Modi's G7 Invite Isn't An Olive Branch, It's The West's White Flag Of Necessity

News18

17-07-2025

To not have India at the G7 table would be pure diplomatic myopia.
Let's be brutally honest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's presence at the G7 summit in Canada is a sign of how India has become impossible to ignore. Beyond just being a sign of a diplomatic thaw, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's invitation to PM Modi symbolises the criticality of India to the Western world. After all, India is now the world's fourth largest-economy. Therefore, to not have India at the G7 table would be pure diplomatic myopia. Whether it's global supply chain resilience, climate finance, or counterbalancing China's influence, India's role is no longer peripheral. It is, in fact, pivotal. For Canada, despite months of frosty ties following the Nijjar controversy, the invitation is a pragmatic recalibration. For the rest of the G7, it is an acknowledgment that global governance without India is no longer viable. PM Modi's presence in Canada is less about optics and more about bare necessity.
So, how should one interpret PM Modi's participation at the G7 summit in Canada? Many would call it an olive branch from Canada, a nation that several months ago stood before the world and accused India of orchestrating a political assassination on its sovereign soil. But is that really the case?
Hardly. This was a white flag. Plain and simple.
That the Canadian government would agree to share a forum with a leader it has publicly implicated is the entire story. It is a stark and deeply revealing lesson in 21st-century realpolitik. It represents the West's reluctant but necessary capitulation to a new global hierarchy.
In a world ablaze—with a grinding war of attrition in Eastern Europe, an escalating inferno in West Asia, and the shadow of China's ambitions looming over the Indo-Pacific—the leaders of the G7 have been forced to confront an inconvenient truth: moral outrage is a luxury they can no longer afford. The principles they preach on sunlit stages have been quietly shelved in the cold, hard calculus of survival.
The unstated reality, the one whispered in the corridors of power from Washington to Brussels, is that India has become too big to fail, too powerful to ignore, and too strategically vital to alienate. It is the indispensable counterweight, the emerging economic engine, and the demographic behemoth whose trajectory will define this century. The West doesn't have to like it. They just have to accept it.
And Canada's acquiescence is the ultimate proof. Trudeau's government chose drama over realpolitik. There are early signs that his successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney is much more pragmatic. After all, the choice for him was simple: Modi's presence at the G7 summit could be the first step to normalising relations with the world's fourth-largest economy. Alternatively, not having him at the G7 summit would be an act of geopolitical self-immolation.
Canada chose survival. Strategic compulsion has officially trumped bilateral fury.
You do not have to read between the lines to understand the transactional nature of this decision. You just have to listen. Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre cut through the diplomatic fog with the clarity of a CEO discussing a balance sheet. 'India has been at the last six G7 conferences," he stated, matter-of-factly. 'It's one of the biggest and fastest-growing economies in the world. We need to sell our natural gas, our civilian nuclear power technology and other resource projects to India. And we need to work with India and other countries on trade and security."
There it is. Stripped bare of all pretense. No lofty rhetoric about shared values. No platitudes about the bonds of democracy. Just a raw, unvarnished calculation of need: gas, nuclear tech, resources, trade and security. Poilievre's statement was not a political gaffe; it was the accidental articulation of the West's private consensus. He simply said the quiet part out loud, revealing the uncomfortable truth that while principles are admirable, prosperity and national security are non-negotiable.
This is not merely a Canadian story of swallowing its pride. It is a collective Western pivot, orchestrated by the bloc's most powerful players. It is learnt that the G7's heavyweights impressed upon Ottawa the need to set aside its grievances for the sake of greater strategic good.
Why? Because in the grand chess match against an increasingly assertive China, India is no longer a pawn. It is the queen.
Every facet of the West's long-term strategy in Asia hinges on a cooperative, powerful, and economically integrated India. The entire concept of a 'Free and Open Indo-Pacific" is a hollow slogan without New Delhi's active participation. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad—a cornerstone of American, Japanese, and Australian strategy—is toothless without the Indian military's heft in the Indian Ocean.
More pressingly, the global push to 'de-risk" and diversify supply chains away from Chinese manufacturing dominance leads directly to India's doorstep. No other nation on earth possesses the demographic scale, the low-cost labour potential, and the burgeoning technological sector to serve as a credible, continent-sized alternative to China. To sideline India over a yet-to-be-proven accusation could cripple the West's most important economic and geopolitical project of the 21st century.
For Canada, the calculus is even more desperate. The simmering tensions with India are happening against the backdrop of a far greater existential threat: an increasingly unstable and unpredictable relationship with its southern neighbour. With Donald Trump in-charge of the White House, Canada is scrambling for new friends and alternative markets. The very real threat of American protectionism makes a burgeoning trade relationship with the world's fourth-largest and fastest-growing major economy not just an opportunity, but a strategic imperative. Ottawa cannot afford to be locked in a permanent standoff with India while its economic lifeline to the United States frays.
So, when Prime Minister Modi takes his seat at the G7 table in Canada, do not mistake the polite handshakes and forced smiles for friendship or forgiveness. See them for what they are: the grim acknowledgments of a new reality. The West is not embracing Modi's government; it is clinging to the strategic necessity of India.
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This is the world we live in now. A world where strategic imperatives silence moral condemnation, and where economic survival forces erstwhile antagonists into the same room. The old order, where the G7 could comfortably sit atop the global hierarchy and dictate terms, is fading. In its place is a multipolar world, messier and more transactional, where influence must be courted, not commanded. Welcome to the new global order, where power, not principle, gets you a seat at the table.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
About the Author
Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra
Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra is a producer and video journalist at Network18. He is enthusiastic about and writes on both national affairs as well as geopolitics.
tags :
g7 summit pm narendra modi
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
June 17, 2025, 12:53 IST
News opinion Straight Talk | Modi's G7 Invite Isn't An Olive Branch, It's The West's White Flag Of Necessity
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