The personal touch that never was

To be able to correct a problem, we first have to acknowledge that a problem exists. If we do not make this acknowledgement, then we will not address the problem and it will not be corrected. The first step is to accept that there is an issue and then we can move on to resolving it.

The problem we are discussing today is the effectiveness of personalised diplomacy of the sort that we have seen since 2014. It is centred around such things as physical interaction and displays of affection, grand events in honour of guests, and the idea that the ‘friendship’ that is produced by these actions will help resolve issues.

Why are we discussing this today? Because the government of India is struggling to find its place in the world. Nations it was convinced were friends, if not allies, have spanked it gratuitously, and it has been forced to turn to nations it saw until a few days ago as rivals, if not enemies.

This is the problem. To address it, we will first have to acknowledge that it exists. This will not be easy for this government because it has rested its entire performance on the genius of one individual. To accept that there is a problem is to acknowledge that the genius has not worked as was being presumed. But one of the jobs of the columnist is to offer unsolicited opinion, and in times of crisis especially, we must put our shoulder to the wheel.

At the root of the matter is a simple fact that has become clear: our prime minister is not good at personalised diplomacy. He is, as we will see, spectacularly bad at it. Note that this is a separate matter from whether or not personalised diplomacy by itself works.

When PM Modi ran with the hare and hunted with the hound

It well might. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger used it to bring China onside with the United States, and keep Mao from aligning with the Soviets. When he was hosting foreign dignitaries, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto would sometimes personally receive an individual at the airport. In their memoirs, his associates Iqbal Akhund and Rafi Raza write that this sometimes yielded results.

However, that is not what we are on here. When the clash at Galwan happened, it collapsed the sense of a camaraderie that had been promoted by the prime minister himself. In September 2014, he coined one of his famous acronyms, speaking about bilateral ties with China as moving ahead from 'INCH' (India and China) to 'MILES' (Millennium of Exceptional Synergy).

The report that published this news ended with this paragraph, and remember this is 2014: ‘Modi’s remarks came amid local authorities in Leh claiming that Chinese civilians in government vehicles had entered Indian territory in Demchok in Ladakh and were preventing locals from working on an irrigation project there. The contentious boundary dispute will be among the issues to be discussed by Modi and Xi.'

Modi met Xi a total of 18 times before the clash at Galwan in 2020. Young Indian couples in arranged marriages meet fewer than 18 times but are able to suss out whether the other individual is suitable as a life partner. Our prime minister was not able to do so, despite all the hugging and jhoola-swinging. Xi is an individual led by a harder calculus and would scoff at melting over gestures.

That we did not know this was our failure. The reaction to his actions was also personalised at our end: after Galwan, Modi has avoided meeting Xi until now. Actual personalised diplomacy would have required him to pick up the phone to ask why Xi was acting the way he was, rather than sulking, but as has been noted, he’s not actually good at this stuff that he is thought to be good at.

Life after a bromance gone wrong

Our diplomats are today unsure of why Trump has been manhandling India, but there is a precedent for this. In his first term, Trump forced Modi to stop buying oil from Tehran. We complained that our refineries were calibrated for Irani crude, but though there was no UN sanction in operation, we complied with Trump then.

The easiest explanation for why Trump has been harsh with us on tariffs is to be found not in the theory that he is upset that India has not acknowledged his ending of our war with Pakistan (he doesn’t care what we think). The explanation is to be found in all schoolyards across the world. The bully does not want to be fighting everyone all the time. The bully wants to make an example of one individual in public so that the others comply without fighting. That is what has happened here in front of the eyes of the world.

Our giant rallies for Trump in Houston and Ahmedabad did not save us because he is a selfish bully who looks after his own interests first and last. That is his character. It is our fault that despite our assumed closeness to him, we did not comprehend what was so obvious to Xi and everyone else in positions of power.

If we are to acknowledge that this is why we are where we are, then we might be able to correct it. But it is more likely, given the record, that we will continue down the path we have since 2014, because it is impossible at this juncture to convey that our great leader can ever be anything less than totally competent.

Views are personal. Read more of Aakar Patel's writing