President Kyung-wha Kang,
Vice President Danny Russel,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It's good to be back at the Asia Society, and to share thoughts with you today on 'India, Asia and the World'. So, let me start with the world. And I am very conscious we are here for the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly. We have just finished the Summit of the Future. So, when we look at the world today, I mean, if I were to pick a few words to describe it, probably one very obvious word to me would be ‘rebalancing’. Rebalancing a global order which started with 51 founding members of the United Nations, which has quadrupled in the last eight decades, where you not only have more independent countries in the world, but the economic, political and even demographic weight of individual members of the global order has shifted, shifted to a point where many of us believe that today we are actually at an inflection, an inflection which really makes a very compelling case for reforming the global order, especially the United Nations.
Now, when I speak about rebalancing, I think Asia has been very much key to that rebalancing. If one looks, for example, at the top 20 economies of the world, there are many more Asian economies in that than there were a few decades ago. And even if one looks into, say, among the 20; the Asian ones have really risen much more strongly and impactfully. And among them, of course, is India, which was a decade ago the 10th largest economy in the world, currently the fifth, likely to be the third by the end of the decade.
A second word which would occur to me when I again try to describe the world would be ‘multipolarity’. And this is a consequence of rebalancing. Multipolarity in the sense that there are many more independent centers of decision-making in the world. And what it does is, it really shifts international politics more in the direction of finding convergences and overlaps. And that actually has an impact on the global architecture, that from what was in the initial years of the UN a very much more bipolar world, which briefly went into unipolarity. Today, we are looking really at a global landscape which is much more regional, which is, as I said, much more characterized by countries who have their strong interests and which have the ability to pursue that interest. And so a lot of what we see in terms of the world is really how does the politics of convergence of the world is really how does the politics of convergence play out.
And a third word which would occur to me is ‘plurilateralism’. It's a very ugly word, but it in a sense describes a world beyond bilateral relations but which are short of multilateral. That where countries form combinations based on these convergences and overlaps that I've talked about. And you have really this phenomenon of groups of countries coming together for often a limited agenda, sometimes in an agreed theatre to pursue their interests. And again, to me, a very visible example of that would be the Quad, which has been an increasingly, I would say, growing present platform in the Indo-Pacific and what you described, Ambassador, in the Quad Summit in Wilmington which just took place, I think, is the latest step in the growth of that platform.
Now, rebalancing, multipolarity, plurilateralism; they describe a world which is changing, but they don't fully capture a world which has been subjected to repeated shocks. And those shocks actually today have hastened the transformation the world is going through. And the shocks include COVID, the shocks include a world which is witnessing multiple simultaneous conflicts, a world that is seeing intense and very disruptive climate events. So you could say, in a way, the world is changing. Asia is very much at the cutting edge of that change. Within Asia, India is part of leading that change. But that change is today stretching the fabric of the global order. And these shocks which I have described have been stress points on that.
And there are two particular aspects in terms of the global economy which I would highlight. One is the supply chain challenge, where what COVID conflicts and climate events have taught us is the need for more resilient and reliable and redundant supply chains. And what that is doing is really, in a way, reorganizing the international economy; so it's not just a global order which is changing, but the international economy as well. And here again, I would point out that Asia is both a player as well as an arena for that transformation.
The second characteristic of the international economy is, of course, its digital feature. And the digital era actually calls for much more trust and transparency. So when we look at economic relationships today, there is a security filter through which today businesses are increasingly being viewed. And here again, I would say, Asia will experience that digital dilemma, perhaps much more sharply than many other regions of the world.
So what does all this mean for India? I would sum it up in six or seven points. One, an India which is rising has to prepare to rise amidst volatility and unpredictability. That typically when countries rise, big powers rise, they hope really for congenial circumstances. We know that we are not going to get that. And we have to factor that, hardwire that into our planning as we prepare to rise. In that rise, obviously, what is crucial for us is how much more rapidly and impactfully we can regionalize the subcontinent and South Asia. And to do that, we have really, over the last decade, been pursuing a policy of focusing on the neighborhood in a non-reciprocal, very generous way so that we can actually drive particularly the infrastructure and the economic regionalization of our part of the world.
