By Rohit Srivastava

Republished - June-July issue of GeoStrategy (IDI's online magazine, now discontinued)

Indo-Russian strategic relation is a unique relationship among the comity of nations. The concerted efforts of the west, since February, to convince, cajole, and coax India to take a firm stand against Russia is an attestation of the fact that India and Russia together is a game-changing partnership.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has redefined geopolitics. As expected, the NATO, European Union and western allies – South Korea, Japan and other minor nations spread across the globe – had a unified stand against Russia. Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the global focus had shifted back to European affairs. 

Unexpectedly, very soon, India-Russia relations became the focus of the global media. Their onslaught was startling for India. The Indian response to them was even more unexpected. 

In one of the famous (now infamous) conferences in Europe, one journalist asked visiting India foreign minister S Jaishankar, how can we trust India? His response “Europe has to get out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems."

This became the defining statement for the Indian perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war. Responding to the allegation of India funding the Russia through oil purchases, Jaishankar pointed out that Indian import is less than what Europe buys in a week.

It appears the focus is the amount of money flowing into Russia from India, but one cannot expect western analysts to be so naïve as to ignore the comparative volume of energy purchases by Europe.

Energy import was just an excuse, the target was India-Russia relations. The recent development in India’s relationship with the West (US-EU) was being read as India moving away from Russia. The firmness of the Indian stand came as a shock. West understands geopolitics better than India. They have been dominating the world for the last three centuries and they realise how a resurgent Russia and India can topple the existing world order.  

The world is envisaging challenges in near future and all the major powers would like to come out stronger through them which require finding new allies and cooperation among the present allies.

The most important of all the challenges is a shift of the global economy to Asia after three centuries. The world is witnessing the rise of India, China, and ASEAN countries and simultaneously, West Asia preparing for a post-petro-dollar economy with each country in the region forming a new partnership with countries in its extended neighbourhood.

This is giving birth to regional and sub-regional multilateral partnerships like Quad and I2U2. From 1950-2020, one can arguably say, the world was West looking, now, countries are looking around.

From this perspective, Eurasia is witnessing multilayered integration with the rise of regional powers dominating these partnerships. China, Russia, India and Iran are four major nations at the periphery of Eurasia and none of them is fully on the western side.

Geolocation of India – Russia

Geopolitics is primarily defined by geography. One needs to look at the world map to see the significance of the location of India and Russia in the Eurasia land mass. India dominates Indian Ocean Region and Russia dominates a vast area stretching from the Asian Pacific Coast to Europe. Russia is primarily a land power and India is neither a land power, all thanks to the partition of India and Pakistan's control of North Kashmir with the tacit support of the West, nor a maritime power. But India has the geographical position to dominate the whole of the Indian Ocean Region provided India is ready to push the western navies out. This is only possible if India has the economic and technological might.

The geolocation of India and Russia makes them in conflict with the West. In the last 300 years, the West has moved away from its shores to dominate the world. As the nations in the East rise and reclaim their region, they would conflict with the West led by United State.

Today, the US considers China as its main adversary and has convinced India to join them in containing China to its shores. West appears to be supportive of India’s rise but is not ready to accept its assertiveness. West is ready to help India to rise as an economic and industrial power but would they not consider India as an adversary once India is sufficiently developed?

India and West 

West wants to define the world for everyone. Be it in the domain of gender, identity, individualism, academic theories, political theories or social norms. They give a moral high stand to their ways and expect the rest to accept it. They judge nations and governments on their stand on subjective issues like gender identity and use western funded social organizations to malign nations and governments through a concerted campaign.

India has suffered substantially at the hands of Islamist Pakistan. West has always supported, and armed Pakistan to contain India. It is a fact that Pakistan was created for this very purpose. All the talks about democracy and rule of law go for a six when it comes to Pakistan.

Europe and the US have used Pakistan to ensure India never takes decisive action against Pakistan. They have used global financial institutions and technology sanctions as a stick to ensure northern Kashmir (gateway to central Asia) is not in India’s control, hence, limiting India’s reach to Russia and Central Asia.

Along with external agents, the West has been sabotaging India internally. Even today, they fund the majority of the anarchist organisations that oppose various development activities. Western academics lent intellectual support to all kinds of fringe elements in name of minorities and marginalised communities. Through Christian conversion and academic discourse, western powers are trying to destroy the whole civilization of India.  

Taking a cue from West Asian countries, China and Russia, India, would have to ensure her civilizational values remain protected from external sabotages. As a major nation in the world, India along with Russia and China cannot accept the western interpretations of the world event.

Why India and Russia 

Former Russian Prime Minister and geostrategist Yevgeniy Maksimovich Primakov proposed the concept of ‘Multipolarity’ where Russia, China and India act as concerted power against the US-imposed unipolarity. He also proposed opposition to NATO expansion and that Russia should be a prime player in the space created by the end of the Soviet Union.

The doctrine that he proposed called for the three eminent nations of Eurasia to come together. China has crossed the economic, industrial, technological and scientific threshold to be capable of producing products and technologies which dominate the world market. Beijing wishes to replace the US as the leading power in the world. China needs to realise, that US dominance is possible only because of its partnership with Europe and the dollar as the reserve currency of the world.

