“India has already chosen a side, its own, where it is happy, willing and most importantly capable of staying put”
The current crisis in Ukraine has, or at least threatened to, shift the focus away from two equally urgent geopolitical conundrums – the Taliban usurping power in Afghanistan and China increasing its assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. One almost gets the feeling that the timings of these events couldn’t have been better scripted. Needless to say, all three of them are intertwined in a complex web of events where the major world players are looking to outmanoeuvre each other. These events hold serious ramifications for India, a country which under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has looked to continuously raise its international profile as a major and responsible power in the region. Out of the three, India is a serious stakeholder in the Afghan equation and the Indo-Pacific construct, with even the Ukraine crisis putting the world’s focus on India.
Derek Grossman, writing for the Foreign Policy magazine, observes that due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing crisis, “Modi’s multipolar Moment Has Arrived”. He even sees India as ‘the clear beneficiary of Russia’s war’. Grossman says that by not condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and refusing to toe the Western line in sanctioning Moscow, India has in fact elevated its global stature. He suggests each of the major powers from the US to China to Russia has been vying to have India on its ‘side’. This assumption is not limited to just Grossman alone but many Western analysts assume that India is vying for a side. But this is exactly where Grossman fails to understand the basic objective of India’s foreign policy. India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar’s remarks at the recent GLOBESEC 2022 Bratislava Forum throw light on this ‘misunderstanding’ on the part of Grossman and analysts of his ilk. Jaishankar, to a question regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict that in case India must pick a side, who India will side with – the US or China, quipped “I don’t accept that India has to join either the US axis or the China axis. We are one-fifth of the world’s population, the fifth or sixth-largest economy in the world, and India is entitled to have its own side and make her own choices devoid of cynical transactions but based on India’s values and interests.” In the same forum, he also remarked that India is not “sitting on the fence” on the Ukraine issue (a reference to Biden’s remark of India being ‘shaky’) and is in fact merely “sitting on its ground”. Jaishankar’s remarks emphasize India’s policy of strategic autonomy and of India not being a lackey of any power or axis. Meaning India has already chosen a side, its own, where it is happy, willing and most importantly capable of staying put.
“Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”
But what Grossman does get right is in his usage of the term ‘Multipolar’. India indeed views the world as multipolar today. Instead of clinging to either pole of the binary world order, India desires to be one of the poles itself. So, then what explains the West’s adamancy or incapability to understand India? Even this has been partly answered by Jaishankar himself as he says, “Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” And this is exactly why I mentioned Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific at the very outset. It is not to say that an India desiring to be a globally recognised power shouldn’t be concerned about Ukraine, but to understand the fact that, for India, a “messy” US withdrawal from Afghanistan and an ever-aggressive China lurking large on its borders are far greater challenges that cannot be met by choosing sides, rather India has to meet those challenges on its own strength. India simply doesn’t have the luxury of joining Axis A against Axis B or vice versa. Among many other things, India needs Russia to balance out China and for its strategic interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia; India needs the US to cement its role in the Indo-Pacific and create a strong deterrence against China; while India also needs to partner with China and Russia in climate change politics as well as limit Western dominance over the global financial system.
But it is also true that today, India’s strategic interests find greater convergence with that of the US, ranging from countering extremism in the Af-Pak region to checking China’s rise and securing a free and open Indo-Pacific with the help of “like-minded” nations in the region like Japan and Australia in the QUAD grouping. With regards to Russia, relations between the two traditional partners have cooled down a little especially because of Russia’s hobnobbing with Pakistan to secure its interests in Afghanistan and India’s growing ties to the US. Given the fact that Russia is speculated to become increasingly dependent on China as the war in Ukraine wages on, India’s manoeuvrability stands even more limited. Ever since the start of the war, India has tirelessly tried to explain to its Western counterparts the need to re-focus on the Indo-Pacific. Perhaps the bigger challenge for the democratic world is China’s unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the region. Russia’s threat is largely military in nature and is a headache majorly for its European neighbours. But the Chinese threat is global and all-encompassing ranging from economic to military to security to cultural. Additionally, for India, the Taliban in power next door doesn’t evoke any pleasant memories as anti-India forces might be on the loose given the Taliban’s proximity to Pakistan and its ties with anti-India forces.
India must solidly guard against being labelled in any camp and should steadfastly pursue its own path. India’s recent actions of abstentions in the UN against Russian aggression at the same time as Prime Minister Modi making a whirlwind tour of Europe to calm Western nerves augur well for its strategic objectives. The signing of the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in the recently held QUAD summit in Tokyo also serves India well vis-à-vis China. A recent visit of an Indian delegation to Afghanistan, ostensibly to oversee aid distribution, suggests that New Delhi may be willing to work with the Taliban regime, thus providing the latter with some legitimacy and the former some flexibility. To be recognised as a major global power, India should de-link from all geopolitical binaries and work towards becoming the Third Pole, maybe taking a cue from the Himalayas.
Feature Image Credits: Economic Times