The third point I would make is about India and China. I think the India-China relationship is key to the future of Asia. In a way, you can say if the world is to be multipolar, Asia has to be multipolar. And therefore, this relationship will influence not just the future of Asia, but in that way perhaps the future of the world as well. We have long pursued what we call the ‘Act East’ policy with ASEAN at its centre. But again, in the last decade, we have seen that mature into something beyond the ASEAN. So, I would argue that the arrival of Indo-Pacific as a strategic concept is actually the success of the ‘Act East’ policy and the extension of India's interests today all the way to Australia, which is for us today a very crucial Quad partner.
I know the Asia Society's traditional interest in Asia generally stops at India, but I would also make the point that India's ties with the Gulf have again dramatically changed in the last decade. And I would particularly point to some interesting connectivity proposals, initiatives, which are on the table, most notably the IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. And I point to it because what it does is, in a way it connects the Atlantic to India, Europe through the Arabian Peninsula to India. And we are in turn trying, obviously with a lot of challenges in front of us, to also build the connectivity to the Pacific through Myanmar, which is called the Trilateral Highway. So it is conceivable, perhaps by the end of the decade, that you could actually have land-based, primarily land-based, connectivity all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which runs through Asia, and which will have obviously very profound strategic and economic consequences.
And finally, I would say what we are seeing, which is a return of history, that the growth, because you have in India recovering from the COVID, posting 8 percent growth again, very confident that it has perhaps multiple decades of that level of growth ahead of it. And such in India, preparing to invest in its own region, in its extended neighborhood, which is very much at the cutting edge of globalization, I think in a way is retaking its place in history. So when I picked the title of ‘India, Asia and the World’; I was gently suggesting that perhaps there was a greater centrality to India in the future than we've had in the last few decades, and that would represent a return of history.
Thank you very much.
Conversation between Dr. S Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs with Daniel Russel, Vice President of Asia Society Policy Institute.
Daniel Russel: Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much, minister. It's wonderful having you here as President Kang said during such a hectic week. It's great to have you back at Asia Society, and I thank you very much for your thoughtful remarks. I'll do my best to rise to the provocation.
You talked about trends, important trends affecting the global order. Rebalance is a phrase near and dear to my heart as a veteran of the Obama administration, but I understand the context you're raising it in. The shifting convergences among the major players, the plurilateralism, the Quad is one example. And you also talked about the shocks and the stress points. I'm actually quite intrigued at two particular things, connections you made. One is between multipolarity, global order and regionalism. I think there may be a case to be made that these pull in somewhat different directions. The other thing I heard, which frankly sent chills down my spine is the US had to adjust from East Asia as a formula to the Indo-Pacific.
Now you're suggesting that we may be headed towards the Indo-Pacific Atlantic, which is gonna be another big leap of our imagination to reach that kind of connectivity. But let me dig in a little bit. You covered many of the issues on my personal bingo card, but one thing that is relevant to the world that you didn't discuss was US-India relations. And I wonder if we could start there and ask you to tell us a little bit about not just what you assess to be the state of the relationship but against all of these stresses and volatility, what are some of the drivers of progress? What are some of the anchors in the relationship that may keep the progress going forward in the US-India relationship in the face of inevitable change?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: Well, look, I would really describe the changes in India-US ties as probably, I mean, certainly for an Indian it has been the biggest foreign policy, I would even say strategic transformation of our lives. We had seen, if I were to take the approximately 75-plus years after our independence, we had that initial period of non-alignment. Then as we looked at US, China, Pakistan coming together in the early 70s, you had an Indo-India-Soviet Union response. Then you had the end of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and which in many ways allowed India and the US to both readjust their positions and look at each other very differently. It took some time for that logic to unfold. You know, part of it was declogging the system from the obstacles and the impediments of the earlier era. Part of it, and I say this from, again, purely Indian perspective, our own hesitations which limited the advancement of those ties, and I would say in the last decade where those hesitations, the ideological hesitations were not there on the Indian side, we've allowed the natural forces driving that relationship to take it forward.
