India’s diplomatic manoeuvres have touched all the right chords in the last few years. This is particularly true of the post-Ukraine times where horrors of conventional armed conflict have stumped the aspirations of the globalised world. Dense and AI-powered militarisation of state and non-state actors has rendered the world deeply insecure. ‘Slowbalisation’ has made the global economic outlook look its bleakest in decades. And there’s more.
The world is sailing in choppy waters of intensifying great power rivalry between the US and China with a geopolitical bifurcation underway. The premonition of yet another war in the straits and its cataclysmic impact has gripped our universe. From Ukraine and Gaza to the Indo-Pacific, semiconductors and outer space—geopolitics is throbbing anxiously.
Under deft leadership, India has managed to shine in dire times – unleashing a truly intersectional global moment that has ensured steady economic growth, expanded diplomatic heft and footprint and wondrous respect for commitment to the “global south”.
At the heart of this success, as many would argue, lies India’s commitment to multi-alignment. It is imperative that an assessment ensues on what really substantiates this foreign policy tool. Fundamental here should be a re-iteration that ultimately it is a means to an end, not the end itself. Effective multi-alignment and relevant multipolarity should be moored in their utility with clearly defined national interests.
The India Way
When modern India revels, and rightly so, in transitioning from the romanticism of the Nehruvian epoch to the realism of the Modi era—the unmissable subtext here is about the optimal utilisation of India’s civilisational strength and its elegant multi-aligned posture in the politics among nations. The aspiration is to ultimately make India a “vishwaguru”, a world leader, a power centre. Long story short, it means an unwavering focus on amassing India’s comprehensive national strength, namely hard power, economic power and techno-polar traction.
That is the quintessence of the India Way, a phrase made famous by external affairs minister S Jaishankar. The commentariat, however, often entangles itself in glorifying the means and losing sight of the end. That’s where it defeats the purpose.
Nowhere was the disjunct most unobscure than in the recent visit by Jaishankar to Moscow. It appeared as if this one visit in two years alone has championed India’s multi-alignment pathway. The only physical meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi had with President Vladimir Putin after the Russia-Ukraine war was on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan in 2022. The year 2023, however, neither saw a bilateral summit nor a physical meeting. By contrast, one cannot even count the number of high-profile bilateral leaders’ meetings India has had with leaders of the US, EU, France, Germany etc despite disagreements.
In two years alone, defence and economic cooperation, critical and emerging tech and joint military exercises have all seen unparalleled growth because New Delhi understands where and how global security and economic and digital orders cross-cut. And I am not even starting with the G 20 ‘mahakumbh’ that India pulled off with elan, defeating opposite apprehensions.
Jaishankar’s five-day visit to Russia was necessary but gravely delayed. The visit had raised expectations about substantive outcomes with futuristic overtones. The outcome statement talked of myriad plans, and therein lies the challenge. The real issues in the Russia-India relationship are too technical and complicated to be solved with conducive bilateral goodwill alone.
There are at least two major roadblocks to substantiating India-Russia ties in a fast-changing world.
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Economic and geopolitical hurdles
Economic first – India’s purchase of Russian oil was done because, as emphasised repeatedly by the government, it was beneficial to India’s economic interests and not to defy Western sanctions. However, unresolved payment issues, ballooning trade deficit and Russia’s repeated production cuts have dented the discounted oil ecosystem.
These problems do not stem from the state of bilateral ties, but purely technical issues that point to an unsustainable ecosystem. It gets aggravated by Russia’s discomfort at investing nearly a trillion rupees lying in its recently opened Vostro accounts back into India.
As pressure mounts on Moscow to increase defence spending back home, the priority is not to tackle trade deficits with New Delhi.
It has become evident over the last two years that mini investments, such as an order of 24 cargo ships for Russia, likley import of Indian eggs or Russia’s modest investment in Indian government securities, are but a tiny step in tackling the underlying problem.
Regardless of the debate on the efficacy of Western sanctions, the ecosystem in which India and Russia find their trade operating is fragile and susceptible to economic realities that go far beyond the matrix of historic friendship and generic goodwill. It must also be remembered that references to historic friendship are made in the context of the 1971 treaty with the USSR, before which a non-aligned India with excellent relations with the Soviet Union was left alone to face and manage its defeat in the 1962 war with China.
In 1971, however, since Pakistan (supported by the US) was India’s adversary, the pieces of historic friendship fell into place. India-Russia ties and Moscow’s unflinching support to New Delhi on the Kashmir issue have been steady ever since.
India’s humongous weapons dependence on Russia and subsequent joint production of weapon systems in the decades that followed 1971 is a crucial pillar of India-Russia steady relations.
Coming back, regardless of how safe New Delhi considers its consequential hedging, the complexity of geopolitical bifurcation has also proved detrimental to India-bound Ural shipments in the Red Sea. Iran-backed Houthi rebels have attacked ships carrying Russian oil to India while avoiding containers bound for Iran or China. As a result, India has had to turn to its traditional importers in the Gulf. This is over and above the stuck payment issues mentioned earlier.
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The China factor
The second roadblock to India-Russia ties is undoubtedly the China factor. The Ukraine war and its aftermath have aligned Russia with China in a way that is unarguably complicated for India’s aspirations of keeping Asia multipolar.
In the post-1991 era, and especially after the 1998 Pokhran test explosions, the genesis of India’s multi-alignment goes back to the tri-variate engagement with the RIC (Russia, India, China), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and SCO complex. That trivariate complex was seen as the most convincing pathway to engage Russia and China.
Then the context changed. India and the collective West found mutual interests in managing the rise of China and Beijing’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific. As India remained neutral in the Ukraine war, Russia started depending on China to an extent that hitherto unconnected security theatres of the transatlantic and the Indo-Pacific began to merge. The country that is at the forefront of pushing indivisible security from Europe to Asia is India’s other natural partner – Japan.
The India-Russia bilateral relationship is in search of realism – the much-loved continuity endures but inevitable change is looming. When Jaishankar called India-Russia ties the only constant in today’s world, he implied tacitly that change was the only constant too.
Each epoch derives the meaning of its ponderables according to prevailing contexts. And today the uncomfortable question is whether India’s engagement with Russia will offset Russia’s all-encompassing dependence on China.
It is important to note that what will truly guide India- Russia bilateral relations is not India’s commitment to remain multi-aligned, which is almost a foregone conclusion. Rather it is Russia’s commitment to remain neutral between India and China that is anything but a foregone conclusion. By all available markers, Russia’s dramatic dependence on China is only set to grow further.
Multi-alignment is the preferred destiny of middle-order powers favouring multipolarity for obvious reasons. For India’s interests though, it cannot be an equal distribution. New Delhi should certainly engage Russia in more constructive terms, capitalise on the goodwill of historic friendship and set up enabling frameworks to reduce trade deficit et al. But at the same time, it must not lose sight of the end—lest multipolarity become messy-polarity.
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)