Latest / Prof James Ker-Lindsay / 001. Why Doesn't India Take Sides? | How Nations Think

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001. Why Doesn't India Take Sides? | How Nations Think · Prof James Ker-Lindsay

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to How Nations Think with me, James Carlindsey.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: In each episode, my guest and I take a deep dive into a country's foreign policy, exploring the key events, figures, and factors that have shaped its view of the world.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: India is emerging as one of the world's great powers.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: But its foreign policy has rarely followed a simple path.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: During the Cold War, it championed non-alignment while building close ties with the Soviet Union.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: More recently, it's drawn nearer to the United States while confronting an increasingly powerful China.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yet these relationships now seem to be shifting.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, what explains India's distinctive approach to the world?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: How has its foreign policy evolved from Nehru and Indira Gandhi through to Narendra Modi?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what does India ultimately want from the international order?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: To discuss all this, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and author of Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped US-India Relations during the Cold War.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Tanvi.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this is a really difficult place to start when we talk about India because it's a country which obviously has so much history and such an uh an interesting and crucial history.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think probably the best point is to say when it became independent in the late 1940s, what were the main factors that you would say were driving uh the new country's uh foreign policy on the and and some of the key issues as it saw it?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um one thing that really I found fascinating and I hadn't really realized before is that India was amongst just a small, I think there were only four countries that was actually officially uh a member of the United Nations before it became fully independent.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it had already had a little bit of an exposure, if you like, even in those last years of British colonial rule.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and how did that, for example, also shape the way that it approached the world?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks, James.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be on the show.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an important place to start and an important question to start with.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because if if you were India's founding fathers and mothers in 1947, um, you came into a world uh that wasn't uh wasn't what you might have uh liked.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but you know, it's the old kind of uh Donald Rumsfeld's phrase, I think, which is, you know, you work with the with the situation you you you have rather than the one you wished for.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the important factor for just the chronology for India, it becomes independence, independent a couple of years after the Second World War, um, an experience that had touched India uh in many ways, including the fact that Indians uh had fought and died uh around the world, but also uh India's uh India had helped pay for Britain's uh Britain's participation in that war.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it was partly kind of coming out of the Second World War, but this is also India becomes independent as uh kind of Cold War lines are hardening.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you start to see the US-Soviet competition really start to, you know, Truman's, Harry Truman's uh 1947 speech uh happens just a few months before uh India becomes independent.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think so there's on the one hand, it's the strategic environment in which India is operating that helps shape its foreign policy, a bipolar confrontation that's dominating the world.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, you also have India coming at these problems from uh as uh as a post-colonial state.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's thinking, so it's basically the intersection of kind of Cold War bipolar confrontation, but then the decolonization process that intersects into kind of Indian, Indian foreign policy developing.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And on that, there's on similarly an Indian view at that time from both the right and left and center as well, about India as a as a civilizational state that before uh British Empire or before the colonial experience for Indians had been a dominant economic power in the world, uh, going back thousands of years.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then, second, at the same time, a set of policymakers who had to grapple with the strategic environment, had the historical view of India as a great power, but then had to had some immediate concerns, including nation building, uh putting together a country uh that didn't even have borders settled at that point.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So where this intersects is where this kind of how this manifests itself is an India that says uh we need to uh nation build, we need to develop, we need to secure our uh our frontiers, and we need to do this uh while the world might be blowing up uh all around us.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And unlike China, which in its past had kind of you know kept foreigners towards its periphery, towards the coasts, uh, and uh India didn't have that luxury.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: It had always had this experience, whether because it was a largely maritime country, but even continentally, it understood and its policymakers understood that India couldn't stay apart or aloof from what was happening in the world.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: There was this belief that if there was a crisis anywhere, it would affect, it would spill over into India, that uh a war anywhere could potentially become a world war, and that would disrupt that nation building.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so you saw in India that wasn't staying apart, that did want to be involved in things like the UN in uh international order building, uh, to keep the peace and stability, not because of something idealistic, but very pragmatically because India needed peace and stability to grow and develop and secure itself.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you saw in India that also said it did not want to join alliances because for two reasons.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: One, its experience of the or its view of the Second World War was, or at least Nehru's view, the first prime minister's view, was that because of alliances, this war in Europe had become a global war.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And second, the view that as a post-colonial country, as a country, a newly independent country, India wanted to retain independence of action.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it never wanted to be taken to war again uh uh based on somebody else's interest.