So what are those forces? I mean, obviously, one part of it is the strategic recalculation that we are seeing in the global order today. Different countries reassessing their relationships depending on where they see the value of that partnership, and on the Indian side, a perception that the US, our strategic assessment of the US today is positive, which was not always the case before.
On the American side, I think a much greater willingness to partner with a country like India which is not a member of an alliance or a treaty partner. So you actually, and you can see that today in the Quad, but in the bilateral India-US relationship as well. So you can see the defense side of it, the security side of it, the political side of it, the diplomatic side of it play out. The second is, of course, the economic convergences, and there, I think particularly the technology side has been strong, but I would suggest to you it'll get much stronger in an era of, in a digital era, in an AI era. I think there's a much greater possibility of a coming together of our economies.
And the third would be really, in a sense, I would say the societal part of the relationship, that if one looks today at the Indian community, the Indian-American community, the bridge that it constitutes, and in many ways, it's been a very unique community in the US that it's kept its links with its home country very strong. And that has been a very big asset to the relationship.
So I would really say very objectively that India, the change in India-US ties, it's been very significant in the last, maybe I would say 20 years plus, 25 years, but definitely it's coming to its own in the last decade. And I can give you a range of examples. And the most obvious one would be in defense. A country which, where we had virtually no military relationship for 40 years, from 1965 till 2006, where there was not a single American platform in our inventory.
Today we operate four American aircraft, I think three, four helicopters, and land-based systems. So you can see that as one example, but I could cite to you many others.
Daniel Russel: Thank you. So I agree, on the defense side, I would frankly point to some of the terrific things that the US and India are doing together. I think that's indicative of the kind of shift in paradigm and thinking that you're describing. And I noticed some great things in the fact sheet that came out of Prime Minister Modi's meeting in Delaware, the bilateral meeting with President Biden, including in the defense partnership, the Combined Maritime Task Force, things like that. That's really tackling real here and now issues together in a way. And as you mentioned in terms of technology, there's now this joint project on semiconductors, building the fab, the first fab, a multi-material fab facility in India. So those are dramatic. But let me pick up on the economic point, because we're in New York, this is the city of business and finance, and I know that the Prime Minister, you and your colleagues are engaging with the US business community a lot. So many American companies are de-risking, diversifying, moving out of China, looking for alternatives. There are a lot of them knocking on India's door. But could you talk to us a little bit about, you mentioned earlier India dealing with obstacles and overcoming barriers of the past. What are some of the obstacles that your government is addressing to facilitate investment and business opportunities, market access, by Western and American companies?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: Look, good question. I would say it begins first with the acceptance that we have challenges. And I think that realization has been very fundamental to the policies of the Modi government. So if you go back to 2014, there's a very determined attempt starting then, but continues to this day, to make it easier to do business in India, in different ways, you know, in making the procedural part of it, policy part of it, but also providing the infrastructure for businesses to come in. So we kind of take it in three parts.
One, what we call making it easier to do business. Second, what could be described as easier to live or easier to function in India. So cutting the paperwork, making the processes of approvals easier. And the third is actually the infrastructure development. I mean, there's been a very significant infrastructure improvement in India.
So, you know, you're talking today of an economy which is building about 25 to 30 kilometers of highway every day. And if you take the number of airports in the last 10 years, they've doubled. If one looks at, you know, the railway movement that has improved, the turnaround times and ports have improved, the number of industrial estates have grown. So you need a combination of all of these, really, to attract business, and I think it's worked to a large measure, but there are, you know, there's obviously great scope for further improvement.
We are 107 days into the third term of Prime Minister Modi and in the first hundred days, among the big initiatives that were taken where the, you know, the idea that there'll be 12 big industrial nodes in India, where we would actually create environment for making it easier for manufacturing to set up shop in India. Two, a doubling down of investments on rail, road, and ports, particularly ports, and connect it with the industrial nodes. And along with that, a big program to skill human resources to meet, you know, the needs of industry at this point of time.
So we're taking it very seriously for us. This has been really, I would say, thrust area of the foremost priority.
Daniel Russel: Just stepping back to the Quad which you mentioned and your overall remarks about the emergence of more, both regionalism and multipolarity, I wrestle with what seems to me, at least, as something of a conundrum of India's simultaneous active membership in both the Quad and the BRICS, and for that matter, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: We can chew gum and walk at the same time.
