More of the same? India’s Strategic Balance

Nicole Rivas and Alexis Holewinski: So I want to begin the conversation with a broad view of India’s relevance in foreign policy discussions. So, what makes India a geopolitically important country today? Or why should we pay attention to India and what India is doing?

Constantino Xavier: I think there are two or three factors. Maybe the main reason is one that was in the news recently, which is India now is the most populous country in the world. So just by demography, this country weighs more than any other. It is a country that is growing in so many, different ways. It is a country where people want to have a greater say in world politics. It is a country that is increasingly entangled with regional and global affairs whether it’s on technology, health, migration and the huge Indian diaspora of around 20 million people around the world.

[Second] India’s location in Asia, which is now the world’s geoeconomic hub. The global economic focus is clearly shifting eastwards. If you look at the gravitational pull forces of the economy worldwide, this is where economies are growing, including new consumer markets, where countries are going through multiple [economic] revolutions. In India, that is still, in some ways, the manufacturing and industrial revolution. It’s also one in technology with India’s advanced digital payment services which, in many cases, are far more advanced than what consumers have in Europe or the United States.

[So] if you consider demography, the economy, and geography, you have three factors that explain why every decision-maker around the world, why every researcher around the world, but also why every citizen around the world should be looking more at India and realizing that its rise is irreversible. Whatever happens in this country will lead India to increasingly matter more in global affairs.

Whatever happens in this country will lead India to increasingly matter more in global affairs.

NR: We were also hoping to take a brief step back and understand how India got to this position that you’ve described. Soon after its independence in the late 1940s, India’s foreign policy became associated with the so-called non alignment movement. So could you explain what that history means for their foreign policy today, as well as what some of the guiding principles of India’s foreign policy are currently?

CX: Glad you asked that question because I think it is impossible to understand India’s possible future trajectories without understanding its past experiences, its past location, geography and history. And non-alignment is a big word, generally one of the first concepts that pop up when we think about Indian foreign policy. But let me unpack that a little bit.

I think factor number one is that India was colonized for over 400 years, from 1498, when the Portuguese showed up on India’s western shores, up to 1947, when Britain left back a variety of different polities in this region, including the Indian republic. So I think that is a factor that is structural, because that’s something that still weighs on the mindset of several policymakers, on the mindset of most Indian citizens, that this is a country that somehow used to be one of the central economies, one of the places for scientific and technological innovation, that attracted empires from around the worlds. And that was lost during the colonial period. And if you look at the percentage of GDP that was generated here in India between the 15th century and today, it’s a story of a declining trajectory, of [loss of] economic centrality that is being slowly restored.

So that explains why many Indians will tell you that they suffered under that period that was actually particularly beneficial towards the empires in Europe. And a narrative that now somehow the time for India has come as part of a larger time for Asia. That leads sometimes to a positive story of ‘we want to be independent.’ It also leads sometimes to negative stories of not wanting to be dependent on, or aligned with the West and, instead that ‘this is a time for payback.’ Or narratives such as ‘why are you telling us that we need to make decisions with the developed industrialized West on climate transition, after hundreds of years of unequal burden?’.

Non-alignment remains a conceptual code, a symbol for India to avoid alliances, strict treaties and relations where it has to somehow pre-determine and condition its future behavior.

But non-alignment remains a conceptual code, a symbol for India to avoid alliances, strict treaties and relations where it has to somehow pre-determine and condition its future behavior. India wants flexibility, India wants autonomy. Strategic autonomy is sometimes used to explain Indian non-alignment. But if you look at countries like Japan, Australia, who have formally allied with the US during the Cold War, if you look at other countries in the socialist camp that formally allied to the Soviet Union, India  doesn’t look at the world in that way. It wants to have maximum flexibility. It wants to be indispensable. It wants to be useful to all countries.

So the key is really how to achieve that balance, and that is not easy – when you are friend with everybody sometimes when you really need support there is no single, real and reliable friend. But that’s a different story, widely debated in India. But non-alignment means, in many ways, also multiple alignments. It’s today an India that is comfortable working with Russia. It’s an India that is also comfortable in deepening its convergence on technology, security, intelligence sharing, trade and other economic issues with the United States and the European Union at the same time. So rather than non-alignment, one might prefer the concept of multiple alignments, flexible alignments that India has pursued consistently since the 1950s through diversifying its partnerships. It’s an India that is comfortable with Australia as much as it is with Russia. And there are not too many other major powers in the world that can do this or are comfortable with this balance between opposing poles.

