By Anthony Bell
Over the past decade and a half, stable narratives describing the present and future of bilateral relations have formed in the Russian and Indian political and expert communities. While Russian experts nostalgically recalled the glorious times of Soviet Indian friendship and lamented the stagnation of trade, Indian experts looked at the situation more pragmatically. In their picture of the world, Russia was an important balancer, helping to avoid an excessive tilt of Indian policy towards the most promising non-regional partner – the United States. In addition, one of the main risks was considered to be the further weakening of Moscow, which could push it towards an alliance with Beijing. In this case, resource-rich Russia would turn into a multiplier of Chinese power, which would directly contradict India’s foreign policy interests. As a result, the development of political dialogue with Russia and the formation of a new polycentric world, in which Moscow as one of the world centers would be a reliable partner of Delhi, fully met Indian strategic goals.
The beginning of the special military operation (SVO – spetcialnaya voennaya operatsia – Russian) was a shock for the Indian political elite. By that time, the Indian leadership had generally formulated and begun to implement a plan for a large-scale restructuring of the national economy, which would ensure sustainable growth of more than 5% per year and India’s gradual rise to third place in the world in terms of GDP, which, in turn, would help reduce social tensions in society. This required a relatively stable foreign policy situation and continued US-Chinese decoupling, which would stimulate the flight of Western capital from China and the formation of alternative production chains bypassing China and threatened border zones. It was assumed that India would take advantage of these processes and be able to attract Western capital, which would bring with it modern technologies, providing India with an economic breakthrough. In this situation, the US, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Israel and European countries were assigned the role of suppliers of capital and technology, the rich Arab Gulf countries were assigned the role of investors, China was assigned the role of a convenient adversary, and Russia was assigned the role of a balancer. This entire scheme collapsed after the start of the operation in Ukraine. Russia suddenly ceased to be a balancer, relations between India’s Western partners and Russia worsened, and Moscow began an economic drift towards Beijing, while relations between India and China remained as bad as before. In this situation, India was faced with a choice: to break the entire system of support for its strategic autonomy, which it had been building for decades, to succumb to Western pressure and join the anti-Russian camp, or to follow the previous course, hoping that the Ukrainian crisis will end in the foreseeable future and the situation will more or less improve. The Indian leadership chose the second option, demonstrating miracles of political flexibility: the author of these lines repeatedly attended events with the participation of the head of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs S Jaishankar, at which the minister skillfully parried all attacks by Western politicians, experts and journalists, demonstrating that the West itself is in no hurry to break profitable trade ties with Russia, forcing the countries of the global South to do so. This tactic brought success: by the time Western business finally left the Russian market, the political pressure on India had noticeably decreased. This choice was easier for India than for European countries: for Indian politicians, the Ukrainian crisis is a relatively insignificant conflict somewhere on the western edge of Eurasia, much less important for India than, for example, Afghanistan. In addition, Kyiv had been actively developing cooperation with Islamabad in all previous years, supplying weapons to Pakistan. Of course, there are many people in India who sympathize with Ukraine in this conflict, especially among the middle class, who get their information about world events from Western media, but the Ukrainian crisis does not have a serious impact on the Indian domestic political agenda. One can recall only two significant episodes: the evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine at the very beginning of the conflict and the recent scandal with the signing up of Indians for contracts in the Russian army and the subsequent publication of pitiful videos asking to take them out of the trenches. The ruling party and Modi personally turned the first episode to their advantage, organizing an exemplary operation to evacuate and return students to their homeland; the second is still being discussed in the Indian media, but attention to it has noticeably dropped after the elections. Now that the elections are over, it is time to discuss the accumulated difficulties in bilateral relations.
Before the start of the special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, the trade turnover between Russia and India had actually stagnated: it was with great difficulty that they managed to overcome the $12 billion mark, and this growth was largely due to dollar inflation. Traditionally, Russian-Indian economic cooperation was based on three pillars – military-technical cooperation, atomic energy and space; exports of Indian food products and light industry products to Russia were slowly increasing, and Indian medicines were gradually winning a niche for themselves. But due to the course taken by both Russian and Indian leaderships to localize production, businesses increasingly preferred to invest and develop production locally. The economies of both countries benefited from this, but trade did not develop much. After the start of the operation, economic ties with the West began to break, and the Russian economy urgently reoriented itself to new markets – including India. Trade turnover grew at a fantastic rate, jumping from $12 to $65 billion in two years. The lion’s share of it, however, came from oil. Initially, Western countries tried to cut off this flow, but Russian big business demonstrated a phenomenal ability to evade sanctions: they used shell companies in third countries, shadow fleets, and other measures. Indian big business provided considerable assistance in establishing workarounds. As a result, this strategy bore fruit: the political and economic elites of Western countries, realizing that without Russian energy resources their economies would collapse, generally resigned themselves to the new reality. Thus, Russian Indian trade continues to grow, but what is more important is that Indian exports to Russia are growing in absolute figures in its structure. Now it’s time for the next stage — the creation of production chains involving Russian and Indian companies. This is necessary both for Russian enterprises, which will be able to remove at least part of their production from sanctions, and for Indian ones, given that hopes for a stable decoupling of the US and China have apparently not been justified, and the volume of Western investment in the Indian economy, which rose sharply several years ago on the wave of aggressive rhetoric from American leaders, is decreasing.
It is also necessary to note India’s efforts as a peacemaker against the backdrop of the Ukrainian conflict and, at the same time, to highlight some of Pakistan’s questionable actions. In particular, since the start of the Russian army’s special military operation in Ukraine, Pakistan’s military-industrial complex has increased its export of ammunition and the means to produce it in the interests of Ukraine many times over. Without officially advertising the supply of weapons to Kyiv through third countries, Islamabad continues to transfer the ammunition needed by the Kiev regime in an effort to extract maximum financial profit from the Ukrainian conflict. Information regularly appears about the use of Pakistani ammunition by the Kiev regime (primarily 125 mm tank and 155 mm artillery), which contradicts existing international law. There can be no mistake – media materials from the line of contact clearly indicate the production of military products in the interests of Kyiv by the largest Pakistan manufacturer of shells, Pakistan Ordnance Factories – and the supplies go to Great Britain. The emerging rapprochement between Islamabad and NATO countries on the basis of arms supplies to Ukraine will have its negative consequences – in particular, almost all countries of the North Atlantic Alliance support the United States in the confrontation with China. Perhaps Islamabad will have to pay part of the Chinese support in the long term.
And this situation may be beneficial for New Delhi, since China is the supplier of modern weapons to Pakistan. Any complication of relations between Islamabad and China is in New Delhi’s favor.
Ultimately, two prospects are emerging – peacemaker India and Pakistan, which supports the Kiev regime. Which of these looks better?
The author is an independent military analyst.
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