This event will present the findings of the Transatlantic Academy’s new report, Liberal Order in a Post-Western World, which examines the future of international liberal order in a world shaped by the rise of emerging powers and a transatlantic community dealing with internal challenges. Produced by collaboration between scholars from Europe and North America, it recommends ways to build an enduring rules-based order for the 21st century.

How changing power dynamics will affect how the international order is constituted is one of the most fundamental questions facing the world today.  Whether or not the US itself is declining, the post-war liberal world order, which is underpinned by US military and economic primacy and supported by various global institutions, is evolving. However it is unclear what, if anything, will take its place.

Amitav Acharya argues that the age of Western hegemony is over. While the US will remain a major force in world affairs, he says that it has lost the ability to shape world order in  its own interests and image. As a result the US will be one of a number of anchors, which include emerging powers, regional forces, and a concert of the old and new powers, shaping a new world order.

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With extensive and diverse engagements across sub-Saharan Africa, China is one among a range of international partners that is evolving its policy and relations with African states. At this roundtable meeting, Ambassador Zhong Jianhua will discuss China’s interests in Africa, the challenges it has faced and how China cooperates with international governments and across sectors in Africa. 

The unprecedented victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, in India’s general election was a milestone in the recent history of India, leaving a single party with a majority in parliament for the first time in 25 years and the ruling coalition with a clear mandate. Manoj Ladwa, who worked on Modi’s election campaign, will provide his insights into the campaign and assess why it worked so well. 

The panel will consider the policy implications of the election results and, among other issues, provide insights into how this might shape India’s business outlook and foreign policy over the next five years. 

Africa is now recognized for its vast potential as well as its political influence in international fora, and there has been a growing number of Africa-focused summits, with China, India, the European Union, South Korea and Turkey all hosting such events in recent years. The US has in the past given precedence to bilateral engagements in support of its ‘four pillars’ approach to implementing its Africa strategy. The first US-Africa Leaders’ Summit, held in August, marked a shift towards a complementary continent-wide engagement. 

At this roundtable, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield will discuss US policy and priorities in Africa and the significance of the summit for enhanced US-Africa relations.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

On 26 January, President Barack Obama joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his guest at India’s Republic Day, in a reflection of the huge potential in the US-India relationship. The trip makes Obama the first US president to visit India twice while in office, and comes on the heels of Modi’s visit to Washington last autumn. Nevertheless, the heavily touted ‘transformation’ in bilateral affairs that these summits are supposed to herald is unlikely to materialize soon. Continued, active and deliberate effort by the two leaders could allow the relationship to jump forward, but given competing priorities, this moment seems destined to pass without the major advances many believe are possible.

Since the 2005 breakthrough nuclear deal which brought India into the non-proliferation tent, the opportunities in the bilateral relationship have been loudly extolled. Notably, the countries lack historical closeness − during the Cold War, India led the Non-Aligned Movement but leaned towards the Soviet Union. This means that there is ample opportunity to progress in a number of key areas – but also is indicative of the challenges.

Democracy

It is often said that India is the largest democracy and the United States the oldest. President George W. Bush saw India as a valuable partner in promoting democracy around the region and the world. India’s loud, raucous political system should be a good example of a vibrant democracy. However, India, like China, holds strongly to the primacy of sovereignty and as such has no wish to lead others to build new political systems or to impose them.

Economics and trade

India has a middle class that is, by some counts, larger than the entire US population. However, India’s regulatory system is complex, and its legal architecture slow and unpredictable. After recent Indian decisions such as the 2012 case where retroactive taxes were imposed on Vodafone, American businesses have been extremely wary. Tensions at a governmental level were also raised in America after India collapsed the WTO negotiations last July.

Security

Major strides have been taken in military cooperation, and there is space for more.  During Obama’s visit, the two leaders revitalized their Defence Framework, building on a 2005 agreement and subsequent progress led by then-US deputy secretary of defense Ash Carter. Carter’s likely confirmation as secretary of defense in the coming weeks is probably the brightest spot for the future bilateral agenda. But Indian acquisition processes do not align well with their American equivalents.  And the US is resistant to providing blueprints to technology, which the Indians want, preferring to build at home and sell the equipment on. These misalignments make progress in this area difficult.

Geopolitics

India wants to be considered a regional and global power, and America would dearly like to have India onside, particularly in light of China’s occasional muscle flexing. However, as illustrated by its uncritical stance towards Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its abstention from the 2011 UN Security Council resolution authorizing military action in Libya, India’s view on sovereignty and its historical non-aligned positioning mean that it too often fails to back up the US on divisive issues.

