All eyes on India as G20 leaders head to New Delhi

A collapsed world order

As a grouping, it worked till there was no political rapture between the countries, but ever since Moscow entered Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the world order has collapsed.

Read more: The birth pangs of a new world order

While the Bali summit survived, despite the standoff between the US and Warsaw pact countries over the Russian invasion, Delhi, unfortunately, has no such luck.

With India being very careful in not taking sides in the messy Ukraine war and treading carefully to not step on the toes of the warring sides, the Delhi Summit is already seeing setbacks including Chinese President Xi Jinping and a few others declining to participate in the event.

Besides, the Indian government has been facing difficulties in formulating a joint declaration that finds agreement with all the participating countries.

The contours of the change that would influence the Delhi Summit were visible during the recent BRICS meeting held in Johannesburg in early August 2023. Till last year, it was seen as a moribund body, but ever since the Ukraine war and after the US imposed sanctions on Russia, it started coming on its own.

BRICS began to manifest the desire of the leaders from the global south to build a counterbalance to the US. Driven by China and backed by Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin chose to stay away from the BRICS summit in South Africa to avoid an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), these changes revealed themselves in ways that hurt the core of the western dominance in world affairs.

Read more: Is an expanded BRICS a threat to the West?

Firstly, they decided to expand the body by inviting six more countries to join the grouping. These included Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, UAE, Egypt, Iran and Argentina — many of the countries that the US routinely does business with.

A look at the potential new entrants — with many of them oil and gas producers — emphasises the fact that the power to decide on the quantum of oil production, price and the currency in which the transaction should take place had shifted to this new bloc.

What made it more interesting is that besides the clutch of energy producers in BRICS, India and China have the world's largest population of energy consumers. What must be upsetting for the US would be the manner in which China brokered a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has implications far beyond common comprehension.

In simple terms, Beijing managed to bring together a US ally — Saudi Arabia, and an enemy — Iran, to talk peace. This move of China became the foundation of the new world order that is nudging its way to make the G7, and effectively the G20, rather irrelevant.

Read more: G7: Valuable forum or outdated irrelevance?

It not only threatens the primacy enjoyed by the US dollar by encouraging trade in national currencies but also questions the conduct of the US in imposing economic sanctions against Russia and other countries.

A rising power

There are about 30 countries that want to join the BRICS and many of them have begun to trade with China and others in non-dollar currencies.

China — which is now a $18.75tn power and is butting heads with Washington over technology restrictions and its desire to claim sovereignty of the South China Sea — is leading this resistance against the West.

It has been working to safeguard itself from harm from the US and empowering BRICS, according to many commentators, is a way for them to do that. Expectedly, this is happening at a time when India is the host of G20 — a body where the US has inordinate influence.

Till now Chinese President Xi has had a perfect attendance record at all G20 summits. In fact, Beijing has benefited from its participation in multilateral events as it raises its profile as well as lends the outcomes of these events much-needed legitimacy when it is stated by commentators that the US and Chinese President met with each other and agreed on a common declaration.

That's the reason for the success of the Bali summit. Its high point was the meeting between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden. The meeting contributed to some thawing of ties. US President Joe Biden is coming to Delhi and has expressed unhappiness that President Xi is not attending.

Despite the tension between the US and China, President Xi's decision to skip the G20 summit has raised eyebrows. The Financial Times said his absence "shakes the stature of the G20 as the pre-eminent global forum."

Indian officials are downplaying the Chinese president's absence and maintain that the G20 will be a success, but the strategic community in Delhi is keeping a close eye on the implications of his absence.

Although Beijing dispatched its Chinese Prime Minister, Li Qiang to the event, it is not clear how far he can commit himself in the deliberations that take place in Delhi.

The Chinese president's attempts to pull India away from the West over the years had failed.

China had backed India to physically host the Shanghai Cooperation Summit in Delhi earlier in 2023. Termed the Asian Nato, the SCO summit in Delhi would have cemented ties between the member countries that included Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and many from Central Asia, but New Delhi, due to its preoccupations and perhaps indifference to SC, much to the chagrin of Beijing and other countries, turned the SCO from a physical two day meeting into a virtual two-hour event to ostensibly allow Prime Minister Modi to visit Washington on a state visit.

This could explain Bejing's frustration with India and the reason why Xi is skipping the event.

Sources in the government said that the Chinese government was annoyed by this move and also that the Indian government was giving so much importance to the G20. Even Pakistani officials, sources claim, questioned why the SCO date was changed and later why it was turned into a virtual event.

To embarrass the Indian government, thereafter, Chinese representatives also raised objections about the use of a quote from an ancient language, Sanskrit, in the G20 logo, claiming it was not approved by the UN.

However, the most probable reason for Xi to not come to Delhi, sources claim, was that the meeting with PM Modi in Johannesburg on the sidelines of the BRICS summit was not successful.

Though it was trumpeted as one which will sort out outstanding issues, including the long-standing border dispute, between the two neighbours who saw a nasty clash in 2020, seemingly their differences could not be bridged.

China increasingly sees India as close to the US and is resentful of its membership in the QUAD — a group of four countries including Japan, Australia and the US that are trying to rein in China.

India has been practising multi-alignment policies that allow India to do business with Russia as well as the US and other European powers.

Read more: India walks toward the New World on three roads

The US has been magnanimous towards India and has allowed it to buy Russian oil and after refining it, resell it to the consumers in the West. That was the reason why India felt confident that it was in a position to play a mediating role in the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

Leaving aside perfunctory moves, New Delhi's efforts to get Kyiv and Moscow to talk have not yielded any tangible results. Kyiv was even hostile to New Delhi for supping with the Russians.

During the Delhi summit, Prime Minister Modi will make attempts again to broach the issue of conflict resolution, but the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has made it clear that his country would not allow any mention of the conflict in the Delhi Declaration.

What India hopes to achieve at the summit

India will announce the entry of the African Union(AU) in the final communique of the G20 Delhi summit.

Nearly, all the G20 countries are wooing the union and there are likely to be many engagements with the representatives of the 55-member AU during the Delhi Summit. It is believed that the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is also organising meetings with some important countries from Africa.

Interestingly, Ethiopia, the only country in Africa that was not colonised and where the African Union's HQ is located, Addis Ababa, has joined BRICS. Quite visibly the African Union is being wooed by both blocs and the urgency is visible in the G20.

This is also due to the fact that countries from the Sahel region in Africa where Niger and Mali are located are shaking off the yoke of French colonialism and galloping towards closer ties with China and Russia.

Read more: Africa's string of coups points to waning Western influence

Earlier this year, Russia courted African leaders in St. Petersburg and demanded that it was high time the AU joined G20, quite like the EU.

Russia has protested attempts by the US and Europe to politicise the G20 which was ostensibly created to address economic issues. But European leaders contend that the war in Ukraine has destabilised the world economy, so it should be addressed at the G20 summit.

Will the failure to reach a joint declaration and the absence of Xi and Putin cast a shadow over the summit in Delhi? 

On his part, Modi seems to be unbothered. Pictures of him brushing shoulders with world leaders like President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, will certainly help boost his image ahead of the Indian elections next year.