Why India walks a tightrope between US and Russia
With the emergence of the Cold War in the 1950s, newly independent India became a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement — countries that sided neither with Washington nor with Moscow. Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has advanced an inverted version of the policy — picking and choosing relationships in either camp that he believes best suit India's own interest. Most notably, the South Asian nation is deepening security links with the US while snapping up military hardware and cheap crude oil from Russia. The question is how long it can stay close to both sides while they themselves pull further apart over the war in Ukraine. With India chairing the Group of 20 nations this year, the dance has become more delicate.
1. Is India a US ally?
India has been a "strategic partner" of the US for at least two decades, but they're not formal allies. That means that while they have much in common — two large, heterogeneous democracies — New Delhi doesn't feel bound to sync its world view with Washington. For a long time India was leery of the US largely because of its close security ties with Pakistan, India's neighbor and archrival. But the relationship has improved in large part due to shared concerns about an increasingly assertive China. Washington sees New Delhi as a bulwark in the region and has enlisted it as a member in the so-called Quad grouping of Indo-Pacific democracies, along with Australia and Japan. China has criticized the group as a "clique" that could stoke a new Cold War.
2. Why is India cozy with Russia?
Despite its avowed non-alignment, India drew closer to Moscow's sphere during the Cold War. For decades India's economic strategy was laid out in Soviet-style, five-year plans. Close cultural and people-to-people ties also grew. But at the heart of the relationship is New Delhi's long dependence on Moscow as its main supplier of weapons. While that dependence has shrunk — imports of Russian weapons dropped 19% during 2018-2022 compared to the previous five-year period, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute — Moscow is still its main supplier. New Delhi is especially sensitive about that, given its border tensions with its two biggest neighbors, China and Pakistan. India — the world's third-largest crude importer — has also been lapping up cheap Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine, a trade that benefits buyer and seller.
3. Has the war in Ukraine changed anything?
India has stood out among major democracies for its reluctance to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has held off from efforts by the US, Europe and their allies to isolate Russia globally. Many in India place greater blame on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Washington for Russia's invasion of Ukraine than on Putin, according to a survey by Morning Consult, a US-based business intelligence company. Modi is conscious of walking a fine line, however. New Delhi has abstained from United Nations votes condemning the war, while saying at global forums that the conflict needs to end because it's hurting developing countries economically by disrupting supply chains and driving up commodity prices. Modi skipped his annual, bilateral summit with Putin last year after the Russian leader threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. But India may be put on the spot as host of the G-20 summit in September if Putin were to show up. (He skipped the last two amid pressure from the US and its allies over the war). India is also concerned about more direct impacts of Putin's aggression: supplies of Russian military spare parts for customers like India are drying up, according to army chief Manoj Pande.
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4. How has the US responded?
India's links to Moscow seem to have had no significant political cost in Washington. That's at least partly due to the growing economic and political clout of a country that's forecast to surpass China as the world's most populous this year. For example:
- President Barack Obama upgraded India to "major defense partner" in 2016, a unique status "commensurate with the closest allies and partners" of the US. Yet when India started taking delivery of Russia's S-400 missile-defense system in 2021 as part of a $5 billion weapons deal, there were no repercussions. A similar purchase by Turkey prompted the US to ban its fellow NATO ally from the US F-35 fighter jet program.
- India has faced little public blowback over buying Russian oil either, because it's meeting the West's twin goals of crimping Moscow's revenue — by paying discounted prices — while preventing a supply shock by refining much of the crude into fuel for Europe and the US.
- Bilateral trade has soared, including US weapons sales. The US and India laid out a plan this year to share more advanced defense and computing technologies.
- US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, during a November visit, emphasized India's potential as a manufacturing hub, in another push against China.
Long before all that, the US in 2008 lifted a three-decade moratorium on civil nuclear trade with India, even though the country has nuclear weapons and isn't a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
5. What drives India's foreign policy and where is it headed?
If a newly independent India was seeking to keep its distance from big power blocs, the newly assertive country under Modi is seeking ties that advance its own interests. New Delhi sees itself both as a power broker in big geopolitical rivalries — having influence with Putin as well as the West — and a champion for the voice of the Global South. Modi's welcome at the White House and in Europe despite his government's spotty human rights record, especially with regard to treatment of the country's minority Muslim population, and a crackdown on media freedom. In his book The India Way, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar argued that in an increasingly multipolar world, India needs to avoid alliances. Instead, he advocated "identifying and exploiting opportunities created by global contradictions," with the aim of extracting "gains from as many ties as possible."
Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.
