Smita Sharma
Ahead of the disengagement between Indian and Chinese troops at Doklam on August 28, 2017, Prime Minister Modi’s close strategic minds were spending a sleepless night. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, NSA Ajit Doval, Army Chief B. S Rawat, Foreign Secretary (FS) Jaishankar and senior MEA officials were engaged in a close conversation with Beijing. India’s interlocutor was its Ambassador Vijay Keshav Gokhale who did the talking late into the night with a senior Chinese representative. Finally, as the ‘mutual disengagement’ was agreed upon there, was a sigh of relief and New Delhi called it a result of its ‘matured diplomacy’. With Vijay Gokhale now appointed as the new Foreign Secretary and China more assertive than ever before in India’s neighbourhood and in the Indo-Pacific, will his knowledge of China and his recent experience of its diplomatic hard bat become the key to some innovative diplomatic initiatives?
New Delhi’s pundits are excited. Vijay Chauthaiwale, Foreign Policy Cell in charge of the BJP, says, “Vijay Gokhale thinks and acts very fast and is exceptionally talented. The way he handled the Doklam crisis shows he has the necessary skills to deal with such situations.”
The outgoing FS
A 1981 batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer, Gokhale replaces Dr S Jaishankar on January 28 with an appointment term of two years and will have big shoes to fill. Considered one of India’s brightest strategic minds, Jaishankar was credited for the highly successful first official visit of Prime Minister Modi to the United States that saw him being embraced by the West after years of being treated as a pariah. Jaishankar himself had a broad-based experience, having served in DC, Moscow and Beijing before donning the Foreign Secretary’s hat that had eluded him during the UPA regime. He replaced Sujatha Singh under controversial circumstances in January 2015 and received a further extension in 2017, thus superseding senior diplomats. But With Navtej Sarna, a batch senior and currently Ambassador to US retiring on December 31 and re-employed for a year, Gokhale’s appointment as the seniormost diplomat meant no superseding. Gokhale has not served in the immediate neighbourhood or the US and Russia, but has handled all postings crucial to the ‘One China Policy’, including Taiwan and Vietnam and is an astute South-East Asia observer. He served in Malaysia for four years before heading to Germany and also handled Japan bilaterally. He has had bilateral and multilateral exposure of finance portfolios and troubled spots in Africa and the Middle East in his current role as Secretary Economic Relations. He is now a well-rounded diplomat.
With India upping its ASEAN Policy and facing the neighbourhood embrace of the dragon, and with the China-Pak axis becoming a growing concern, Gokhale will have his task cut out. Additionally with Rohingya, Iranian, Palestinian and Korean crises and the possibilities of limited conflicts impacting large Indian diaspora, the MEA under Gokhale in the days ahead will need to synchronise better with the Defence Ministry.
No dramatic change expected
Speculations are on though if Jaishankar will be accommodated in the Prime Minister’s Office in some advisory capacity in the months ahead, especially given the turnaround in India-US relations and the bonhomie with the Trump administration, of which he has been a key architect – and if that might squeeze Gokhale’s work space and authority. “When Shiv Shankar Menon was the NSA, he literally controlled the MEA internally too despite Ranjan Mathai as FS. But during Jaishankar’s term, all ambassadorial postings had his clear stamp and he was the man in control of MEA internally,” says a senior diplomat.
But most do not expect is a dramatic change in the NSA-FS equation once Gokhale takes over.
While on China, Pakistan and the immediate neighbourhood, Doval has been a driving force, there was a clear understanding between him and Jaishankar on security and strategy policies. Diplomatic sources suggest that Gokhale will adhere to the perceived lines and barring a hierarchical change between him and Doval, a working chemistry between the two should emerge naturally.
Gokhale’s colleagues describe him as ‘a pragmatic intellectual with clarity of thoughts’. He is known to speak his mind but stays away from media glare. A 1979 IFS and retired Ambassador, Anil Wadhwa, who knows Gokhale from their days of language training in Hong Kong, says: “He is a solid officer with a rounded background and enough of experience to handle issues at hand. I am certain that he will be excellent in this job.”