Daniel Russel: All right, but can you be all things to all people and all regions? Does that really work?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: You know, look, it's not that we are all things to all people, we are ourselves to all people. And the idea that countries must operate in a particular context or a particular structure, that's a very post-45 Cold War-ish idea. Times have moved on. So there are today a lot of countries who feel that their freedom of choice, their operational flexibility should not be constrained because their interests are much more complicated and much more diverse than the binary picture which the Cold War era represented.
So, I mean, certainly what I say applies to India, but look at the BRICS. I mean, you have today countries like UAE or Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Now, these are countries which have had strong relations with the West, still have strong relations with the West. So it's not like by being in the BRICS or being in SCO, you are necessarily sort of turning your back on your other relationships.
So I think it is that ability to operate in multiple contexts and multiple spaces. And that, to me, is a characteristic of the current era.
Daniel Russel: Well, can you help us understand a little bit about what India gets, what benefits accrue to India from participation in the Quad or participation in the BRICS or the SCO? Is it the same? Are these substantially different? And which of these, do some of these represent the future and some of them represent the past?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: I think all of them represent the future, partly because I think I myself am part of the future. So, you know, you're kind of growing with that. If you look at the Quad, you have four countries, they're all market economies, they're all political democracies, they're all pluralistic societies, they also are all maritime powers, and they have a common interest in dealing with the Indo-Pacific, in a certain way. And they have that ability to cooperate and communicate with each other, work with each other and carry other countries along with them.
So, we see this, in a way, as a non-treaty way of working with countries. I would argue that perhaps this is the future, that the era of arguing over who's paying who, what share, and is that fair. You don't have those arguments in the Quad. So, you don't have those arguments because everybody is doing, you know, what they think is right and there's a, there's a kind of a, sort of understanding about it. In the case of the BRICS, it has a different history. It it's a history of an era where a Western dominance on the global order was very much more. And so, you had really a collection of non-Western countries who felt they weren't getting a fair hearing in the overall scheme of things, and that by getting together on issues on which their interests overlapped, they would be able to make their voices more strongly felt. And I think it's, it's also served its purpose. So to me, each one is a different facet of our interests and our activities.
So I wouldn't compare them because I think they have different histories, different composition, often different themes. You know, the SCO again has a history. It, it's more Eurasian. It was focused much more on countering radicalism, terrorism. That's where it began. And today, it's perhaps evolved into something more. So, for us to have this range of options, combination of partners working multiple agendas at the same time, that's how it's going to go.
Daniel Russel: Good answer. Thank you. And I think I heard one group put in the future tense and the other put in the past tense, but I won't hold you on that. So, speaking of borders, India has obviously a very, very acute border problem with China. I've been reading and hearing pretty encouraging things. You yourself said recently something to the effect of, you know, you assess progress and disengagement at the, sort of, three-quarters, seventy-five percent mark. Your colleague, the National Security Advisor Doval, met recently with Wang Yi that generated pretty positive signals from both sides. At the same time, it's not much of a secret that India, shall we say, has a China problem. And so, I wonder if you would give us some sense of what you see the prospects are for progress in Sino-Indian relationship.
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: We have a difficult history with China, a history which included a conflict in 1962. It took us 14 years thereafter to send back ambassadors. And it took another 12 years after that, really, to come to some kind of modus vivendi. And that happened in 1988. And the basis of that was that we would develop a relationship ensuring that there is peace and tranquility on the border. And on the border areas, because the border is not agreed to, the entire border, which is about 3,500 kilometres, is disputed. So, you make sure the border is peaceful so that other parts of the relationship can move.
Now, to make sure the border was peaceful, you had a series of agreements in 93, in 96, in 2005, 2006, 2012. So, each one of these agreements went into greater and greater detail on how to ensure that the border remained peaceful and stable. Now, the problem was in 2020, despite these very explicit agreements, we saw that the Chinese, and we were all in the middle of COVID at that time, if you remember, moved large number of forces in violation of these agreements to the line of actual control. And we responded in kind. And once troops were deployed very close up, which is very dangerous, it was likely a mishap would happen, and it did happen.