NR: I wanted to turn our conversation to India’s relationship with Russia. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, what had been the state of Russia-India relations and why has Russia been so important to Indian foreign policy?

India is keen to have a more multipolar world, one where there are different centers of economic and military power, one where there’s a distribution of capabilities, one that is not solely dependent on the United States

CX: Yes, the question about Russia is a tough one. Because it’s really not understood by many people, especially in the West, why Russia, as you rightly pointed out, remains so important for India. And I think the best way to explain it is maybe a combination of two or three factors. One is a very large geostrategic factor, which is, again, related to that issue of balance I mentioned before. India is keen to have a more multipolar world, one where there are different centers of economic and military power, one where there’s a distribution of capabilities, one that is not solely dependent on the United States, for example, as during much of the 1990s and 2000s, where we had the US as a sole superpower.

It’s also an India that is not comfortable with a bipolar structure with the US and China. India has a very difficult relationship with China. It’s the number one strategic concern based on a territorial dispute between both militaries that flared up again recently in 2020, with several casualties on both sides. So there is an active competition with almost strategic rivalry elements between China and India. So India has an interest in diversifying away from both a US-centric system and the US-China bipolar system.

And that’s where Russia matters, as a third or fourth pole. That’s also, by the way, why Europe and the European Union or France, Germany or the UK matter so much for India these days. That’s why India has also deepened its relations with Japan. That has flourished over the last 10 years. India and Japan today have formidably deep and expensive relations cooperating on infrastructure or technology, on hydrogen, on maritime security.

That’s also an India that is interested in the relationship with Australia. Some 10-15 years ago, India and Australia had a relatively decent but, frankly, not very positive and sometimes even hostile relationship. Today, they are working together in the Quad together with Japan and the US, as four democracies that have a certain like-mindedness on several issues, whether it’s multilateralism, the rule of law, sovereignty, and sea lines of communication. So, you see an India that looks at Russia from this wider angle of structural distribution and diversity of power.

A second and less abstract factor is, of course, India’s military dependence on Russia. India has a long history with Russia that dates back to the 1971 treaty with the Soviet Union. Much of India’s military hardware and software since the 1970s depended on Soviet Union, and then until today on Russian technology and supplies and maintenance. So you have that military angle that weighs strong from a security perspective for the Indian armed forces. The share of Russian supplies and equipment in the Indian Armed Forces has come down over the last 10 to 20 years, it used to be at something like 70%, but that has decreased significantly, especially in several critical areas. So there’s again, an example of Indian strategic diversification, in this case away from Russia.

There is a sense that there are core Indian national interests where Russia is still able to support India or, maybe more importantly, act as a spoiler that could complicate India’s foreign, economic and security policies.

And the last factor is, I would call it a strategic nostalgia for Russia that conditions future assessments, as a country that supported India in the past and at several crucial moments delivered where the US failed to, especially during the Cold War but also in the 2000s. The Soviet Union used its veto at some points to protect India from sanctions and condemnation at the United Nations Security Council. So that sort of focus and path dependence on Russia is still there and still matters, continues to weigh on the Indian strategic mindset. It is not just wishful thinking: there is a sense that there are core Indian national interests where Russia is still able to support India or, maybe more importantly, act as a spoiler that could complicate India’s foreign, economic and security policies. Especially a growing rapprochement with China.

NR: Right, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in February of last year, and I’m wondering, how did India respond immediately after, especially because it relies on its military? It depends on it militarily?

CX: So I think the immediate reaction shocked many people in Europe and in the West, also Japan, Australia, because it was a reaction that was very neutral, very cautious, including an anodyne appeal to peace. There was no real condemnation of Russia. In fact, the word invasion or aggression is hardly used here in India and certainly not in official statements. So that was the main reaction, the immediate response, which has however shifted gradually over the last year. I think India has become more and more impatient with Russia’s behavior. It has become more and more understanding also of European concerns.

There are other risk situations in India’s neighbourhood that are facing the brunt of the geoeconomic churn and ripple effects of the war in Europe.

But the largest concern is really: what is the effect of this war on the global economy? That is front and center: how many people will be affected by rising energy prices, by inflationary pressures? And how many people in India and in the developing Global South and Africa, Latin America and Asia will be sliding back into poverty because of this war? How will this destabilize countries politically, as we saw in Sri Lanka? There are other risk situations in India’s neighbourhood that are facing the brunt of the geoeconomic churn and ripple effects of the war in Europe.

NR: And, during the 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan, Indian Prime Minister Modi told President Putin that “today’s era is not the era of war.” So what does Modi’s comments suggest here?

