Modi’s visit to Brussels, US and Saudi Arabia: Engaging with the EU

As a mark of solidarity regardless of the brutal bomb attacks that unleashed a reign of terror Prime Minister embarked on his scheduled visit to EU headquarters Brussels on March 30^th for the 13^th India-EU summit. Key focus of Modi’s bilateral state visits has been touting India’s economic potential and EU summit is no exception. Rattled by the terror attacks exactly a weak ahead of Indian leader visit, counter-terrorism surfaced as an important aspect of the summit and bilateral meetings. Despite its traditional linkages with Europe, unlike China which cogently fostered trade and economic ties, India failed to capitalize its long standing relations with EU. India was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with European Economic Community in 1962. India signed an agreement of bilateral cooperation with EU encompassing aspects beyond trade and economic cooperation in 1994 and the first India-EU summit was unveiled in 2000. Having borne the wrath of cross-border terrorism, India urged EU to vehemently condemn the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the first ever joint statement with EU in 2000. EU chose to ignore ruinous state of affairs in Afghanistan and held that Taliban be encouraged to join the mainstream slowly. A systemic change about terrorism threat dawned on the West only after the 9/11 incident. Subsequently from the third India-EU at Copenhagen EU began to endorse India’ fears of burgeoning terrorism. A Joint Action Plan was adopted in 2005 to strengthen dialogue and consultation mechanisms in political and economic spheres, trade, investment and people to people interactions. Cooperation in security related issues is enhanced through constitution of a security dialogue (which holds deliberations annually) under Joint Action Plan in 2006 to which bilateral Joint Working Group on counter terrorism, cyber security and cyber piracy reports.

Earlier in 2015, Modi’s visit to Brussels during his Europe trip to France and Germany for the Indo-EU summit was cancelled as EU failed to respond. Miffed with India over the Italian marines’ issues, EU foreign policy head, an Italian passed a resolution blocking India in European Parliament in January 2015. Hence Modi’s current visit despite terror attacks just a week ahead of his visit immensely rejuvenated India-EU relations. The last India-EU summit took place in 2012. During the current summit India represented by Prime Minister Modi and the EU by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of European Commission adopted a Joint Statement encompassing a gamut of aspects. At the outset, the statement strongly condemned the bomb attacks in Brussels on 22^nd March and extended condolences to the families of the 32 people who lost their lives and over 300 who were severely injured. Both sides reposed strong interest in working towards “building global peace, security and prosperity fostering non-proliferation and disarmament, creating jobs and inclusive economic development and tackling global challenges like terrorism and climate change in addition to other challenges such as migration and refugee crisis”. Leaders have laid concrete framework for India-EU strategic relationship by endorsing the Indo-EU Agenda for Action-2020 for the next five years.

Other important outcomes include- European Investment Bank (EIB)’s 450 million Euros loan towards construction of first metro line in Lucknow. EIB is planning to set up a representative branch for South Asia in New Delhi. Laying great emphasis on stepping up cooperation to counter violent and extreme radicalization, India and EU adopted Joint Declaration on Counter Terrorism and renewed Joint Declaration on Terrorism of 2010. While India anticipated a strong reaction from EU with regards to Italian Marines Case, in the joint statement EU endorsed Italy’s concerns of expeditious solution for the case. In a remarkable change of stance, Afghanistan issue surfaced in the joint statement with EU welcoming the commitment of international community to Afghanistan in the Transformation Decade from 2015 to 2024 and recognizing India as a major regional power. The Joint statement also stressed on a need for a stable and democratic Pakistan, acknowledged India’s efforts in supporting Nepal during the devastating earthquake and later in reconstruction efforts and encouraged dialogue with all regional partners to restore democracy in Maldives. Both sides welcomed the Iranian nuclear deal and condemned North Korea’s nuclear testing. EU expressed its interest in supporting Prime Minister’s flag ship programs- Make in India, Skill India, Clean India, Clean Ganga, Digital India and Urban Development Program. Welcoming the agenda for Sustainable Development, EU agreed to work together towards realization of COP21 agenda and appreciated India’s International Solar Alliance (ISA) initiative. The leaders have extended India-EU Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement until 2020 and endorsed the establishment of Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (CAMM) between India and EU.

Modi during his brief visit, participated in the wreath laying ceremony at the Molenbeek metro station and met a delegation of business leaders. Modi known for his penchant for Indian Diaspora addressed the expats at the Brussels Expo Community Hall. During his one hour long talk in Hindi, he expressed grief over the terror attacks, took a veiled jibe at Pakistan for nurturing the rogue elements, and questioned the UN for failing to define terrorism and proscribing action against the countries that support terror elements. The Summit meetings were followed by bilateral talks with Belgian counterpart Charles Michel. Accompanied by minister for commerce and industry Nirmala Sitharaman, Modi strongly pitched for foreign investments in a meeting with business leaders.

While India has different degrees of closeness with various countries of EU, India couldn’t substantially collaborate with EU. Though the negotiations for Bilateral broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BITA) were initiated in 2007, the talks failed to achieve a breakthrough till now owing to EU’s concerns about trade barriers in India. EU is India’s largest regional trade while India is EU’s 9^th largest trading partner. The bilateral trade between the 28-countries conglomeration of EU as of 2014 is 72.5 billion Euros. EU is also one of the largest sources of FDI. While there is a perfunctory understanding between India and EU regarding various issues with cooperation in the fields of science and technology, people to people interaction yielding laudable efforts, there is still a greater scope for enhanced cooperation. Modi wrapping up bilateral visit to Brussels travelled to Washington for a two day long trip to attend fourth Nuclear Security Summit (NSS). Unlike Modi’s first trip to Washington, the current visit was low-key affair and hectic. Modi met the local Indian American community and started bilateral diplomatic engagements with New Zealand counterpart John Key, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister David Cameron, renewed ties with Kazakhstan Prime Minister Nursultan Nazarbayev, Argentinian President Mauricio Macri and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe along the sidelines of the summit. India and the US signed a MoU to establish Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO).

At the NSS, Modi eloquently exhorted the urgent need for a “strong security culture”, condemned dubious posturing of “his terrorist is not my terrorist” which could abysmally thwart the attempts of annihilating the global terror-networks. In an alleged indirect swipe at China’s malefic obstruction of stalling India’s resolution to ban JeM chief Masoor Azad at the UN, Modi reiterated that terrorism transcends boundaries and appealed for a consolidated global action to nail the cancer of terror. A more compelling need for securing nuclear weapons was outlined by author in an earlier post. Modi strongly contested the allegation of serious security lapses in India’s nuclear program pledged to set up 23 response centers across the country to address nuclear or radiological emergency and Counter Nuclear Smuggling Team. Modi’s Washington visit brought to fore, the debate on India’s military alignments with US that can foreclose India’s option and contradicts the Nehruvian non-alignment policy. Indian Strategists are now seriously debating about the three possible agreements between India and US-the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), the Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA).

It is worth capitulating India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) objections to Obama’s remark at the NSS that India and Pakistan should ensure that they are moving the wrong direction while they develop military doctrines. MEA was irked by US’s lack of understanding about India’s defence posture and pronounced that India has never initiated military action against any neighboring country and is firmly committed to its no-first use of nuclear weapons policy. While US’s concerns of possible theft of small tactical weapons is understandable, it is ludicrous to lash out at India which has less than one-tenth of US’s nuclear weapons and when reports  suggest that India’s nuclear weapons development is tightly regulated and that of Pakistan’s is proliferating at dangerously alarming pace. Concluding his second leg of trip, Modi started for Riyadh.

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