So, there was a clash, and a number of troops died on either side, and that has since, in a sense, overshadowed the relationship. So, until we are able to restore peace and tranquility on the border, and ensure that the agreements which we have signed up to are adhered, it's obviously difficult to carry on with the rest of the relationship.
So, what has been the focus for the last four years is to, in the first instance, at least disengage the troops, which means that they go back to the military bases from which they traditionally operate, because right now both sides have troops who are deployed forward, and when I said 75% of it has been sorted out, I was asked in a way to quantify, to give a sense. It's only of the disengagement.
So, that's one part of the problem, and the main issue right now is the patrolling, you know, how do we, both of us, I would say, patrol up to the line of actual control, and right now the patrolling arrangements after 2020 have been disturbed. So, we've been able to sort out much of the disengagement, the friction points, but some of the patrolling issues need to be resolved, but once we deal with the disengagement, there is the larger issue, which both of us have brought very large number of troops up to the border.
So, there is what we call the de-escalation issue, and then there is the larger, the next step is really how do you deal with the rest of the relationship, because right now the relationship is very significantly disturbed. That said, there are, there are other issues that we need to look at. I mean, you have two countries who are neighbors, who are unique in the sense that they are the only two countries with over a billion people, and who are both rising in the global order, and who often have overlapping peripheries as well, other than the fact that they have a common border. So, it's really a very complicated issue.
If you look today in global politics, the parallel rises of India and China, I would say, present a very, very unique problem.
Daniel Russel: Well, it's a formidable problem. So, my timer went off reminding me that it's important to give the audience a chance, a crack at you. We started a little bit late. You're gracious in letting us run a few minutes over. I do want to ask one more question before we invite the audience in. You've established beyond question that India is more than capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, and doing a lot more besides that. We talked about the China-India relationship. I think something that's very much on the minds of America is India's relationship with Russia. Now, we're all, I think, familiar with history, the legacy, the background to the bilateral relationship, the long-standing strong ties. You yourself described a tremendous growth and flourishing in India's relationship, partnership with the United States, as well as with others in the West, and there's just no question that there are tensions between those two trends. So, can you give us just a sense of how India squares that circle, reconciles those pressures?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: I would make four or five points about Russia so that people understand, why, what is the importance of that relationship. First of all, if you look at the map of Eurasia, there's a very simple obvious strategic proposition there, which is you have, if you look at the big countries of that, of the Eurasian landmass, it makes sense for those countries who don't have direct borders with each other to develop strategic relationships, which is how they serve each other's interests. And for us, our own history after independence, we've never really had anything other than a positive experience with the Soviet Union and then with Russia.
Secondly, during the period of the Cold War, when the US and Western countries generally tended to prefer, at least in our region, dictatorships like Pakistan, we actually had a 40-year period where the West was primarily arming Pakistan, and we turned to the Soviet Union as a military partner. So we have a long defense and security relationship other than the strategic and the geopolitical equations of which I spoke about.
The third point I would say is economic. Today, if you look at India, the nature of the Indian economy, we are large natural resources consumers, and for us, the natural resource exporters of the world hold a very special significance and so it could be a Russia, it could be an Australia, it could be an Indonesia, it could be the countries of the Gulf for energy requirements. And as Russia today turns more towards Asia because of its current tension with the West; for us, there are certain economic complementarities here which come before.
So there is today, I would say, a kind of a geopolitical case for the relationship, a military security case, economic one as well. Now, how do you reconcile this with a growing relationship with the US? I would even say growing relationship with Europe, that relationship has also grown. As I said, look, it's a multipolar world, different poles deal with each other, none. You know, we're no longer in a world where the relationships are exclusive. Every country wants to get the best out of the international order in the most effective way it can. So it requires, you know, a certain amount of care and I would say perhaps dexterity to manage it. But it has to be done because it's not feasible to expect that big countries constrain their options and don't deal with other countries, not because of their interests, but because somebody else has a problem with those countries.
Daniel Russel: All right, that's a very provocative answer. So on this note, our auditorium is strategically designed to make it impossible for the moderator to see the audience. But we will open the floor to some questions. We have microphones on either side. I see Ambassador Juster in the front row and I'd love to begin with him, please.
