The war in Ukraine has changed the world.
In Europe, it’s torn a continent apart
and pulled the western alliance back together.
It looks like a new kind of Cold War has begun.
Here in Asia, all of that might seem far away. But in today’s world, everything is connected. There’s
already a battle underway for domination of this giant continent. A battle that’s now intensifying
in unpredictable ways. And you might not expect it, but at the heart of it, right here, is India.
India finds itself in a dramatic geopolitical squeeze
Russia, its old friend and arms supplier is deepening ties with China
weakened by the war and becoming subservient to a power that’s no friend to India.
There are serious concerns in New Delhi about whether
Russia will continue to be a reliable supplier.
At the same time, China’s threat to India becomes ever more apparent compelling India
to reinforce its borders against attempts to take its territory.
The Chinese are breathing down our borders and they just killed our soldiers
less than two years ago.
And Delhi faces deep dilemmas over how close to get to the West
The US has had many, many alliances. Not all of them have fared very well.
India has a long tradition of avoiding close alliances - and preferring to stay
"non-aligned." But the war is forcing it to think again about ALL of its relationships.
And face up to choices it’s never had to make before.
In part one of this video we'll look at how durable
India's old friendship with Russia really is - and whether it can survive Moscow's new path.
the Russia relationship is now in a position where it really does need to be rethought.
In part two we’ll see how tensions between India and China are far more dangerous than the rest of
the world realizes Think about this: Beijing even says that IT should control an entire
Indian state. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it’s all too easy to imagine a devastating war.
We are talking about a very big section of the world, a very important part of the world,
very large armies, nuclear-armed countries fighting each other.
And in part 3 we’ll ask whether India and the West
really can come together… or if they are ultimately heading in very different directions
When China attacked us... where was this degree of outrage from
Europe or from other countries? Yes, there was a little bit of
finger wagging and tongue clicking, but nothing in comparison to what we are seeing
Europe has a legacy problem with India because of the experience of colonialism. I think
countries have to be very mindful of what leverage they have to influence change.”
India is coming to resemble Russia and China far more than it resembles Western democracies
As the world enters this dangerous new era, India could be the deciding factor.
No matter where you are, the decisions made here in Delhi will matter to you.
So let's get into this story - with a choice India has been trying to avoid
but may soon have to make. About an old friend that’s gone rogue.
The UN Security Council, February 2022.
The high table of world affairs gathers… to pass judgment on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
India’s ambassador is here, holding his country’s non-permanent seat. He calls for a ceasefire
We urge that all efforts are made for the immediate cessation of violence and hostilities.
The western powers vote to condemn the war. Russia casts its veto.
And India abstains.
What was India doing here? It was joining the likes of China in refusing to condemn the Russian
invasion. Well, it wasn’t a point of principle. This was all about pragmatism.
And not angering a valued friend.
Delhi, just two months earlier. Vladimir Putin on a rare trip abroad, heaping praise on his host.
We see India as a great power and a friendly people – our relations have a wonderful history.
The relationship has roots in the depths of the Cold War.
In 1971, Indira Gandhi and Leonid Brezhnev were both concerned about tensions with China
The result: the “Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation”. India's policy
of non-alignment meant the treaty stopped short of being a full alliance. But it helped
seal Moscow’s position as India's number 1 arms supplier - something that's not been forgotten.
Jay Panda is vice-president of India’s governing BJP party.
Russia, or the former Soviet Union, had stood by India
when we needed defense capabilities to deal with these challenges of China and others.
It was the Soviet Union and continuing into Russia that gave us equipment.
Fast forward to the end of 2021 and Putin’s visit to Delhi and arms were very much on the agenda.
We work together in the military-technical sphere like with no other country.
Russia is supplying high-tech gear like its S-400 air defense missiles to India.
That deal is so sensitive that the United States has threatened India with sanctions for it.
But Delhi is sticking to the deal, and counters that the West
won’t match Russia on providing the military tech it needs.
We are still denied certain key defense technologies which are critical for our
safety and for our security. And we have been getting them from Russia.
Moscow has also done deals allowing Indian manufacturers to make hardware like these
Russian T-90 tanks. That's something other suppliers have been reluctant to do.
India not only gets the tanks - it also boosts its own defense industry - a major strategic priority.
But pressure is mounting from the West, for India to make a break with Russia
over the war on Ukraine. When prime minister Narendra Modi welcomed the
European Union’s top official to Delhi in April 2022, Ursula von der Leyen brought her personal
experience from a trip to the warzone – and warned her hosts not to look away.
I visited Bucha, I saw with my own eyes the bodies lined up on the ground… The outcome of the war
will not only determine the future of Europe.
For the Indo-Pacific region, it is as important as for Europe that borders are respected.
But at the same event – India’s flagship security conference, the
Raisina Dialogue – India’s Minister of External Affairs said Asians would not be lectured to.
We've been hearing for the last two months a lot of arguments from Europe saying, you know, there
are things happening in Europe and Asia should worry about it because this could happen in Asia.
Guess what? Things have been happening in Asia for the last ten years…
Europe may not have looked at it. This could be a wake-up call not just for
Europe. This could be a wake-up call for it also to look at Asia.
It was an open rebuke from India’s top diplomat – to the most powerful figure in the European Union.
The message was unmistakable: don’t tell us what to do.
