Resilience has become a familiar word in international affairs. But its strategic meaning rests on a harder question: when external circumstances change, can a country sustain the pursuit of its interests on its own terms? For India, moving from the language of resilience to resilience in action means matching national ambition with the capacity to carry it forward. This calls for a grand strategy that connects domestic strength with external engagement and continually reassesses the assumptions guiding India’s choices abroad.
The challenge is sharper in an international order where power remains concentrated, interdependence can become an instrument of coercion, and commitments are open to renewed bargaining. Alliances, partnerships and adversaries are still consequential categories, but these labels alone cannot tell India what a relationship will deliver. A partner may enhance its security while narrowing its economic choices. A competitor may remain important to its development. An accommodation between major powers may reshape the choices of countries with no seat at the negotiating table. India’s strategy must continually assess what these overlapping realities mean for its interests and room for manoeuvre.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s remarks at the Asia Society in New York on 28 September offer a useful starting point.
“How do we de-risk? How do we diversify? Which are the new partners? Where do we get more value out of an existing partnership?” he asked, describing a world where the US and China are competitors but are also having “a certain conversation”.
His emphasis on diversifying relationships and drawing greater value from existing partnerships raises a larger strategic question: how can India widen its agency when expectations surrounding its external relationships are becoming less predictable? Answering this requires moving beyond the management of disagreements to examine the foundations of national power that give diplomatic choices substance and make them sustainable.
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Power and partnerships
Allies have long disagreed, just as adversaries have found reasons to cooperate. The challenge today lies in how deeply security competition runs through the economic and technological networks that sustain prosperity. States seek strategic advantage within relationships they cannot easily walk away from. The same dependence that enables growth can become a source of pressure. Grand strategy must therefore reckon with how these gains and vulnerabilities shape one another over time. Convergence on shared interests cannot be presumed to settle the competing pulls within a relationship.
For India, strategic autonomy is a continuing endeavour to build the capacity for independent judgment and action. The freedom to make a diplomatic choice means little if the costs of sustaining it become prohibitive. Resisting pressure, holding a position or negotiating a better bargain requires economic strength, technological competence, and institutions capable of translating ambition into action. Foreign policy can help strengthen these capabilities, but it cannot indefinitely compensate for their absence. The room India creates through external engagement ultimately depends on the foundations of power it builds at home.
The question is how external engagement alters the balance between dependence and influence. Access to technology and capital gains strategic value when it builds capabilities India can sustain and deploy. A partnership’s worth therefore depends on its terms, India’s capacity to absorb the gains and its preparedness for disruption.
India’s relations with the United States and China complicate this challenge. The American partnership can strengthen capabilities essential to India’s rise, even as differences test strategic convergence. Engagement with China may ease immediate tensions without resolving structural competition. India must assess both relationships by their contribution to national objectives, the constraints they create and the durability of their commitments.
Washington-Beijing relations add another layer of uncertainty. Their rivalry can open opportunities for other countries while exposing them to new costs and pressures. Selective accommodation may ease tensions but unsettle expectations built around continued confrontation. India’s strategy cannot rest on a presumed course of US-China relations. It must build the strength and flexibility to advance national interests as competition and accommodation evolve.
Diversification serves this wider purpose. The number of partnerships reveals little about the agency they generate. Their strategic value lies in creating usable alternatives, strengthening national capabilities and reducing vulnerability to decisions taken elsewhere. A wider diplomatic network can coexist with critical dependencies. India must therefore judge its relationships by the choices they make possible and its capacity to sustain those choices under pressure.
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Making autonomy work
This also demands choices about where India should concentrate its resources. Complete insulation from external disruption is neither affordable nor consistent with its developmental ambitions. Openness remains a source of growth and national strength. The strategic task is to identify dependencies that could constrain decisions vital to national interests and build the capacity to manage them. Resilience requires bearing some costs today to preserve freedom of action tomorrow. A grand strategy that promises every benefit without confronting these trade-offs provides little direction when competing priorities demand difficult choices.
Preparedness carries opportunity costs. The pursuit of resilience therefore requires a clear hierarchy of interests, distinguishing the indispensable from the desirable. An effort to address every vulnerability can spread resources thin and weaken the capabilities India needs most. Strategic priorities become meaningful through choices about what to fund, what to defer and where to accept manageable risk.
These choices also require institutions capable of organising national power and putting it to use. External engagement, economic policy and technological development must inform one another. India’s capacity to act depends on connecting developments abroad with their consequences at home and turning diplomatic opportunities into capabilities it can sustain. An agreement must be judged by what it enables beyond its announcement; preparedness, by the state’s ability to mobilise resources when external shocks threaten national objectives.
Constant re-examination must be anchored in a durable sense of purpose. If every disagreement triggers a change of direction, flexibility risks becoming drift. India needs clarity and continuity in its core interests, alongside adaptability in the means of pursuing them. Recalibration means judging whether a change reflects a passing disruption or a deeper shift in a relationship and what it means for national priorities. Strategic patience and timely adjustment are both necessary.
Institutions must also be able and willing to question familiar assumptions before a crisis reveals their limits. Do partnerships continue to serve their intended purpose? Have domestic capabilities kept pace with external commitments? Such questions should inform strategy routinely. Revision must be a considered part of strategic practice rather than an improvised response to disappointment. Preparedness begins with recognising when yesterday’s assumptions no longer provide reliable guidance.
A more Hobbesian world makes reliability a strategic asset. As trust erodes and immediate bargains gain ground, relationships that offer predictability become more consequential. India has an interest in sustaining rules and institutions that restrain arbitrary power while building the capacity to manage their shortcomings. Its credibility will depend on how closely its conduct reflects its commitments. Cooperation with the Global South can advance this purpose by helping countries withstand external pressure and exercise greater agency.
Resilience in action depends on how effectively India connects its aspirations, capabilities and external relationships. Can it absorb disruption without compromising core interests, revise assumptions without losing direction and retain meaningful choices when others change course? The grand strategic question is whether India’s expanding engagement with the world strengthens its ability to shape the conditions in which it must act. Strategic autonomy acquires substance when India has the capacity to exercise the independence it claims.
Monish Tourangbam is a Fellow at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)