GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

In the messy world of international politics, foreign policy doctrines are, more often than not, improvised plans haphazardly designed to achieve overambitious national objectives. Strategy, in other words, is often illusory or recognised only in hindsight. Although India has never produced an official doctrinal document on foreign policy writ large — either for internal or external consumption — its international engagements since the end of the Cold War have, in fact, been remarkably consistent and successful. The small size of India’s policymaking community, its historically limited interests, and its relatively meagre resources may have predisposed it towards continuity, but India’s leaders also deserve considerable credit for their successful stewardship of the country’s foreign relations.

The central pillars of India’s foreign policy since the end of the Cold War have been three-fold. The first has been to develop India’s economy and technological capacity so as to increase its resource base and latent capabilities, or internal balancing. India’s economic liberalisation beginning in the early 1990s and its subsequent economic and trade agreements with other large economies might be considered manifestations of this approach. The second has been to dissuade or defend against the use of military force by others in a bid to preserve Indian sovereignty and the territorial status quo, or deterrence. India’s development of nuclear weapons and the modernisation of its conventional forces have been oriented towards this goal. And the third has been to widen India’s options as to political, security, and economic partners in order to increase its strategic flexibility, a policy which, for lack of a better term, can be thought of as strategic autonomy. This has involved leveraging the relative strengths of several powers against one another — in contrast to exclusive preferential agreements with any one partner — so as to secure more favourable terms of engagement.

Internal balancing and deterrence are not uncommon policies among states seeking to enhance their bases of power and preserve the territorial status quo. But strategic autonomy is a more unusual, and possibly more contentious, aspect of India’s international behaviour. And yet this policy — often mischaracterised by both Indian and foreign observers as nonalignment — has been remarkably successful. Today, India enjoys better relations with both the United States and China than it did 10 or 20 years ago. It has also preserved or established cooperative ties with Russia, Japan, member states of the European Union, and emerging powers such as Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa. Its commercial relations are roughly balanced between the United States, Europe, China, and the Gulf and it has preserved important defence relations with Russia, Israel, Europe, and the US. Translated into a regional context, India is perhaps alone in having fruitful bilateral relations with Israel, Iran, and the Gulf Arab states.

Remarkably, India’s improved bilateral ties have not come at the cost of constraints associated with formal alliances. And New Delhi has carefully ensured that improved relations with any one partner country have not resulted in a precipitous decline in ties with others, instead producing what can best be characterised as a ‘virtuous spiral’ of improving bilateral relationships. Strategic autonomy has also proved surprisingly resilient. India did not abandon this approach to its foreign relations after its 1998 nuclear tests, the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan, the 9/11 attacks of 2001, or the landmark 2005 civilian nuclear agreement with the US. And yet, strategic autonomy has only been possible under a specific set of circumstances: high rates of economic growth, a globalising international system, the absence of superpower rivalry, and a development- oriented domestic agenda.

 This essay was originally published in Force magazine.  It can be read here in its original form.