India’s international influence is growing and it’s now at a geopolitical crossroads.
India right now is in a geopolitical sweet spot,
it is being courted by countries all over the world.
The question isn’t whether India will rise as a great power, it will, based on
the current statistics. But the question is when?
With a GDP of more than $3 trillion, India is the world’s largest democracy and has
the 5th largest economy in the world, behind Germany, Japan, China and the United States.
Notably, the country has a growing influence
in the Global South, which is mainly made up of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, says
Karthik Nachiappan, who researches Indian foreign policy at the National University of Singapore.
That will increasingly clash against India’s own growing
partnership and relationship with the West,
especially with the United States, with Europe, which require different things from India.
Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, India has
been mostly tight-lipped in condemning Russia over the act. Instead, India has boosted its imports
of heavily discounted Russian oil since the war began. This has ruffled the feathers of western
powers such as the U.S. and the E.U.
During the Cold War, one of India’s most steadfast partners was the Soviet Union.
This was during a period when India did not have very close relations with the West,
especially the United States. The Soviet Union gave political
support for India, it gave material support. It gave different kinds of security support,
through Russian arms and ammunition. Almost 70% of the Indian military’s resources
and arms are made by Russia.
Even though bilateral trade between Russia and India hit a record $45 billion, the
U.S. is by a long way New Delhi’s biggest trading partner. That year, trade between
the U.S. and India exceeded $190 billion.
And yet India has not married its trading relationships with military alliances.
The U.S.-India relationship is one for the future, whereas the India-Russia relationship
economically is one of the past. And so, what the U.S. has been trying to do is move even
further forward into the future by expanding deepening its economic and trading relationship with India,
to make it realise that siding with Russia over these kinds of issues and conflicts
is not in its long-term interest.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
has called for peace and cooperation.
This is not an era of war.
But it is one of dialogue and diplomacy.
India is performing a delicate balancing act between protecting its own interests while
maintaining ties with its trading partners. But as the world becomes more polarized,
can India maintain its stance of non-alignment,
or will it be forced to pick sides?
India’s position of non-alignment dates back to its independence in 1947. Then, the world
was drifting into two blocs - the western bloc led by the United States and its NATO allies,
while the eastern bloc was led by the Soviet Union. Developing countries were under pressure
to side with either of the two during that period of political and military tension,
known as the Cold War.
Refusing to get caught between two major powers, the Non-Aligned Movement was
first assembled in 1956, before India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru,
along with leaders of Yugoslavia, Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia, had their first official summit in
1961. Its aim was to give a voice of autonomy for developing countries in international affairs.
Non-alignment has been a primary strategy that has covered Indian foreign policy through the decades.
It has given the Indian government over the years a tool, to not entangle itself into
issues or affairs that would harm its national interests, primarily economic development.
Upon decolonisation, India was a very poor country.
If they were going to focus wholly on development, then they had to
be geopolitically distant from different kinds of hot issues that were breaking up.
How is it different from neutrality?
The difference between neutrality and non-alignment is that neutrality is more relevant during times of war,
it's when a country or a state categorically says that it will not support a particular war and it
will remain indifferent. It’s generally a legal concept and it’s enshrined in international law.
Non-alignment is not purely applicable during times of war. It’s a foreign policy strategy
that also extends during other kinds of crises, whether it’s an economic crisis,
whether it has something to do with sanctions, for example.
Don McLain Gill, a geopolitical analyst at De La Salle University, says that India has an
independent approach to its foreign policy.
It is beyond neutrality and looking into ways where India will be able to contribute responsibly
and at the same time look after its own interests.
India is a member of numerous regional and multilateral institutions.
The country's a member of security centred blocs
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, alongside China and Russia and the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, alongside the U nited States,
which has longstanding contentious relations with both China and Russia.
India is also a founding member of BRICS,
a coalition made up of emerging economies that includes both Russia and China.
At the recent 15th BRICS summit, the bloc has more than doubled its membership
to include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2024.
China wants to turn BRICS into an anti-West alliance.
It wants to derive more support from key members in the Middle East, Africa,
Latin America, against American interests worldwide.
India does not want to see or does not hope to see BRICS to be turned into an anti-West
coalition. So, by staying in, and by supporting the expansion could work against that internally.
It could work to ensure that the BRICS
and the kinds of issues that it deals with over the next few years does not get too
confrontational with the West.
How can we explain India’s foreign policy decisions to be a member of
all these different bodies that are not necessarily aligned with each other?
Over the last 10-20 years, non-alignment has incrementally transformed into a
policy of multi-alignment, where India is open to different kinds of groupings,
coalitions, alliances, arrangements, bilateral partnerships with countries that it did not have
good relations with, as long as it advances the national interest, which is economic transformation.
India plays an influential role in international financial bodies such as
the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.
Over the last decade, India has had
limited involvement in free trade deals, including pulling out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP), considered to be the world’s largest trade agreement. However, in the last few
years, the country has ramped up its free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries including Japan,
South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
It also has FTAs within its geographic neighbourhood,
such as with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
or ASEAN, and directly with countries such as Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.
We are looking into India’s participation in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,
which is also seen as multilateral game changer, as they like to say, to be able to redirect supply chains away from
China, to hopefully lessen the dependence of developing countries towards China.
Even as Modi seeks to transform India’s economy,
the country has a long tradition of protectionism. Most recently, it banned food exports like rice,
wheat and sugar. While the move was to cool domestic prices, it exacerbated a global food
crisis smarting from the war in Ukraine.
India has to always balance between the strategic considerations which are compelling it to be more
open economically, security-wise, with the political economy constraints – the
different kinds of industries and firms within India
that do not want to compete with other foreign firms.
India is not against such arrangements, but it has to be equitable to the point that it
also reflects India’s concerns, given of course, that it is responsible for 1.4 billion people.
It’s not going to be neat or pretty and there’s going
to be a lot of zigzagging back and forth between protectionism and openness.
But I think the broader trend is toward more free trade over time.
Besides prioritizing trade, another factor that influences India’s foreign policy
is its neighbour up north: China. While bilateral trade crossed $100 billion in
2022, India’s relationship with China has worsened over the last decade due to border disputes.
India has a massive security problem on both its eastern and western border with China. And
it is looking for ways to balance what it sees as a very powerful Chinese threat. And one
way to do that is by working closely with other partners who also have their own Chinese strategic
problem like the United States, like the European Union, like a few countries in Southeast Asia.
India presents itself as an alternative buffer, a strategic buffer that Southeast Asian states can rely on
without worrying that they will have to choose sides.
Southeast Asian countries want more of India,
but they don’t want so much so as to offend China. So that balance is an important one to maintain.
But will India's growing economic clout mean that
it will remain non-aligned in the years to come?
More growth over time will also mean that India will be able to convert some of its prosperity
into military influence so to deal with the different kinds of security threats that it’s facing now.
India has witnessed several challenges
that are quite relatable to the challenges of other developing countries. And the fact that
India has been able to slowly surpass them in a sustainable way is something
that is seen as a positive benchmark for countries to sort of emulate in the long run.