Ambassador Juster: Thank you very much and thank you, Minister Jaishankar, for those terrific comments. And it was very gratifying to see the output of the meetings that Prime Minister Modi and President Biden had and also of the Quad Summit and how much has been accomplished and how transformative the relationships have become over the last 25 years. And we continue to deepen the relationship and you spoke about, especially in the area of critical and emerging technologies, among other things. One area that, as you know, I still feel is underdeveloped but is increasingly controversial domestically is trade. And neither India nor the United States are part of the regional architecture in the Indo-Pacific. And yet, we do increase the volumes of trade and I think we have complementarities. And with the US elections coming up, and it's anybody's guess as to who would win, but I think at least one of the candidates is still open to a potential trade deal with India and I hope the other one would be as well. Is this something that India could see doing in maybe sectoral areas such as critical minerals or services or green energy? Or is it just such a tough area that we'll have to do it without an agreement? And is the Quad also a potential area where every country has an agreement with the other except the United States and India where, again, we could, from the ground up, build a bigger and better trade relationship?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: You know, the truth is trade, free trade agreements are not the most popular things to do in the world today. This is not American observation or even an Indian one. Across the world today, there is a sensitivity, there's a social, political sensitivity on free trade, which probably there wasn't 10, 20 years ago. That said, obviously, we have an interest and we believe the US too has an interest in finding ways by which trade volumes grow and the quality of trade grows, the ability of each country to collaborate in different fields increase.
Now, some of the challenges are structural. I mean, India is still an economy with a per capita income of below $3,000 where in many sectors you have really not just small producers, you have micro-producers. If you look, for example, at agriculture or you look at dairy, when you have very small farmers or people who have a handful of cattle, they will obviously find it very difficult to compete with industry size enterprises on the other end. So I think there would be certainly natural sensitivities to some of these sectors. But to my mind, there are, as Indian industry grows, it becomes more capable, more confident, and more competitive.
There will be areas where it has that ability to deal with the rest of the world. So I think that trade agreements have to be done with a high degree of deliberation and judiciousness. Governments have to take that call, which sectors you feel more comfortable putting on the table and which one less so. But I would also make the point that there are today, there's a whole new world out there where if you look today at semiconductors, you look at electric mobility, you look at a lot of the digital-related economic activities, there, many of these constraints do not apply.
So I would say today when one looks at the future of India-U.S. economic partnerships, I see them increasingly kind of technology-based, very much more digital, very much more new economy kind of centred collaborations. And quite honestly, even with the current administration, we came to the understanding that, look, something like the Indo-Pacific, the IPEF, was a good way of working, because it doesn't have the kind of binding commitments which probably any administration in this country would find it hard to get through the Congress. And it similarly relieves us of some of those burdens in India as well.
Daniel Russel: So digital trade would be an area to concentrate?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: You know, I would say critical emerging technologies, because again, look, I mentioned that across the world today, countries, especially bigger countries, have to view their economic transactions through also a political and a security filter. That many businesses you would like to do with countries and companies and partners with whom you have a certain basic convergence. So, it could be telecom, it could be semiconductors. I think the whole digital domain, in a way, today, it's not just pure business. I think there's something more to it than that.
Daniel Russel: I certainly agree with you. All right, we have time for one or two more questions. I see, is it all right to take two questions at once? I see two gentlemen in those two rows. And a question, you know, is a sentence with a question mark.
Speaker 1: So Dr. Jaishankar used a very interesting phrase, non-reciprocal aid in his initial remarks. And that's something India has given lots of unconditional aid to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in particular, which seems to have not brought benefit. There have been government changes there which seem to be potentially adverse for India. So I'm curious how Dr. Jaishankar thinks about that. And in particular with Bangladesh, there's been lots of very concerning news about the religious minorities, Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh. I'm curious how India thinks about its role in protecting those minorities there.
Daniel Russel: Thank you. One other question.
Speaker 2: You made the case for maintaining a strong economic relationship with Russia and because of historical roots. As India emerges as a global economic and political power, with that will come also increased responsibilities on the global stage, obviously. So my question to you is what is India going to do to help us solve the problem in Russia and Ukraine?
