the G-20 but it gives Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the choreographer, a stage with more space. 

His media advisers will anguish over a different matter: how to balance his solo performance as G-20 president and a summiteer with President Joe Biden, that’s if he’s able to attend.

The twin events, in days of yore, would be an editor’s nightmare. President Kennedy shot dead in Dallas. This coincided with an Indian tragedy: five generals of the Indian armed forces died in a helicopter crash the same day. Editors anguished: which story to lead with.

No such anguish for today’s editors. They have been downgraded by TV channels. The channels will get instructions from minions of the master choreographer. It will be fascinating to see how anchors conceal their obsequiousness.

Once the dust settles on G-20, both Mr Modi and Mr Biden will be staring at their 2024 election prospects. Mr Biden’s deadline is fixed: elections in November next year. Mr Modi by now is an expert handler of American Presidents. He has come a long way from the early “Barack, Barack” days when someone tried to drape him in a pinstripe suit with his name embroidered in between the stripes.

At the “Howdy Modi” event in Houston 2019, he was audacious enough to put his arms around then President Donald Trump and proclaim: “Abki baar, Trump Sarkar”. Which meant his “hope” was that Mr Trump would win the 2020 US election.

He didn’t. When Mr Biden won, the pundits thought the new President would be cold to Mr Modi. But the global power play configuration since the messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan and rank miscalculation in Ukraine placed India in a sweet spot: wooed by the US as well as Russia. Since Russia and China are sworn to a “no limits” friendship, Mr Modi may be tempted to take temporary risks with China. Russia will be expected to bridge the New Delhi-Beijing distance should it increase, say, in the context of Mr Biden’s visit.

Washington’s wish list from the Delhi summit will include a mention of Ukraine in the final communique, a statement by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at least virtually, give Mr Modi’s dexterous navigation between Brics and Quad a nudge towards the grouping designed to encircle China.  

New Delhi too will read the fine print of US treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s talks in Beijing. On her heels, virtually, was US commerce secretary, Gina Raimando, looking chastened as she engaged her China counterpart. Then followed James Cleverly, Britain’s foreign secretary. The Beijing-Washington traffic is soaring. Military intentions are not on show. Even containment should be made of sterner stuff.

What does one make of all the anxious punditry from US think tanks that the US is making a bad bet on India if it imagines the country will ever be part of military action against China. The grouse in these US circles is that the word “alliance” is anathema to New Delhi. Washington on the other hand doesn’t feel secure enough with terms like “partnership”, within which even “interoperability” is taboo. It fears that New Delhi will tease, but not go to bed. After the consistent Washington-Beijing high-level visits, in the bargain in any case is not a commitment in perpetuity. This three-way pirouette is as much a test of affections as of stamina.

The G-20 summit’s outcome as well as the crucial bilateral visit will be determined not by what happens but how the Western media plays it up. It must project Mr Biden carrying away a bagful of goodies. What will these be?

Much greater urgency attends what Mr Modi is seen to be carrying away. For the first time in the recent past will an Indian PM be projected by the media, which is already in his thrall, as one at ease and familiar with the world’s most powerful leaders? Will Mr Modi emerge with a sufficiently stellar performance, enabling him to advance the 2024 election date? He will thus be able to avoid headwinds that possible defeats in four state elections might generate.

It is another matter that for the first time since the Second World War the halo which marks the most powerful will be absent. The leaders will indeed look as diminished as the collective West does, and which has been in decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

Pick them out one by one, beginning with France’s Emmanuel Macron. Just consider the egg on his face in Francophone Africa. Burkina Faso, Mali and now Niger, one coup after another. The US has a military base in Niger. What for?

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa invited 35 African countries to the recent Brics summit in Johannesburg. The leaders acquainted themselves with the rapid expansion of Brics as their emancipators from the colonial, hegemonic world order which filled Western coffers and left Africans in poverty.

As the focus turns to Africa, a new colonial, imperial chapter is opening up. We are told Western troops in Africa were fighting Islamic terrorism. Really, or were they supervising Western loot? The US had built a $110 million drone base in Agadez, Niger. It’s the world’s largest drone base. Over 1,000 US soldiers are deployed there. All this just to fight ISIS and Al-Qaeda?  

Why do these coups resonate well with the people? In Niger, thousands turned up to register for Army duty as demanded by the coup leaders.