The world can never be multipolar as long as the reserve currency is the US dollar or Euro. The financial collapse of third-world countries like Sri Lanka is primarily because of the exchange rate of dollars which is difficult for smaller economies to manage.

The Indian foreign policy wonks have never been enthusiastic about the idea of a new reserve currency. The time for it has arrived and reportedly, BRICS nations are working towards it.

The World is witnessing a gradual transition from ‘Unipolarity’ to ‘multipolarity’. Whatever has been established with force, can be replaced by force only.

For a truly ‘multipolar’ world, India needs to acquire military, economic, technological and scientific self-sufficiency which it cannot achieve on its own. It needs a partner with deep sharing, a partnership akin to what the US and UK share. The most suitable country given India’s shared technology, trust and global challenges is Russia. To develop a deep, long-term relationship, both countries would have to overcome some serious challenges.

Challenges and Vision 

During the last annual summit, India and Russia reiterated their desires for co-production, co-development and cooperative research in various fields including ten years-long military-technical cooperation. (see box)

Two countries have reiterated similar plans during their previous summits, yet many of the major plans like Medium Transport Aircraft, Fifth gen fighters etc didn’t work out. Both sides have different reasons for the non-execution of projects. On the other hand, BrahMos, a co-development project, is an astonishing success. A model worth emulating.

For a decade or so, Indian defence purchases have been guided by ‘not putting all eggs in the same basket’ which is absurd given the very nature of the defence business. Defence purchases require deep trust, long-term partnership and full support during conflict. Given the sanction regime of the west, using western weapons against a western ally would come with sanctions and denial of support during wars. And given the unwillingness of western suppliers to sell their latest weapons, any big-ticket purchases with such country makes no sense. Lastly, if the pie is divided among many nations then India would not be a big enough customer for anyone to command loyalty. In the last two decades, none of the global competitive tenders has worked out well. Most big-ticket purchases are through government-to-government deals.

The biggest drawback of buying from various nations is managing supplies, which comes with maintaining cordial relationships under all circumstances. This is not a good situation to be for a major nation with global aspirations.

As India is moving towards self-reliance, given the paucity of technology within the local industry, co-development with foreign partners is a must. This is where India and Russia will have to iron out the challenges. India would have to let go of indecisiveness. It must think through but once decided must commit to a project and demand a similar commitment.

Indian industry does not possess the capability to design high-tech equipment. India needs to identify areas of co-development and move with firmness and Russia also needs to understand Indian demand for co-developing and sharing of core technology.

India is not a resource-rich nation like Russia. India will never be able to enter into the club of the developed nations through self-reliance or service export. India needs to develop products which command the global market. China has reached this stage.  

In the current scenario, replacing global big-wig is not possible for Indian companies. What Samsung did with Nokia is the way forward. Master the upcoming technology and capture the future global market through home-grown products.

This is where Russian expertise in cutting-edge science, engineering and technology would be of help. Indian technologists and engineers have developed quite an expertise working at India-based western companies’ development centres. It’s time to leverage each other’s strengths.

Why Russia-India?

India and China are adversaries as long as China does not change its approach towards Ladakh, Himalayas and Pakistan. The two nations share over $100 billion in trade, yet, the Indian market is not big enough to discourage China from troubling India. This leaves India with two options, Russia and the West for a long-term comprehensive strategic partnership.

India cannot have a comprehensive strategic partnership with both. Over the years,India has signed so many strategic partnerships that the word has lost its meaning.

The gap between India and the West makes New Delhi a junior partner. The relationship would be similar to what Japan and South Korea share. Given its size, India may not have to surrender full strategic independence but to large extent. Do the people of India want that? Except for highly westernised urban upper middle class not many.

The situation with Russia is the same. For obvious reasons, Russia cannot have a strategic partnership with the West which leaves it with only two options – India and China. The current bilateral relationship is much tilted towards Beijing. In the long term, the situation is expected to worsen. With China eyeing Central Asia, the tension between the two is inevitable.  

Finally, the world is moving away from a carbon economy and for energy exporters like Russia; it’s going to be tough in future. Although the country is self-sufficient in all aspects and with global warming opening up the arctic, northern Russia could be a money minter. Despite such possibilities, Russia would have to export goods to replace energy export.

In this transition period, new products would replace the old products and new companies would emerge. Designing products is not just about knowing technology but also about culture. Some societies are capable of more flexible thinking which helps in developing products with global appeal. Indian may not be good at developing technologies and cutting-edge research but are good at marketing products to consumers, all thanks to exposure to western MNCs. Indian consumer goods are at par with the west.

In the last 70 years, India has missed two generations of industrialisation. India cannot afford to miss another industrial revolution (4.0). India somehow managed to catch the software bandwagon which earned a lot of dollars. It should not miss the fourth Industrial revolution and for which India and Russia can be a good partners provided they develop a long-term vision.

Finally 

Global warming would open the arctic and shuffle food production centres. No one can guess with certainty how things would pan out but India and Russia must think about controlling the two oceans surrounding Eurasia. It sounds big but not as big as the idea of British Empire.

For a multipolar world, rich and powerful India and Russia are a must and a multipolar world is a must for the two nations to manage their regions of influence with dignity. No one should be able to threaten us with sanctions in future.