India’s Strategic Autonomy and Doctrine of Neutrality: A Critical Discussion
Practising diplomacy is a multi-variabled accommodation of interests. But at its most intrinsic, its concern is the relative advancement of particular nation-states. India exemplifies this, and therein lies a specific problem. While India avows neutrality, it actively maintains strategic multilateralism. The functionality of this approach is twofold. India reserves the right to determine its national interest by engaging in, as well as selectively abstaining from international affairs. At its core, this is a carefully curated transactionalism without the promise of equal reciprocity, and without subscribing to formal alliances. Take India’s stance on Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine 2022. The ruling polemic was, and remains, that India’s dependence on Russian oil for its energy security culminated in its failure to condemn Russian attacks on Ukraine’s territory. Yet, for India, its practice of foreign policy has hardly ever been that conditional. In this instance, it is difficult to claim that India failed to acknowledge the plight of war-ravaged Ukraine, since India’s aid supplies to Ukraine have proven otherwise.
As a descriptive heuristic, what is apparent from this instance is that India’s strategic posturing is essentially a structural hybrid insofar as it is concerned about preserving its national interests. But resultantly, it is this very attribute that makes it an obfuscatory participant in international relations, culminating in a reluctance to speak in definitive terms about global politics. As a policy of non-interference, this works well. But seen alongside India’s tendency towards espousing moralpolitik, the stance makes it an indulgent bystander of geopolitical crises. In that sense, India’s calibrated reticence, as a policy of material restraint has earned the ire of global onlookers who thought India’s voice ought to carry weight.
Even so, if we regard that any strategic alignment is a political calculation of material and security interests, it is not morally reprehensible for India to appropriate it. With the nation-state acquiring a sudden preponderance in contemporary global affairs, India, too, has toed a similar line. India has pursued a course of flexible multilateralism over the last few years, through associations like the QUAD and BIMSTEC, which has kept it circumstantially relevant as a bulwark against Chinese ascendancy in its neighborhood. Now the question is whether India’s official doctrine of neutrality holds, as it tilts towards greater global integration.
India’s neutrality is regulated by two factors: its continued territorial integrity and economic sustenance. Its defense partnerships are contingent on mutual arms deals and logistical cooperation rather than direct military intervention as stipulated by blocs such as NATO. Their limitations, however, become apparent when India seeks support on third party encroachments in the North East, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh from its traditional allies and strategic partners. This leaves India at a complex crossroads: its partnerships do not invite external intervention, but are mindful of its allies’ viewpoints. Readers would remember the days of political quagmire in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack in Kashmir last year, when India’s military reprisal in Pakistan and ensuing cross country attacks were supposedly resolved by President Trump. The crypticism of that incident aside, the implied suggestion was clear: that India’s allies could still determine its battles on its behalf. The projection of such a view is damaging, both for strategic alignments and India’s neutrality.
That said, for India, its non-aligned stance is not facing a crisis of faith as much as it is battling a crisis of self-categorization.
What we must understand here is that India’s primordial doctrine of neutrality has taken a hit: its nature has changed to keep up with the compulsions of 21st century global politics; an era where each nation-state tries to secure geopolitical vantage points for itself. India’s neighborhood is volatile and has become gradually hostile to what it perceives as India’s aspirations for regional hegemony. Pakistan’s bonhomie with the United States; its symbolic relevance as mediator in the US-Israel-Iran War; Bangladesh’s internal political turbulence with its dispensation’s pugilist hostility towards India; Nepal’s proximate ties with China – all coalesce as critical factors for India’s diplomatic designs. In such an environment, India’s strategic autonomy cannot be sustained by regional relationships alone. Therefore, India’s ties to the global powers cannot be seen as unreasonable. They serve as a reminder that selective diplomacy is often mindful of alliances - not for their possible involvement in managing India’s external relations, but for their resourcefulness. By practising this brand of disengaged multilateralism, India has made sure to address its immediate existential concerns, though it has failed to adhere to its own normative standards.
Nonetheless, India’s license to settle its external relations is a quiet admonishment of its non-aligned posture. On the one hand, there appears a bureaucratic inadmissibility of India’s new geopolitical concerns. On the other hand, there is a quizzical apprehension surrounding India’s foreign policy, especially in the subcontinent where India’s ties to the Global North is not viewed as laudable. Particularly so, in the face of South Asia and the greater neighborhood becoming a new theatre of geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. Perhaps, it is owing to the fact that as the flagbearer of independent, post-colonial states and as a founder member of the Non-Aligned Movement, India was expected to take the mantle of non-partisanship forward. But India’s maneuvering, as its local counterparts opt for greater global integration, is not a burden that will be shared by the South Asian brotherhood, and as such the paradox of India’s self-determination through the variable coefficients of internationalism, remains. The only consolation for the project of Indian neutrality and strategic realignment may therefore be a redefinition – something akin to Chinese socialism with Chinese characteristics.