External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during St. Stephen's Distinguished Alumni Annual Lecture, in New Delhi. (PTI) Few could have anticipated the turn in the India-China relations in the last two years, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday while delivering a lecture at St Stephen’s College in Delhi.
Jaishankar was speaking at the first Distinguished Alumni Annual Lecture at his alma mater St Stephen’s College. Speaking about India’s security policy with relation to its neighbours, he said: “India faces more than its fair share of external challenges, in part because so many of our boundaries have not been settled.”
On the military stand-off between China and India in recent years, he said: “The world being what it is, self-interest and convergence cannot be fully counted upon, especially with neighbours. Their ambitions and emotions are not always predictable, nor indeed their risk-taking propensity. Few would have anticipated, for example, the turn that India’s relations with China have taken in the last two years… Any prudent policy, therefore, backs its posture with capabilities and deterrence. A big responsibility of Indian diplomacy, therefore, is to create the widest set of options in such contingencies. This could mean acquisition of defence capabilities and other supportive measures, or securing the understanding of policies and actions from the international community.”
He said a “notable achievement” of the Narendra Modi government vis-à-vis its neighbours had been adopting the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh in 2015, which he claimed, had a positive impact on security in the East and had opened up possibilities of economic cooperation in the sub-region.
“A different challenge is being faced on our western boundary vis-à-vis Pakistan. On that front, the initial goal of diplomacy was to expose and delegitimise Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism. When counter-actions were required, such as in Uri in 2016 and Balakot in 2019, effective diplomacy ensured global understanding of India’s actions. Where China is concerned, the diplomatic interactions that are going on in parallel to the military stand-offs since 2020 illustrate that foreign and defence policies are interlinked. Here, too, the value of global support and understanding is self-evident,” he added.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
