Three ‘smart’ remarks by EAM S Jaishankar at the Munich Security Conference

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar retorts to questions on Indian policy in matters, including the import of Russian oil, hogged limelight at the interactive session as part of the security conference in Munich.

The EAM was in the presence of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

1) ‘Non-alignment to all alignment’: In the moderator’s question about India’s foreign policy priorities in the backdrop of observations that it is traversing from ‘non-alignment to all alignment’, particularly on India’s continuing procurement of crude oil from Russia, Jaishankar said: “Why should it be a problem? I am smart enough to have multiple options. You should be admiring and not criticising. Is it a problem for others? I do not think so,” he said.

“I do not want you, even inadvertently, to give the impression that we are purely and unsentimentally transactional. We are not. We get along with people, we believe in things, we share things, …but there are times when you are located in different places, different levels of development, different experiences, all of that gets into it,” he explained.

“So Life is complicated, life is differentiated,” he said. “Good partners provide choices, smart partners take some of those choices,” Jaishankar said.