The 18th BRICS Summit India hosted to mark the 20th anniversary of the Group’s founding was taken note of in the US and the West in a manner the earlier Meets in India (in 2012, 2016 and 2021) were not, because it showed a glimmer of real shift in the global “correlation of forces”.

Look at the photo (above). It projects the leading foursome at the Delhi Summit — Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian striding purposefully alongside Modi, Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia, representing a collective, and its resolve not to be pushed around by America. It is a resolve that serves more than just the interests of the 11 member states and 12 partner countries of BRICS, and hints at a core of a system in embryo that could, in fact, emerge as an alternative to the US-dominated order and, locally, as an elbow in the face of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Pakistan) conceived as a Sunni alliance to contain shia Iran.

A resilient supply chain mentioned in the final BRICS Summit communique, and the reconciling of different positions on the Hormuz War, etc. was all very good. But what stood out to me — trivial though it may be, was that at the “gala dinner” at the Bharat Mandapam, everyone was subjected to vegetarian food — symbolically important in requiring mostly meat-eating visiting heads of state/government to eat ghas-phoos or go hungry (and raise toasts with coconut water or whatever?!) — a small first step in recovering national self-respect by imposing on official guests our norms! The pity is that the Modi government did not follow up by compelling them to also eat with their fingers! Alas, the chopsticks wielding Xi, perhaps getting wind of what was in tow, escaped Delhi before this meal! (Recall that the first UK Prime Minister of Indian origin, Rishi Sunak, in 2022, at the first meal for his cabinet and party leaders at 10, Downing, served South Indian vegetarian stuff on plantain leaves and no cutlery in sight!). If foreign leaders have become adept at returning Modi’s bear hugs with gusto, they will take no time to learn to flex their digits to push whatever fare is put before them down their gullets!

Even more encouraging was the initial response by the Modi regime to the US Congress enacting a law empowering US President Donald Trump to levy 100% tariffs on countries sourcing energy from Russia. Pat came the response from Delhi that it acts solely in the interest of “1.4 billion Indian people”, implying it will continue buying Russian oil and gas to run its economy. It was absolutely the right tack to take. Except, there are no signs the Indian government has pushed and prodded Indian exporters to find alternative markets should access to the American market be cut off. Rather, the official Indian stand despiritingly is that it will scurry around, as before, to seek Trump’s favour (“waivers” to this law), failing which, it will do what? Wag its tail, and fold once again?

Donald Trump’s growingly dangerous and whimsically wayward foreign and military policies have placed the United States singularly on a slide. When a US President takes the UN podium to threaten “annihilation” of a member-state — Iran, as he did the day before yesterday, the utility of a world body set up to mediate conflict becomes suspect. Even its traditional allies are desperately distancing themselves from Washington. The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, particularly bullish in rejecting American overlordship — his stirring speech at the Davos World Economic Forum — “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu” that sounded the warning in the summer for states feeling vulnerable with the US — an ally/partner, turning predatory, offered at the UN a competing idea to rally around.

“It’s not wishful multilateralism which defends only the status quo, nor a cold realpolitik that dismantles the status quo altogether,” he told the media at the U.N. “And the alternative that Canada and many others are pursuing is values-based realism.” It is not clear what “values-based realism” means in practice, exactly, and whether it is a cover for Ottawa to collapse back into the American lap. But his rejection of “wishful multilateralism” certainly seems a dig at Delhi’s clamouring for a multilateral regime without working to realise it by way of laying down the groundwork. Carney is doubtless rising as the unchallenged leader and spokesman of the so-called “Middle Powers” group with his jaw-jutting straight talk of a kind Modi and Jaishankar studiously shy away from.

At the Delhi summit, Xi in his meeting with Modi called for an objective and rational “strategic” perception that a Chinese analyst explained as meaning the two sides should treat each other as opportunities rather than threats. This concept, incidentally, is a bit lower in the Chinese diplomatic lexicon than the basic level “strategic partnerships”. Higher up in the order are “comprehensive strategic partnerships”, which China has established with numerous countries including Brazil, France, Indonesia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Still higher levels refer to “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnerships”, such as the formulation regarding Pakistan of an “all-weather strategic cooperative partnership”. At the top is the “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” uniquely so far only with Russia, expressly to stymie the US and the West.

