When the Western world looks disapprovingly at India’s pursuit or insistence on strategic autonomy for its foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Russia, they overlook how it masks strategic weakness
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Following Prime Minister’s Modi’s bear hug with President Putin during his two-day official visit in early July, several justifications have been proffered for the Indian leader’s decision visit to Moscow and the deep angst and trepidation it has triggered, especially in the West. Shrill statements such as the one from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that Modi’s bear hug of Putin was a, “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day,” are only a dramatic manifestation of what the world gets wrong about New Delhi’s ties with Moscow.
Three common justifications are offered for India’s strategically autonomous foreign policy; and Russia is the focal point of New Delhi’s exercise of strategic autonomy. The first is that Russia is an all-weather friend. The Russia-India relationship has stood the test of time. Countries such as the United States (US) view India more as a strategic tool against China than a country with an intrinsic set of interests and aspirations as a major power. In a nutshell, India has agency and is hedging its bets “…as an independent actor” by remaining engaged with Moscow. Secondly, the Russia-China relationship is not as closely tethered as critics in the West assume or even as some in India do, but more fragile because Moscow is unlikely to be a junior partner of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). India’s ties with Russia help wean Moscow away from Beijing, giving the Russians more options to exercise in their external partnerships. Thirdly, Russia needs the Indian defence market to sell its military hardware, which gives India buyers leverage. After all, India was among the top four recipients of Russian arms between 2017-2021, which also include China, Algeria and Egypt.
The Russia-India relationship has stood the test of time. Countries such as the United States (US) view India more as a strategic tool against China than a country with an intrinsic set of interests and aspirations as a major power.
Each of the above justifications have some merit, but also represent weaknesses. Few have considered how India’s quest for strategic autonomy is an optical illusion. Let us consider the first claim that Russia is an all-weather friend. The joint statement issued by the two leaders makes no mention of the ongoing Sino-Indian boundary crisis, with Moscow remaining steadfastly neutral since its outbreak in May 2020. For Moscow to remain resolutely neutral reveals how wary Russia is of antagonising the Chinese. Nothing substantive accrued from the Putin-Modi summit, which did not address the US$ 57 billion trade deficit between India and Russia as a result of the latter’s massive hydrocarbon exports to India. There was no guarantee of Moscow’s pending supply of two S-400 Triumf systems and upgrades for a part of its Sukhoi-30 fighter fleet. This is not because Moscow does not want to supply; its industry just does not have sufficient spare capacity.
Even worse, it may even side with China or at least privilege the PRC in the event that there is a conflict between New Delhi and Beijing in the near future. There is considerable reason to think why Moscow might not align itself with India, which brings us to the secondary claim that India’s engagement would ensure that Moscow’s “tight embrace” of Beijing would actually enable it (Russia) to “modulate” the PRC’s aggressive conduct towards India. This overestimates Russia’s capacity to use its good offices to moderate Chinese belligerent behaviour towards India. There are two very critical factors limiting Moscow’s influence over China. Russia’s trade with China exceeds whatever trade the Russians enjoys with India. The Russia-China trade balance in 2023 stood at US $240 billion, which was 26.3 percent higher than in 2022. Calculated from 2021, Chinese exports by surged by 64 percent until the end of 2023. Whereas India’s trade with Russia was US$ 65 billion in dollar-denominated trade in 2023. The trade balance between China and Russia is three and half times greater than the trade balance between Russia and India. If push comes to shove, for Moscow, the costs of alienating Beijing far outweigh the costs of Russia alienating India. Lest we forget, Russia enjoys a significant trade surplus vis-à-vis India accruing from the windfall it has made from oil sales to India in the last two years.
For India Russian oil keeps prices low for the Indian consumer. Yet, there is mutual interest between India and the US in keeping Russian oil on the international market. As Eric Van Nostrand, the US Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy stated: “It is important for us to keep the oil supply [ from Russia] on the market. But what we want to do is to limit Putin’s profit from it”. The outcome of this policy is that the world’s seven most industrialised countries (or G-7) and Australia imposed a price cap of US$ 60 a barrel, but still agreed to India and other countries purchasing Russian oil at significantly discounted prices as long as they did not avail or use Western broking and insurance.
Three hard realities explain why India’s ties with Russia are not the result of agency and autonomy, but a product of constraint and weakness. Firstly, India does not have the domestic defence industrial base that can optimally meet the needs of the Indian armed forces. This has been India’s bane since independence in 1947. The lack of domestic Military Industrial Complex (MIC) means that India is compelled to acquire capabilities from abroad to service its military requirements. As long as India remains dependent on defence imports, it will always be susceptible to pressures from external suppliers. Today, 70-80 percent of military hardware that the Indian armed services operate and deploy is foreign made and most of that imported hardware happens to be of Russian-origin.
As long as India remains dependent on defence imports, it will always be susceptible to pressures from external suppliers.
Supplementing this fact is that Russia is the only source of nuclear submarine technology for India, which India is yet to fully master and absorb. Further, as one former Indian envoy to Russia observed a few years ago, “There are other projects of defence collaboration, which necessarily have to remain outside the public domain. Simply put, no country has transferred the level of technologies to India that Russia has done.” Despite diversifying away from Russian arms through a combination of imports from Western states and indigenisation in the last decade and a half, India is still heavily dependent on Moscow for conventional and strategic technologies. Russia does not need the Indian defence market to expand and remain resilient, whereas India needs Moscow to ensure supply of weapons, components and spares. This is weakness, not strategic autonomy and agency.
The second immutable reality or weakness is that India is not rich in hydrocarbons, compelling the country to import over 80 percent of its oil-based resources. Being an energy deficit country with the world’s largest population, it is bound to source hydrocarbons from countries that will sell at the lowest price. Russia’s oil price offer was too attractive to reject. In any case, as noted earlier, it remains in America’s interests specifically, and the West’s interests more generally, to allow India to purchase Russian oil to ensure stable international supplies, even if Moscow makes a profit. Conversely, for those in India and outside who think that Russia needs the Indian defence market, revenue from Russia’s commodities and energy exports are more than sufficient to funnel money into its defence industry, which ties into why the Russians actually do not need the Indian defence market. Indeed, as a former Indian envoy to Russia put it aptly, Russian “defence exports is a small fraction of its [Russia’s] total exports…arms are a prestige export not an economically critical export for Russia…[and therefore] the balance of dependence is more on India’s side.” If anything, Russia is exercising its agency and autonomy by selling military items to New Delhi, which the latter does not have at this juncture.
Russia’s oil price offer was too attractive to reject. In any case, it remains in America’s interests specifically, and the West’s interests more generally, to allow India to purchase Russian oil to ensure stable international supplies, even if Moscow makes a profit.
Thirdly, geography is not in favour of India. India has two formidable military adversaries on its western and northeastern borders in Pakistan and China respectively. Antagonising Russia, which is not far from India’s borders while it still depends on Russian weapons and oil supplies would be strategically disastrous for New Delhi. Russia and China’s influence over Central Asia looms large and India has a stake in preventing Islamist extremism and terrorism emanating from the region. There is strong convergence between India and Russia such as in Afghanistan and other central Asian Republics. Indian membership in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) grouping and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) explains New Delhi’s continued engagement with Moscow through these fora as well as bilaterally.
When the Western world looks disapprovingly at India’s pursuit or insistence on strategic autonomy as the guiding principle of its foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Russia, they overlook how it masks strategic weakness. This requires that US and western states show some more empathy and give India some space and incentives to reorient and adjust policies that go towards reducing its dependence on Russia.
Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme. Kartik specialises in space military issues and his research is primarily centred on the ...
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