Strategic Autonomy

Table of Contents

The Observation

India has been engaged in a recent flurry of diplomatic activity.

India hosted
- Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio (March 19)
- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (March 25)
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (April 1)
Virtual summit with Australian PM Scott Morrison (March 21) and UAE (Feb 18)
In March 2022, India also hosted the foreign ministers of Austria, Greece, Oman, and Mexico, as well as the U.S. under-secretary for political affairs, EU special envoy for the Indo-Pacific, German national security advisor, U.K. foreign secretary, and U.S. deputy national security advisor Daleep Singh.
Currently, India-US 2+2 dialogue is also underway.

India meetings with the Japanese and Australian prime ministers and European and U.S. officials were aimed at securing New Delhi’s interests & participation in some sort of actions against Russia, including reducing Indian reliance on Russian military hardware and oil imports.
Visits by the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers were aimed at maintaining India’s neutral stance and circumventing Western sanctions through a proposed ruble-rupee payments mechanism.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of a “Eurasian Partnership” rooted in a common worldview by Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi in the development of a multipolar world order and cooperation through regional initiatives such as the BRICS, China-India-Russia trilateral, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Despite these recent developments India risks becoming increasingly marginalized in an emerging global order marked by renewed bifurcation fueled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the China-U.S. strategic rivalry.
New Delhi maintains lukewarm support to QUAD & remains unwilling to become enmeshed in more institutionalized regional initiatives like Five Eyes or AUKUS.

India has been marginalized from many global flashpoints
- Had no place on table over Afghanistan issue.
- Had no place in P5 + 1 & Iran negotiations
- Now also, India could have played a bigger role in mediating between Russia & Ukraine but other middle powers, notably Turkey, France, and Israel, have assumed the mantle of leadership in driving efforts at a peace process.
This brings us to a question – Is India Punching below its weight at global level?

Amitav Acharya:
New Delhi appears to be still hamstrung by a vision deficit. At a time when many of the original ideas of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru seem realizable, India seems to be still plagued by self-doubt and the burden of inherited ideologies.