India-Russia-China can form a formidable strategic wedge to loosen the US hold on the international levers of power. But is Delhi capable of not treating Xi’s soft talk as a license for Beijing to keep doing what it has done to undermine Indian interests? The skepticism arises from India’s unwillingness to pull its notions of multilateralism away from China or, what Carney warned was the US-dominated “status quo”. India’s co-sponsoring the so called P4M (Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace & Prosperity) was politically correct, but failed to provide it any real traction. P4M is initiated by the European Union, Canada, and Kenya with India, Australia, and Barbados as co-sponsors.

I mean, External Affairs minister S Jaishankar, in his address to the UN General Assembly, did not connect his “4F” concerns — fuel, food, fertiliser and finance, with the “frameworks and guardrails” on Artificial Intelligence, and with respect to the maritime chokepoints that he hinted at, and failed to articulate what these should be. Indeed, any movement on AI and chokepoints require the US and China to be on board. But there’s no incentive for Xi to give ground, for instance, on AI — a field where the US has a definite (Nvidia) chip edge, for example, and to agree on a shared “vision” that Trump mooted in his talks with the Chinese leader in Washington.

Xi is on top in the underway negotiations with Trump in Washington, which is intended by Beijing formally to cement China’s position as not just the equal of America, but as the prime adjudicator of global trade with its monolopoly supplier stranglehold on rare earths and rare earths magnets, base chemicals for pharmaceutical industries everywhere, etc. with the distinct capacity to twist Trump’s arm and not just obtain a beneficial deal for China, but to use it as the basis for a G2 of China and the US at the apex of whatever global system may emerge from the current churn in international affairs. Except, this dyad will be as dangerous, dreadful and demeaning to India (and BRICS generally) as the present US-led system.

But the Modi government shows no stomach for a serious disagreement and fight. With anyone! But it wants to be a leader! In fact, it seems to have lapsed into the appeasement mode by agreeing on a deal for some 60 US Javelin anti-tank missiles, near worthless pieces of junk even in its light weight FGM-148 version, with a coproduction deal to follow. The Javelin is in no metric superior to the indigenous DRDO Man-portable anti-tank guided missile (MPATGM) and the Nag ATGM, except for a minor differential in weight with regard to the MPATGM! This transaction was fast forwarded by the army also because, yes, the new army chief, General Dhiraj Seth, is a tank man!

And again in appeasement mode, Delhi has succumbed to US pressure and is preparing to let the CIA team of 6 Ukrainian saboteurs led by an American Special Forces agent, Matthew Aaron VanDyke, apprehended in March this year by Indian authorities whilst assisting insurgent elements and stoking secessionism in Manipur, Mizoram, and other points in the Indian Northeast, go scott free by paying a small penalty of Rs 2.5 lakhs on a technical point of “illegal entry” into the country!

Washington is keen to spirit them away before they spill more beans on their subversive activities. But why are VanDyke and his operatives being allowed legally to get away rather than subjecting them to the legal processes of the kind faced by the RAW operative, Gupta, who was hauled up in a US court, declared guilty, and is serving time in an American jail for supposedly planning the assassination of the Khalistani troublemaker active in North America, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun? Shouldn’t VanDyke in particular face the gravest national security charges, and be imprisoned to indicate the gravity of his criminal acts?

In realpolitik terms, VanDyke’s criminality, moreover, will be a lever to affect the release of Gupta to Indian custody, as an exchange. And Delhi should also seek, as part of this deal, a verifiable assurance and undertaking from Washington that its agencies will hereafter strictly police the US-based Pannun group — ‘Sikhs for Justice’ engaging in terrorist activity in Punjab. And, for the six Ukrainians, Delhi ought to cut a separate deal with Kyiv. The CIA has for too long operated nearly at will in India without the Indian state doing much about it. Time the Modi regime acted in the national interest, for a change.