CX: I can’t think of too many leaders that, except when they’ve been directly affected and have direct interests at stake, say that this is an era of war. I think that’s something leaders say when they want to go to war, when there’s really a national aggression happening, for example, the Ukraine, of course. But this coming from Prime Minister Modi, I’m not surprised because he’s also coming from a very transactional approach that believes in cooperation based on economic interdependence. And I think the signal here is mainly towards Russia, following on the point I made earlier that if this war continues, we will all be worse off. President Putin may actually entrench himself, and Russia may survive and continue to thrive in some ways even, but the rest of the world is going to suffer.

But of course the Western camp interpreted this, obviously, as a strong message against President Putin. And vice-versa, President Putin and President Xi Jinping of China probably interpreted this more as an Indian signal that the West started this war. So I think that’s open to interpretation. And respective interpretations will tell you where people stand on this issue and why so many different parties often equally appreciate India’s position.

NR: Right, and even though we’re talking about Russia right now, kind of, as you mentioned, we can’t really talk about just one partner since India likes to have a diverse network of partners. So I want to bring China to this discussion. And China and India have long-standing territorial disputes. But India has concerns also about China’s aggressiveness in the Indo-Pacific. Given its frigid relationship with China, how has India responded to the growing Russia-China ties?

CX: China is now the predominant factor in India’s strategic thinking everywhere. That’s different from 10 years ago, as in the US, including under the late later stages of President Obama’s administration, when there was a larger consensus or at least still a predominant line of thinking that we need to work with in order to assimilate China into the international system. The thinking went that we need to be reasonable with China to engage in economic cooperation, we need to help China find a political place it’s comfortable with within the system. And most importantly, we also have a lot to gain from the rise of China. Let’s not forget that the American growth rates over the last few decades, even India’s growth rates, were heavily dependent on trading with China and the cheap manufacturing capacity of China since the 1990s. Now that thinking has changed. The system is coming apart.

And I think that has led to a fundamental shift in Indian strategic thinking, even if not as aggressively expressed as by the United States administrations, especially the Trump one. India has been a bit more cautious in terms of articulating it. But it’s equally, if not more, concerned about the way China has behaved. There will be still a few people who say that we somehow have failed at socializing China, and that we need to do more to bring them in.

India is trying to find out a way to change, not to isolate or undermine China, but by creating an environment that constrains China to be more responsive and constructive.

But the dominant line of thinking in New Delhi today, and I assume in Washington, too, is that China’s behavior has changed post 2012 on a variety of accounts. And therefore, we also have to adapt and respond accordingly to a new China, a different China in the way it operates abroad, a different China in the way it is structured internally. We saw the consolidation of power by President Xi Jinping, a very different Communist Party from 15 years ago, when there were certain experiments with liberalization. So China has changed. And therefore also India is trying to find out a way to change, not to isolate or undermine China, but by creating an environment that constrains China to be more responsive and constructive.

India certainly is concerned, to your question about drawing proximity between China and Russia. Because that limits India’s options. It forces India to side more with the US and Europe, and the US-led camp. So India would prefer a Russia that is a bit more autonomous, not dependent on support from China. My sense is that over the last few months, we see a growing convergence between Moscow and Beijing. And therefore India is also getting more worried about this diversification strategy and Russia’s role in it.

NR: Thus far, of course, we’ve talked pretty extensively about Russia, and how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected India-Russia relations. But I also wanted to bring the United States into our discussion a bit more fully. So how has India’s relationship with the US evolved since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

CX: I think there’s a clear, irreversible convergence between India and the United States today. This is, again, a relationship that isn’t that old in terms of its newest form of partnership since the 2000s. It warms up after 1999, still under President Bill Clinton, accelerates under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in India and President Bush in the 2000s. Especially a landmark agreement, in the mid-2000s, on civil nuclear energy cooperation where the US worked very hard to open up an exceptional status for India, to access nuclear supplies and nuclear technology abroad. It worked India into various nuclear non-proliferation arrangements. When it tested its nuclear weapons in 1998, it was seen as a nuclear pariah, an alien to that system.

And in the 2000s, India and the US worked out a way in which India is sort of brought into a modified regime. That was a strategic tipping point because it created huge trust in India, paving the way for other, maybe far more important sectoral convergences. The US that 10, 20, 30 years ago before that, in the 70s and 80s, had been very close to Pakistan and China, started pivoting towards India and investing political capital to improve relations with India and gain its trust. And that has progressed systematically now over the last 20 years or so.

