Deepak Dwivedi
PRIME Minister Narendra Modi’s foray into a war zone in the heart of Europe was a bold diplomatic mission. The visit represented a new posture in Indian diplomacy, not just because it marked the first in 45 years by an Indian Prime Minister to Poland and the first ever to independent Ukraine. PM Modi’s predecessors encountered a different Poland: Soviet satellite that was drawing sustenance from a command economy known for potatoes and coal. The Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991 extinguished the Warsaw Pact and the Comecon. Poland rapidly turned to capitalism and democracy, as it signed up for ‘shock therapy’ reforms, executing a successful privatisation programme.
Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004, emerging as a beacon of New Europe and a major EU fund beneficiary, picking up close to 250 billion euros of support in the last two decades. While refusing to adopt euro as its currency, it made good use of the EU largesse to upgrade its infrastructure, morphing into a developed economy with per capita income at 80 pc of the EU average, a role model for neighbouring Ukraine. Today, Poland is a vocal critic of Putin’s Russia, and a key player in the European Union. India has much to discuss with Viksit Poland. Mutual investments in food processing, defence, energy and IT figured in PM Modi’s conversation with Donald Tusk, head of Poland’s liberal coalition Government, and former president of the European Council.
Poland is more than just the face of New Europe; it is NATO’s eastern frontline, a crucial supply link in Ukraine’s war effort.
Hosting over 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees and batting for Ukraine, Poland served as PM Modi’s springboard to land in Kyiv to meet President Zelenskyy. This meeting was not Modi’s first experience with wartime diplomacy – his visit last month to Moscow occurred amid active conflict. But this time around, India’s PM stepped into a conflict zone where the ongoing war has dangerously escalated, with Ukraine having launched a ‘surprise invasion’ of Russia’s Kursk region and the Russians doubling down in Ukraine’s Donetsk. Both sides seem to be creating territorial buffers to strengthen their negotiating positions in any future peace talks.
PM Modi’s visit was more than just a geopolitical balancing act to appease Western partners following an engagement with Russia. Both belligerents are willing to discuss the conflict with him at a time few other global leaders may enjoy similar trust and the UN stands aloof. Fresh from hosting a global summit in Delhi, PM Modi is being seen as a credible ‘voice of the Global South,’ emphasising the deleterious impacts of this conflict on global food, energy and health security. His proposed ‘global development compact’ in the South could be supplemented by a ‘peace compact’: strong advocacy against wars that rich nations fight, and poor ones suffer.
For India, this proactive peace posture is not just soppy moralpolitik but serves realpolitik objectives: creating diplomatic space for India’s multi-sector global engagement, bolstering its reputation as a responsible global power, mitigating risks to its own economic trajectory, and strengthening its leadership of the Global South. It is important for Indian diplomacy not to remain boxed in by the multiple woes of South Asia, but to have a global vision.