For many delegates, western outrage over Russia’s behavior and calls for India to
cut imports of Russian energy simply rang hollow
Shamika Ravi is an economist with India’s ORF think tank.
We have just come out of poverty. We still have an absolute poverty of 5 to 6%. So for us
to bear some of the costs that Europe expects us to bear while at a time when very affluent
European countries continue to depend on Russian oil – it just smacks of blatant hypocrisy.
The US and other Western countries, especially the US, have done exactly this same kind of operation
in many countries.- They have a track record of invading countries, sometimes with UN concurrence,
but many times without UN concurrence. So we have to have norms that apply to all.
But despite all this, there are misgivings here in India about what Russia is up to.
Not so much about principles. But about hard realities.
Garima Mohan is an expert on India’s relations with Europe.
The India Russia partnership is very one note. It is mostly about military equipment and
defence supplies the way the war is unfolding in Ukraine right now. There are serious concerns in
New Delhi about whether Russia will continue to be a reliable supplier in the long run.
A weakened Russia with a degraded military industrial infrastructure
is not going to be the major, reliable, efficient partner that we were counting upon before the war.
Shashi Tharoor is a leading figure in the opposition Congress party
and a former under secretary general of the United Nations.
I think that the Russia relationship is now in a position where it really does need to
be rethought. There's a historical factor, if you like, of a long series of IOUs to first
the Soviet Union and then to some degree to the Russian Federation, particularly when it came
to sensitive Indian issues like Kashmir and so on, where they supported India, often vetoing
unfriendly positions taken by other members of the Security Council,
including some of the Western powers. That is all changed. The Western countries have now, by
and large supported the Indian stand on Kashmir, and I don't think we will now need a Russian veto
anymore to be able to keep some issues off the agenda that we don't like being discussed then.
Second, there is a long sense of dependence on Russia and again the Soviet Union before that
for military supplies and equipment. But that was already on the way down.
If you look at a five year period in the first half of the last decade, I think we
may have bought as much as 75% of our military supplies from Russia. If you look at the second
five year period, it came down to about 45%. India has been diversifying its military supplies,
going to America, to Israel, to France and other countries for major equipment.
The Americans are watching, waiting to see how India responds to the decline in Russian fortunes.
Lisa Curtis served as senior director for South Asia in the US National Security Council.
It's clear that Russia will simply not have the capability to be a reliable partner to
India moving forward. I think India will naturally diversify its military imports
away from Russia because it will have to. Russia will not be able to export
the kind of items that India needs. But my hope is that India recognizes this
and starts to take the steps that it needs to take to diversify away from Russia.
Only a few Russian delegates made it to Delhi to join the discussions at the Raisina Dialogue.
But we caught up with one who did.
Alexey Kupriyanov is an expert on India at a state-backed think tank in Moscow.
He insists that Russia’s ties with India still have huge potential.
Our past relations were fantastic. Our future relations for us,
we think, will be fantastic as well because Russia and India see the world the same way.
We are now cut off from Western markets,
Western investments and Western technologies. So we do not have a choice but to turn to the east.
India will be our main market for our technologies, for our products,
for our fertilizers, for our grain. But above all, turning east for
Russia means turning to China. And sure enough, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping
met in Beijing on the eve of the war. They sealed a partnership they said would have “no limits.
This does carry risks for Russia though of becoming subservient to a much
more powerful Beijing. Moscow is aware of this,
says Alexey Kupriyanov one reason it wants to keep India in play.
I think our relations with China will be relations of good friends who are supporting each other in
this very hard situation after the Ukrainian conflict. Because China now is under pressure
from the United States and we are under pressure as well. In fact, the United States just pushed us
to China, maybe in some fields against our will. And we are trying to keep a distance
between us and China, because I can repeat, we do not want to be a Chinese junior partner.
And yet, while they might not want to be, the Russians clearly will be the junior partner
in relations with China. Some are even saying Russia is destined to become a client state.
Surely the way things are going, whatever happens as this war unfolds, Russia is going to emerge
weakened. Weakened by sanctions, weakened by the calamities of war, weakened by the damage to its
industry and its manufacturing, by the conflict… Will it end up becoming a vassal state of China,
a China that is hostile to India? I think it looks very, very likely that a weakened
Russia will have no choice, particularly if the war ends, but the ostracism continues
and the Western countries continue to treat Russia as a pariah. They will have no choice but to look
for a patron, a supplier, a market, etc. in China. And they will turn there. And if they turn there,
the price will have to be that they will have to pay more heed to China's strategic interests.
This really matters to India. A Russia that’s under China’s thumb isn’t just
less useful as a friend. It strengthens the hand of India’s greatest potential enemy.
Coming up in part 2…
High in the Himalayas near the frontier with China,
India’s leader has come to rally the troops. An outbreak of violence with Chinese forces
in this remote, disputed border zone of Ladakh has shaken the whole of India and left 20 troops dead.
So in our consciousness, China is a threat. They keep disrespecting the boundary
agreements that we have with them.
Are we going to continue to just sit around
temporizing or are we going to examine broader options?
As India boosts its forces in Arunachal Pradesh,
it’s facing a real possibility of war with its superpower neighbor.
It's a much bigger power. Chinese economy is, six times India's size, Chinese defense spending
is four times India's size. China definitely has more diplomatic power, more global power.
If things come to blows with the Chinese on the border,
there's very little that Russia will be able and willing to do for India.