Environment

The environmental debates between India (as a representative of the developing world) and the US (representing the developed) have often been acrimonious, as the two sides take opposing views on where the principal responsibility lies in ensuring growth while limiting the environmental fallout. There are however opportunities in this arena to advance together through technology cooperation. India is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (behind China and the US) and has significant and growing energy demands as it works to bring its people out of poverty. If the US and India could find a compromise similar to the recent agreement between the US and China, the impact could be significant both in environmental terms and in the demonstration effect to others.

Unrealized potential

Most of these issues are central to President Obama’s legacy and integral to Modi’s goals of restoring growth to India and putting it at the centre of global geopolitics. They should dovetail well with both leaders’ agendas. But in each case, the challenges, including the institutional bureaucracies, are preventing real breakthroughs.

If this bilateral relationship is to be transformed, Obama and Modi need to not just push their systems, but exert sustained pressure on them to overcome the long-standing obstacles. Unfortunately, given other agendas and historical legacies of distrust, such ongoing attention is unlikely. More likely, the relationship will continue to move ahead, but the huge potential will for now remain unrealized.

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The stunning victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in elections to Delhi’s legislative assembly on 7 February is clearly causing reverberations around India’s political establishment, and has been widely interpreted as the end of Narendra Modi’s honeymoon period. While it is not a rejection of the prime minister’s development agenda, it highlights the reality that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has built previous electoral victories on a divided opposition.  Its implications may well spread far beyond Delhi.

Sensing Modi’s likely ascendency, many Western countries expended energy in courting him in the run-up to last year’s election. For the previous decade, many had ostracized Modi for his response to the 2002 riots that occurred in Gujarat while he was chief minister (CM). The belief that Modi was the likely prime minister, coupled with the desire to strengthen relations with India, as well as the fact that he had been cleared of complicity in the riots in each court case, meant that past concerns were put to one side. Underpinning this recalibration was a belief that Modi was a changed man; the earlier firebrand had transformed into a managerial technocrat, focusing on development issues — providing power to farmers for instance — in Gujarat.

The 2014 general election campaign did little to change that impression. The BJP’s success was built on a promise of development — house-building, access to sanitation and so forth. Progress has understandably been slower than many would have hoped. But the Delhi election does not change the fact that if successful strategies are put in place to begin delivering on promises made by, say, the third year of the current parliament, Modi may well be able to preside over a 10-year transformation of India.

Modi has also been wooing foreign investment. His bonhomie with foreign leaders, whether Chinese or American, is a powerful signal that India is open for business. India’s economic boom in the middle of the last decade was driven in part by positive investor sentiment. The subsequent realization that ‘red tape’ was still an impediment to business helped drive the slowdown. Recreating a feel-good wave could well boost economic growth; if it coincided with better governance, it could even become self-sustainable.

The Delhi election doesn’t change this, either. It reduces Modi’s air of invincibility and will mean that he faces genuine opposition, admittedly from a chief minister rather than in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. The fact that it is India’s capital will give new Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal much greater prominence internationally than any other CM. But given that both Modi and Kejriwal won landslides on a platform that reflected an aspiration for change rather than a promise for some form of community-based redistribution gives them a (relatively) shared agenda.

If Modi’s vision is to be implemented, it necessarily requires cooperation with chief ministers. Clearly, that is easier if states are BJP-controlled, and BJP-controlled states can be used to test economic reforms. But if a vision is to be India-wide, there has to be some level of cooperation with the majority of states, which do not have BJP governments.

Until the Delhi election, the BJP had been performing strongly in recent state elections. It may well continue to do so and edge closer to a majority in the upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha. But one takeaway from both the general election and the Delhi election is that the BJP is far from a majority party. It won a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha with a little over 30 per cent of the vote. Its vote was concentrated geographically, and the opposition was divided. In the Delhi election, it won 32 per cent of the vote. The obvious takeaway is that a divided opposition benefits the BJP. If the economy booms, more parties are likely to want to join hands with the BJP. If it does not, and if the opposition was united (admittedly, a very big if), the BJP will struggle to win two terms.

An alternative takeaway is that the social base of the BJP needs to be widened. The reaction to US President Barack Obama’s recent speech, in which he mentioned the need for religious tolerance, suggests sensitivity towards communal issues. Delhi witnessed a number of small-scale communal incidents — including vandalism against churches — in the run-up to the state election. If such incidents were replicated in the run-up to the Bihar election later this year, the outcome may well be much worse.

Any switch towards a more Hindutva-focused agenda would seem likely to encourage the consolidation of non-BJP parties. A serious outbreak of communal violence while Modi is PM will be bad for India, but also troubling for the West. Having portrayed himself in a presidential manner, Modi would struggle not to take some responsibility.

