The Silk Route Beckons

A tough call is to be made at the SCO meeting as India's foreign policy must Act East with deeds beyond words

- Raviprasad Narayanan

HIGH -level visits by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to China after six years and meeting the President of China Xi Jinping, and also Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is visiting India next week to meet National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, indicate a Trump effect percolating into New Delhi's foreign policy-making edifice. Why this hullabaloo and will the prime minister's impending visit to Tianjin help? Maybe.

The 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Tianjin, China—from August 31 to September 1—will be the cynosure of many countries, strategic analysts cornucopia and consultants fixated on economic opportunities, if any. Tianjin Port on Bohai Bay exemplifies the economic transformation of China since the reform phase of 1979, epitomising the official closure of the Mao era and the reversion to civilisational continuity of commercial activities. Leaders of China, India and Russia at the 10-member SCO meeting will be watched closely for their coming together to discuss comprehensive issues—needlessly complicated by irreverent statements made by US President Donald Trump.

An epoch growingly determined by technological capabilities, especially digital economic dominance in all spectrums of tangible aspects, could be the emphasis of renewed neo-geopolitics evolving into geoeconomics as the primary concern supplanting the Westphalian rubric, dominating international relation discourses. Russia, China and India are on the Mercator map, a large geographical realm stretching from the freezing Arctic to the warm Indian Ocean. When the three leaders meet at the SCO, a packed agenda of issues awaits—opinions, positions and alternatives to be adopted and preserve their respective sovereignty with identity, encountering ballistic hectoring for their hegemony. Really?