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The Folly of India’s Neutrality

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/folly-indias-neutrality

In the face of Chinese aggression, New Delhi must align with Washington.

Submission Statement India's love-hate relationship with the "First World" can be traced all the way back to its founding. Many of the country's revolutionary leaders were open to or outright supporters of socialism. As a nation, India itself attempted to chart a path separate from either of the Cold War powers and their spheres of influence. The same skepticism of Western motives and attitudes which drove that neutrality remains a powerful force within India. The situation now is less amenable to such neutrality, however. China's revanchist ambitions are growing increasingly overt and violent as the nation displays both the will and the ability to seize Indian territory by force. Russia is inarguably declining on the world stage, leaving only the West as a credible security partner. That leaves India in a bit of a pickle, being forced to pick between its historical Western skepticism and a global environment that is making the West an extremely attractive security partner.

Okay, with all that context out of the way, this article is an excellent summary of India's increasing strategic alignment with the West. The situation is not as cut and dry as the article claims it to be, however. Western nations' attitudes toward freedom of expression and democratic values are likely to remain a stumbling block for India, where the dominant political party, BJP, has increasingly been stoking the flames of Hindu nationalism and undermining its democratic norms and institutions. To be sure, such concerns haven't prevented Western alliances in the past or present(see: Turkey). But Western pressure over India's authoritarian streaks is likely to continue inducing friction over the long term. The tension between domestic and international priorities is fascinating and a space to watch.

SUMIT GANGULY is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University Bloomington and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Politics at the University of Heidelberg.

DINSHA MISTREE is a Research Fellow in the Program on Strengthening U.S.-India Relations at the Hoover Institution.

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Narendra Modi is preparing to make his eighth visit to the United States as India’s prime minister. Although previous U.S. administrations have received Modi warmly, the fanfare surrounding this trip—the Indian prime minister’s first official state visit to Washington—will be unparalleled. He is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress. And as a parting gift, Modi will likely leave the United States having secured a long-coveted deal for General Electric to share technology and jointly produce military jet engines with India.

Such an enthusiastic reception is undoubtedly intended to reset relations with India. Although both countries are ostensibly committed to a partnership, the U.S.-Indian relationship has not lived up to its potential in recent years. The United States must shoulder some of the blame for this failure. Successive U.S. administrations ignored India’s warnings about negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Biden administration has continued to pursue a relationship with India’s rival Pakistan even after U.S. priorities in Asia have shifted toward dealing with China. Washington has also flubbed more routine diplomatic issues such as visa processing, with record backlogs in U.S. consulates in India that only recently ebbed. And it took more than two years for the U.S. Senate to confirm former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India, hampering Washington’s ability to advance its interests in New Delhi.

For their part, U.S. officials seem to be waking up to the promises—and the limits—of a strong relationship with India. It is unclear whether the same can be said for Indian leaders. New Delhi continues to harbor a variety of misgivings about forging a genuine partnership with the United States. Despite ongoing clashes at the disputed border with China, India has resisted embracing its security partnership with Australia, Japan, and the United States—known as the Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—designed to protect the Indo-Pacific from Chinese aggression. At the same time, both Modi and his foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, have been praised at home for their staunch refusal to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This stance of neutrality, they have argued, best serves India’s interests. Since the invasion in February 2022, India has undoubtedly benefited from a steady supply of cheap Russian oil as the Kremlin has scrambled to secure alternative buyers for its energy commodities. But New Delhi’s relations with Moscow occupy a shrinking portion of Indian foreign policy. In the long run, Russia’s growing dependence on China will make it an unreliable partner.

India rightly wants to guarantee itself strategic autonomy as it continues to rise in the world. But such a vision will not be fully realized if India continues to imagine that it can indefinitely play to all sides. Nonalignment may work in specific instances, but it will not serve India well in the long term. Instead, India should forge a strong partnership with the United States. With U.S. support, India can reassert its control over South Asia and emerge as a strong pole of regional order in the Indo-Pacific.

TIME WARP Most of India’s concerns about the United States hark back to another era in global politics. New Delhi, it seems, is caught in a time warp. Key members of India’s foreign policy elite remain fixated on the United States’ relationship with Pakistan during the Cold War and fear its renewal. This belief, although perhaps understandable given the record of U.S. policy toward South Asia, is nevertheless flawed: the United States and Pakistan have never been and are not now as close as Indian policymakers tend to imagine them to be. It is to the credit of the Trump administration that the United States finally called Pakistan’s bluff and terminated all military aid. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, some in the Biden administration have proposed a limited strategic relationship with Pakistan focused on counterterrorism. But Washington’s efforts to secure this new partnership with Islamabad have been halting at best. Although some U.S. foreign policy thinkers still support Pakistan over India, the Beltway establishment is finally recognizing India’s primacy in South Asia. There is little reason to believe that the United States, whether under this administration or a future one, would want to resurrect its old alliance with Pakistan, especially if it comes at the expense of a partnership with India.

India’s supremacy in its neighborhood is not challenged by Pakistan or the United States but instead by China. In Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and even within India’s own borders, China represents an existential threat to New Delhi’s strategic autonomy. Indian and Chinese soldiers have massed along the disputed mountainous border between the two countries, with bloody skirmishes breaking out sporadically. India currently possesses neither the domestic military capabilities (what scholars of international security refer to as “internal balancing”) nor the foreign partnerships (“external balancing”) to guarantee its security interests and protect its northern borders from the Chinese incursions that have been accelerating since 2019.

Some within India’s security establishment continue to believe that Russia may yet serve as a possible bulwark against China. These expectations stem from the Soviet Union’s role during the Cold War and India’s continuing dependence on Russia for defense equipment and spare parts. Recent developments, however, suggest that this hope is rather fanciful. Russia, preoccupied with its disastrous invasion of Ukraine, has already failed to deliver some military supplies that it had contracted to provide India. And New Delhi’s assiduously cultivated neutral position on the invasion has not prevented Moscow from turning to Beijing, India’s long-term competitor and adversary. Russia has grown only closer to and more dependent on China since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. It simply cannot play the role India wants it to in checking China.