Contentious exchanges like the one between the presidents of the United States and Ukraine on February 28 are quite common in bilateral meetings between leaders and their delegations down the hierarchy. The difference that stood out at the Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky was that the spat occurred in public.
It has been an open secret in Washington that, in 2022 itself―after the war started in Ukraine―president Joe Biden clashed with Zelensky. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both had ugly dust-ups with successive Israeli prime ministers. However, whenever the two sides appeared in front of television cameras, everything was sweet as honey. That is what public diplomacy is meant for.
India has had its share of such situations. Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee found himself in potentially the same situation as Zelensky after he ordered nuclear tests in 1998. Manmohan Singh, too, faced intense pressure from his interlocutors abroad for his uncompromising positions and unwillingness to dilute India’s nuclear deal with the US to suit the global architecture on non-proliferation.
As part of a multi-nation diplomatic outreach to explain Pokhran II, one of the first visits abroad by Brajesh Mishra, principal secretary to Vajpayee, was to Moscow. The post of national security adviser had not yet been created. Mishra was received by foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, who had a reputation for being sympathetic to India. However, as their talks began, Primakov delivered a stern lecture on why India’s nuclear tests should not have been conducted. Five minutes into Primakov’s lecture, Mishra abruptly stood up, indicating that he had heard enough. He told Primakov that if he had wanted to hear about the merits of non-proliferation, he would have gone to Washington instead to meet the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright. There was no point in continuing the meeting, Mishra signalled. The Russian side was in shock. The quick-thinking KGB stalwart softened under such pressure. From that moment onwards, Russia was conciliatory, like France, towards India’s compulsions for testing nuclear weapons. All of this was in private, of course, but was told to me in confidence by Mishra when he returned from Moscow.
Vajpayee was discomfited in public―like Zelensky―once, by the venerable Nelson Mandela. Opening the 12th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Durban in 1998, the South African president raised the Kashmir dispute in Vajpayee’s presence. NAM had a tradition of not discussing bilateral disputes among member states at its summits. Moreover, as a founding member, India had appropriated NAM as its diplomatic fiefdom, until Mandela shattered that illusion by referring not only to Kashmir but also by speaking against India’s nuclear tests.
A furious Vajpayee buttonholed Mandela at the summit’s opening banquet later that night, telling the iconic leader that his remarks were “uncalled for and unacceptable”, according to briefings by both countries. However, India was so stung by what happened at the inaugural session that Vajpayee insisted in his NAM address the following day that India would not accept any “third-party involvement” in Kashmir. Indian diplomats worked overtime to salvage the situation, scuttling efforts by several countries to name India or Pakistan in the summit’s 127-page final document. Reversing Mandela’s stance, the document did not name any country but merely called for bilateral dialogue to resolve disputes peacefully.
The public dressing-down of Zelensky is a timely reminder that India should zealously protect its strategic autonomy in external affairs. During the Kargil War, US president Bill Clinton wanted both Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, to travel to Washington to trilaterally negotiate an end to the conflict. Vajpayee refused the invitation. Sharif, as a US ally, had little choice. However, Clinton did not receive Sharif in the White House. Instead, in the library of the adjacent Blair House, Sharif was asked to sign on the dotted line and withdraw Pakistani fighters from Kargil.
After Pokhran II, since India and the US were not allies, Clinton took the stance that he would unilaterally punish India with sanctions rather than negotiate, as Trump is now doing with ally Zelensky. There would be no meetings with Indians at any level. In fact, visas were refused to Indian officials, even those engaged in work unrelated to the US. It was a blessing in disguise, allowing India to pursue its strategic options with countries like France. This clean slate later proved helpful when Vajpayee’s emissary Jaswant Singh and US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott began a rapprochement, paving the way for Clinton’s historic visit to India and everything that followed in India-US relations. Unlike Zelensky, Singh had no baggage to carry.
The author was a foreign correspondent in Washington.