I think there are ups and downs like, for example, the Russia relationship, which is certainly a tension point today in India-US relations; the US has one view and India has a different view.

But despite these ups and downs, these occasional tensions, the larger structural trend is one of convergence. And you can see it in many areas, for example the range, amount and value of military equipment and technology that the US has transferred to India, you can see it in the agreements that the US has signed with India, where it is comfortable now in sharing advanced intelligence on a variety of issues and cooperate on military logistics.

Or you can see an economic relationship, with trade booming over the last 20 years. And now the US consistently being one of the top trade partners of India in the world. It is a relationship that you can also see working out at the civil society level. You see today India and United States crafting out a major technological partnership in upgrading their respective economies with new tools on data sharing on digital economies, on e-commerce, comfortable working on these issues to grow together at a civil society levels. Or you can see it if you ask today where Indian students are going to study. They’re going mostly to US universities.

China really brought the United States and India together and activated a lot of dormant areas that have huge potential for inter-democratic cooperation, which had been missed for decades.

And fundamentally, I’d say this boils down to a level of comfort, about similar models of political organization. Now, one could argue that the US and India were both democracies in the 1960s and 1980s and they still didn’t work with each other. That’s true. They were in different geostrategic camps, despite both being democracies. But once the structural convergence happened, mainly driven by the rise of China and a common concern about that, it has been facilitated by common values. So it’s almost as if China did India and the US a favor by rising. China really brought the United States and India together and activated a lot of dormant areas that have huge potential for inter-democratic cooperation, which had been missed for decades because of different security alignments and strategic interests.

NR: And you mentioned this immense progress that’s been made in US-India relations in the last 20 years. But earlier in the podcast, we also touched briefly, about progress that’s been made in India’s relationships with Australia and Japan. So today, India is part of the Strategic Security Dialogue alongside these three countries, that’s known as the Quad. And we were wondering how India’s role in the quad factors into its relationship with Russia?

CX: That’s a great question. If I recall correctly, when India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar went to Moscow a few years ago, at some point he said something like the Indo-Pacific also has a place for you Russia. And by saying that he was really telling Russia that, listen, you don’t need to depend too much on China. Listen, you don’t need to play games with Europe to get America’s attention and recover global leverage. There is a cooperative, constructive field out there for you to fill in Asia, in particular, in the Indo-Pacific, beyond just the continental territorial heartland of Russia and China, Central Asia, Eurasia.

I think that tells you about the versatility of the Indian strategic mindset. It tells you that while India is comfortable working with the Quad, with three other fellow democracies which have a web of security alliance treaties (Japan, Australia, and the United States) India is the odd woman out as a non-aligned state that has not had a security alliance with the US or any of the other two Quad members. Yet this India is comfortable cooperating with those three nations. But it’s also an India that is sometimes also comfortable working with Russia and China in what’s called the RIC-level of cooperation, the Russia, India, China axis. It’s an India that is also comfortable working in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, together with Russia, China, Pakistan, and Central Asian states.

It’s an India that is comfortable looking at different geographies and different sectors of interest and saying: on this issue in that region, today I am comfortable with x, y or z. And that may change the day after tomorrow.

So it’s an India that really is not feeling forced to choose sides. That may sometimes seem confusing to people that are traditionally used to alliances and the way the world operated for a long time. But did the world really always operate on firm alliances? I’m not sure if you look at the history, it’s full of partnerships that are polygamous, if you want, about relations that are open, inclusive and flexible and fluid, if you want to use some of the common popular terms applied to geopolitics. And that’s what India is doing. It’s an India that is comfortable looking at different geographies and different sectors of interest and saying: on this issue in that region, today I am comfortable with x, y or z. And that may change the day after tomorrow.

Sometimes India is comfortable working with Russia on certain issues, for example, Afghanistan. As the US pulled out dramatically from Kabul, and left the country in tatters after 20 years of a failed military intervention, India was deeply exposed to Afghanistan, where the Taliban rule—a radical Islamic movement with close ties to Pakistan. And there obviously, India had to look at Russia, which has important assets and presence in Afghanistan. In fact, unlike India, the US and many other countries, Russia did not close down its embassy in Kabul and remained operational in terms of its diplomatic and other ground presence. So again, that is I think the DNA of India’s strategic mindset. And that’s one that again, allows you to be very comfortable in the Quad despite China’s annoyance and concern.

