Western nagging will not ease India's Russia-China dilemma
Anxiety over New Delhi's unwillingness to condemn Ukraine attack is mostly overdone
James Crabtree is executive director of IISS-Asia in Singapore. He is author of "The Billionaire Raj."
India's unwillingness to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine is causing irritation in the United States.
"It remains unprepared to step up to major power responsibilities," as Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, put it. "Disappointing as well as shortsighted given the rise of China."
Such unhappiness is understandable. Yet India's actions actually stem from the opposite cause, namely grappling with the trade-offs that come with being an increasingly powerful Indo-Pacific player.
New Delhi's problem is that fierce international condemnation of Russia is now making these trade-offs more acute, limiting its ability to develop a coherent policy approach to China in particular.
India's unwillingness to criticize Russia was clear from its abstention in a U.S.-sponsored United Nations resolution deploring Russian "aggression" on Feb. 26. That vote capped weeks of halfhearted diplomatic statements.
All this caught the West off-guard. India has of late moved closer to the U.S. and various major European powers as it seeks leverage to balance China. Many in those Western capitals believed, incorrectly, that having India as a partner in the Indo-Pacific would bring reciprocal support in Europe.
Their new realization has renewed old doubts about India's reliability, not least given its central role in the anti-China Quad grouping, along with Australia, Japan and the U.S. If New Delhi is unwilling to condemn an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the thinking goes, might it prove unreliable in a crisis over Taiwan?
Much of this anxiety is overdone. India's shift toward the West is genuine, as of course are its profound concerns about China. Recent events may even have the positive side effect of revealing India's core interests as they actually are, and not as many in the West would wish them to be.
Ever since the Cold War, India and Russia have held a close relationship, or a "special and privileged strategic partnership," to give it its present title. Despite his anxiety over COVID-19, President Vladimir Putin even visited New Delhi briefly last December, in part to seek assurances that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new friendship with U.S. President Joe Biden would not come at his own expense.
New Delhi also shares more of a geopolitical outlook with Moscow than its newer friends might like to admit. Modi, like Putin, would welcome a new multipolar world in which India is a major pole. Modi would also be perfectly happy with renewed spheres of influence too, just so long as South Asia is his own sphere.
India then has particular worries about China and Russia drawing closer together, something that events in Ukraine make all-but-certain. The prospect of tighter Russian ties with Pakistan is another concern for New Delhi, where few will have missed President Imran Khan's awkward eve-of-invasion trip to Moscow.
Most crucial of all, India is reliant on Russian arms, which accounts for more than half of its weapons imports, creating various profound dilemmas for Indian security. Modi remains vulnerable to Chinese military pressure, for instance, which Beijing can ratchet up across the Himalayas or in the Indian Ocean.
Hopes of deterring this rely in large part on those same Russian arms imports, including resupplies during any conflict. The risk that China and Russia might therefore cooperate against India is a troubling one.
All that said, the ferocity of international reaction against Russia now leaves New Delhi in a tricky spot. At one level, its actions could well store up problems for later, not least the distant but plausible scenario in which China recognizes the independence of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, just as Russia did with its enclaves in Ukraine.
More pressing issues concern ties with Europe. India's cerebral foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has courted nations like France and Germany, making closer alignment with Europe a major plank of his new foreign policy.
But Russia's invasion has suddenly revolutionized European attitudes to its security, as is clear from Germany's promised hike in defense spending and the European Union's willingness to send military equipment to Ukraine.
This new tough-minded and united Europe is less likely to be forgiving of countries that refuse to speak up in favor of international rules or support the current European security order. Having built ties with Europe so carefully, India must weigh which relationships matter most. It may conclude that sticking close to Putin is a bad bet.
Finally, and most critically, there is the question of whether heavy reliance on Russian arms remains in India's long-term interests. Recent events make clear that this curtails its strategic autonomy, an objective New Delhi prizes above all. Moves to diversify arms supplies will take time, but it nonetheless seems a likely outcome of the current crisis.
For the West, the question is how hard should it press India on Ukraine?
Playing hardball risks damaging a relationship that remains critical to balancing China in the Indo-Pacific. A better approach would be to recognize that India's security dilemmas with respect to Russia and China are real while working with New Delhi to reduce its long-term dependence on Russian weaponry.
It would also help to remember that New Delhi's core interests overlap with the West only up to a point and to plan on that basis in the future.