Maldives refreshes China ties but that’s not all why India must tread carefully
As the world devolves from the unipolar world led by the US in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War to an international order more in flux–not yet multipolar and not quite bipolar either–small states are gaining outsize ability to shape their own destinies. Long used to being ignored, many small countries are increasingly capable of playing rival states against each other and expanding their diplomatic space. Maldives is a classic case in point.
With newly elected Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu being seen as pro-China, the India-Maldives-China triangle appears simply to be continuing a cyclical phenomenon of successive presidents in recent years alternating between being pro-India or pro-China. Muizzu’s predecessor, Ibrahim Solih, was seen as pro-India. Solih’s predecessor, Abdulla Yameen, was viewed as anti-India and pro-China, and his predecessor, Mohamed Nasheed, as leaning towards India.
These characterisations of the leaders of a sovereign nation might be useful shorthand for those engaged in high geopolitics but they are also both crude and unsophisticated descriptors and inadequate to describe changing tides in global politics. Muizzu did not make his first official foreign visit to New Delhi as tradition demanded, but despite his pro-China tag, Beijing was not his first destination either. Instead, Muizzu went in a different direction altogether, travelling to Türkiye followed by a visit to the United Arab Emirates and only then to China.
Read more on livemint.com