China is constantly dismissing the Quad saying it doesn’t matter, it’s useless or it is a new Asian NATO alliance against China. Here again, I think India is confident enough to say, you know, you China are confident to work with Pakistan, you create platforms with Russia. We are comfortable to work with other countries on other issues. And not everything is and must be about China these days. In fact, one should ask oneself, why did India not have deeper relationships with Japan, Australia, and the US before, all countries that are democracies and have many shared values with India. Australia is almost a maritime neighbor of India, they share common interests in the eastern Indian Ocean region. Japan and India are two formidable economies with long civilizational ties, but never really tapped into that potential. So given this abnormal history, I think it’s quite natural to see India now finally exploring win-win cooperation with the United States and all these middle powers, not just only, but also because of China.

NR: As we, near the end of our discussion, I want to go back to something that you said earlier in our conversation, what you call the irreversible rise of India. And we’ve talked about how India seeks out partnerships that give it flexibility and strategic autonomy. And I kind of want to ask about the future of Indian foreign policy, especially as its set to host the G-20 summit that’s scheduled to be in September of this year. And for our listeners who may not know, the G-20 is a forum where heads of state from the world’s major economies meet annually to discuss global economic issues and facilitate international cooperation. So how does India’s role as the 20 23 G-20 President fit into this conversation? And does it lend Modi real opportunities for international leadership?

CX: Let me turn this around and rephrase this as, maybe, how does this lend Prime Minister Modi real opportunities for domestic leadership? And let me give you a very concrete example here in Delhi, where I live. This has been a deeply symbolic moment for India. You go to the streets you have posters everywhere, blasting that India is now the president of the G-20, almost as if presiding over of the world. Or that India is the mother of democracy leading and nurturing the world. You have events in all cities beyond Delhi, a variety of meetings on climate, on the development working group, on health, on the finance track. I think there’s around 300 or more events being held across this one-year presidency across the country.

So that’s the key message for the Indian electorate, for the Indian citizen, which is, in the end, what matters to any leader wishing to be reelected. And let’s not forget India will have elections national elections in 2024. And Prime Minister Modi and his party are seeking reelection for a third mandate. So in 2024, the Indian G-20 idea is to show case internally that India has attained reputation, has achieved status internationally, and sometimes we forget the importance of this domestic dimension of foreign policy. This is deeply relevant in a big country that is craving for recognition, craving for reparation, craving for historical correction, craving for international leadership opportunities, however symbolic, to show that it has achieved its rightful place.

Now coming to the international aspect, the most salient part of India’s G- 20 presidency. Its agenda has been deeply constrained and challenged by the Russia-Ukraine war. India could not ensure a joint declaration at the G-20 ministerial meeting that happened recently in Delhi because of the differences between the West and Russia and China. So it’s very difficult to be presiding over something that is fragmented as deeply as the world is today between these two camps in the G-20. But therefore, one niche that India has carved out for itself, is what India calls its capacity, its ambition to be a representative of the Global South, of the developing countries, of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

And this Global South is not only a territorial and geographic construct. India has stressed that the Global South also lives in the US, a Global South that is also present even in the most advanced economies of Europe, that still suffer from inequality, in fact, where inequality levels are rising again, and there’s poverty in several pockets. So the Indian idea of the Global South is one about how do we empower the most destitute populations, the ones that are suffering the brunt of the Ukraine-Russia war, but also suffering the brunt of different legislative actions taken in the US and European economies that are protectionist, that are inflationary, that are affecting the called Global South.

Besides the G-20, India also hosted a different summit in January, which is called the Global South Summit. This included over 120 developing countries that virtually joined Prime Minister Modi in discussing their diverging interests. And how India during the G20 presidency can push these interests internationally, particularly, for example, on a just climate transition. If we want to achieve an equitable climate transition in developing economies, these countries need financial instruments.

India will try to find a bridging role, a representative role, between what we generally call the Global North and the Global South, reflecting efforts towards a more balanced and also sustainable world order.

India has been able to follow up on its Paris commitments in terms of de-carbonization. But the West and particularly the advanced economies have not been able to fulfill their pledges towards financing and transferring technology, for example, towards the greening of the economies in the developing world.

So there you will see on climate, but also in other areas like health, and broader financial systems and digital inclusion systems for the new economy, a big niche for India to play. It has begun by playing that already in the last few months. And you’ll see much more of this towards the September summit here in New Delhi, where India will try to find a bridging role, a representative role, between what we generally call the Global North and the Global South, reflecting efforts towards a more balanced and also sustainable world order.

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The revised and edited transcript is prepared by Mahesh Kushwaha, Research Intern, CSEP.