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: The first question, look, we stepped forward in respect of Sri Lanka when it was facing a very deep economic crisis and very frankly when nobody else came forward. And I'm very glad we did it. We did it in a timely manner. We did it on scale. We put out four and a half billion dollars effectively. And what it did was it stabilized the Sri Lankan economy and the rest of it was up to them.
Now, at the time we did it, it was not that we had a political conditionality which accompanied that. I mean, we were doing it as a good neighbor who did not want to see that kind of economic meltdown at our doorstep. So I think what happens politically in Sri Lanka, that's for their politics to work out. I mean, at the end of the day, each one of our neighbors would have their own particular dynamics. It's not our intention to suggest that their dynamics must necessarily adhere to what we might consider as being better for us. I think this is a real world. I mean, everybody makes their choices and then countries adjust to each other and find ways of working it out.
In the case of Bangladesh, I would say it's a little bit different. What we have done over the last, particularly over the last decade is to do projects of various kinds which have been good for both of us. That economic activity overall has picked up, the logistics of that region has improved, and I think both countries have gained a lot out of that. So I would urge you not to be deterministic about it. It's not as though India is seeking to control every political move of every neighbor. That's not how it works. It doesn't work not just for us. It doesn't work for anybody else.
I mean, every country will have its own dynamics and in foreign policy, you try to read it, you try to anticipate it, you also respond to it. And I'm very confident that at the end of it all in our neighborhood, the realities of interdependence or mutual benefit of the fact that our ability to get along will serve both our interests, those realities will assert themselves. That's been the history. Look over the last few years. Every few years, something happens in our region and people suggest that there is some kind of irretrievable situation out there. You then see the collectives beginning to manifest themselves. So I would take it in that spirit, and I'm quite confident that in both these cases, I would expect that our relationship would continue to be positive and constructive.
On the Russia-Ukraine question, I'm suggesting that we had traditionally a strong relationship, and the future of the relationship also, there are benefits for us, so it's not just a look back, it's also a look ahead. But on the war that's going on, we, one, believe that wars are not the way of settling disputes. Two, we don't believe that a solution is going to come from the battlefield.
Three, that we think at some point, there will be a negotiation, and such a negotiation has to obviously include the parties. It cannot be a one-sided negotiation. And from those assessments, we have been engaging both the Russian government and the Ukrainian government, in Moscow and in Kiev and in other places to see whether there is something we can do which would hasten the end of the conflict and initiate some kind of serious negotiation between that.
This is a kind of exploration that we have been doing. I mean, it's not that we have a peace plan. We are not suggesting anything. We are having these conversations and sharing these conversations with the other side. My sense is both sides appreciate it. So if we look at the last few months, Prime Minister Modi met President Zelenskyy in June. He met President Putin in July. He met President Zelenskyy again in August. This month, we've had contacts. Our NSA had met President Putin. And yesterday, Prime Minister Modi met Zelenskyy again.
So we think if these conversations are helpful and there's something we can do, and there are not that many countries and that many leaders today who have the ability or the willingness to engage both Moscow and Kiev at the same time, I think we could make a contribution and certainly I think there is a widespread feeling in many parts of the world that the sooner the conflict ends, the better it is for the global economy and society.
Daniel Russel: Minister, obviously there's no dispute at all on your three points and your hope for a resolution, satisfactory and peaceful resolution soon. And I know that President Biden appreciates and values the meeting your Prime Minister just had with President Zelenskyy and you've talked about the strong relationship between Delhi and Moscow and we're all very hopeful that that kind of leverage can be applied and that India will be able to move President Putin in the direction of an acceptable settlement consistent with international law and sovereignty, something you've repeatedly endorsed.
I owe an apology both to the audience and probably to your dinner host for making you late. We've simply run out of time for questions. This has been a fascinating conversation for all of us. This program was streamed online. It's available on YouTube, on Asia Society's online platforms. I hope that everybody who's watching online will become members of the Asia Society and certainly see the lineup of the fantastic programs that we have in the coming days and weeks. Nothing to compare, of course, with you, Minister. Honestly, you've been terrific. Thank you.