Thus, sticking with a development agenda must be imperative. The Delhi election should be seen as a blip for the BJP, a demonstration of the value Indian voters place on development and reinforce the need to focus on delivering that development. While voters may be getting impatient, what’s important is where India stands at the time of the next election.

This article was originally published in the Indian Express.

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The speaker will argue that Chinese foreign policy should be viewed as an extension of domestic policy to a degree not seen in other countries. China's foreign policy aims to support domestic growth and employment, must be aligned with nationalist and narratives of ‘rejuvenation’ and the ‘China Dream’, and must help dilute hostile foreign values. The ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, also known as the ‘New Silk Road’, exemplifies this. The speaker will illustrate its origins and development, discuss how it promotes the Communist Party’s domestic agenda, as well as look at (secondary) geostrategic aims and difficulties. Finally, he will look at the lessons for Europe, and why and how this Chinese initiative should be welcomed.

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Much of the focus on China’s 13th Five Year Plan – its centralized and integrated economic guidelines for the next five years – has been on the estimated growth rate of 6.5 per cent, its lowest in recent history. This reflects the so-called ‘new normal’ of China’s development, as President Xi Jinping’s administration describes its aspiration for higher-quality growth in the context of a slowing economy.

But this growth target is an estimate, rather than a pledge. The emphasis on ‘ecological civilization’ – another of Xi’s signature buzzwords, referring to a broad set of approaches environmental protection – is striking. Further, by putting innovation and ‘green development’ at the heart of its ambition to create a ‘moderately prosperous society’, China has sent an important signal: that the country’s strategy for future prosperity in many respects converges with a shift away from its environmentally costly development model.

Environmental goals

The plan endorses a ‘vertical management system’ that will help overcome structural impediments to the local enforcement of environmental laws,  and of its 13 binding targets, 10 relate to the environment and natural resources. In the plan, China commits to an 18 per cent reduction in carbon emissions per unit of GDP from 2015 levels by 2020 and a 15 per cent reduction in energy consumed per unit of GDP from 2015 levels by 2020. It also re-commits to generate 15 per cent of primary energy from non-fossil sources and introduces an important new target of keeping energy consumption below 5 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent by 2020. Underlining how air quality has become a major driver of energy and climate policymaking, it also promises a 25 per cent reduction in harmful PM2.5 particulates.

In short, the plan suggests that decision makers in China not only take seriously its UN pledge to see a peak in the country’s emissions before 2030, but also that they hope the country will be the leading supplier of low-carbon technologies. Among its non-binding targets are some significant innovation-related measures: to raise gross expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP to 2.5 per cent, from 2.1 per cent today; and over the same period to almost double the number of patents owned per 10,000 people, from 6.3 to 12.

Innovation

The document makes clear the principal driver of China’s economy should be innovation, rather than investment. Innovation, says the plan, ‘must be placed at the heart of overall national development’ and ‘integrated into all the works of the Party and the country’. There is emphasis on strategic areas at the ‘frontiers’ of science, ‘mass entrepreneurship’ through new models such as crowd-funding, and digital economy projects – what the leadership likes to call ‘Internet+’ – including around the Internet of Things, quantum computing and big data.  

Under China’s 12th Five Year Plan (from 2011 to 2015), the state focused on a defined number of specific technology goals in its ‘strategic emerging industries’. Renewable energies and electric vehicles, for example, were afforded specific preferential policies. By contrast, the new plan has a greater focus on ‘clean coal’ and hydropower in the energy sector; and while it doesn’t abandon solar and wind, it also suggests greater diversity in its overall approach, with more of an emphasis on reform of the energy sector, developing smart power grids and investing in energy storage technologies such as batteries and fuel cells.

Moreover, innovation in the plan is not framed as simply being about hardware – the commercialization of science and technology. Rather, the text reiterates that innovation should come in many different varieties: ‘theoretical, institutional, scientific and technological, and cultural innovation’. This raises the intriguing and hopeful possibility that the country’s planners recognize some of the challenges and opportunities the public, particularly in the form of newly vocal, engaged and connected urban constituencies, pose in the governance of innovation.

Policymakers – taking ‘social innovation’ seriously – could begin look at the public as technology users, incubators of demand-driven successes, and innovators in their own right. In a context of low public trust around food and agriculture in China, for example, organic cooperatives and ecological entrepreneurs have pioneered supply-chain innovations, typically facilitated by digital networks, to connect farmers with urban consumers looking for safer food. Lower-tech approaches to energy too – such as inexpensive solar water heaters, which garner a mention in the latest plan – have been driven by rural users and supported by local initiatives, rather than central government coordination or subsidies.

These approaches to innovation would present a quite different model than previous central government plans have encouraged. Whether in the plan’s implementation they are harnessed and given support might be critical to meeting China’s environmental goals, as well as its drive to create a more innovative economy and society.

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