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the short form was the decision should be made in New Delhi, not in London, Washington, uh, or Moscow.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that sort of ties in very much uh with the idea of non-alignment and it it's it's move to become um sort of quite an influential member of that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh was that something that was, from the sounds of it, it it had quite widespread support in the country at the time, at the political leadership.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was certainly the dominant view.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I would point out there's never really been a consensus view on pretty much anything in India, including foreign policy.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but the dominant view was that um largely India uh non-alignment wasn't that you wouldn't align when it suited you uh with certain countries or blocs, uh, but it meant that you would not join an alliance, uh which, and especially either the Warsaw Pact or NATO at that point, or kind of the US-led system, uh, including in Asia, where there were bilateral alliances developing.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea was that for India that they understood that India needed partners, um, that uh to grow, to to uh to even build a defense industrial based, uh, to develop its economy.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So at that time, India needed food and economic assistance uh and technical assistance as uh the first government really wanted to develop India's own technologies and strategic technologies.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And for those reasons that uh they needed partners, they could not do it alone.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, in an ideal view, Indian practitioners, uh policy practitioners have always wanted to, you know, they call it self-reliance.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and there's a word for it in Hindi called Atman Ibhta, being not, you know, not dependent on anybody else, being self-reliant.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: But there was an understanding that India would have to be dependent or at least open itself to partnerships for its objectives.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so the idea for India was you didn't want to do this by partnering with only one set of countries, because that would take away your freedom of action.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially what India did is try to reduce dependence where possible or diversify that dependence uh where they needed to so that they would retain that freedom of action.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that that diversification strategy under uh underlay that manifested itself into non-alignment, but it was essentially a diversification strategy.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: We mean US, uh, you know, retaining ties with the West, uh with the Eastern Bloc, but also with what we call today the global south, but was that kind of non-aligned world that ended up into the non-aligned movement, though India itself, interestingly, never really wanted uh uh the non-aligned movement to coalesce into a movement because it saw that as a block that would constrain India down the line.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this sort of naturally brings us on to uh a few of the central issues that have emerged in in Indian foreign policy at a neighborhood level, which of course uh the relationship with Pakistan and the relationship with China and how that in turn feds through uh to its relationship between the two superpowers.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all the viewers will be aware that India fought a series of wars with Pakistan, but also uh a war with China as well, that is is often forgotten about, I think, um, certainly looked at from the West.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how did those relationships uh evolve and what did that do to Indian foreign policy over the course of the 1950s and 60s?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: It deeply affected Indian policymakers' view of the world, and it was also the subject of debate within in terms of how much to partner with others to secure uh India's uh borders, for instance.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it deeply affected it even at the start because India emerges from uh uh from kind of the partition of India uh in 1947, uh, but also uh with borders that are uh disputed uh by Pakistan, for one.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: But also after the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1950, India uh suddenly has a direct border and an undemarcated border, to this day, mind you, uh has this undemarcated border, an unsettled border with China as well.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a country that is trying to nation build, but the the the kind of border boundaries of that nation are still not settled in some ways.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you see is starting in 1948-49, uh, where you start to see the first Pakistani attempt to take over Kashmir, the war then uh to then another India, uh Pakistan war in 1965, and then eventually in 1971, you also see a war with China in 1962.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: There are other issues involved, but these come down to in part those unsettled borders.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this did a few different things uh for in terms of the Indian debate.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: For one, um, it made security uh a key uh a key priority at the start.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: It also meant that not as much as, say, the Pakistani military did, but that the that the Indian um Indian policymakers who might have wanted to spend almost all their money on development uh and on the economy uh did have to dedicate a certain amount to defense.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so this there's this long-running debate that you have within the Indian foreign policy and economic establishment about how do you uh divvy up that buy between defense and development.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: It also leads to an interesting foreign policy debate among India's kind of initial set of policymakers on whether India should be uh focused on dealing with the Pakistan challenge or dealing with the China challenge.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one Indian uh, in fact, India's kind of first deputy prime minister, um, he didn't live too long, but very, very influential figure, uh Neru's equal in many ways, he argued that China was going to be the bigger challenge for India, and that's where the focus should be.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: He and others who thought who were like-minded with him also argued that India should align with the West to be able to uh tackle both its China and Pakistan challenges.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there were some in the Communist Party, there were communist parties in India at this time.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: They argued that India should align with the Soviet Union, but the debate was really about how far to partner with uh with the West at that point.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh nonetheless, that didn't happen, but you did see these debates over time in the course of uh these uh uh uh India's kind of contentious relationships, at least during the the first kind of 30 years or so of Indian uh actually 30 to 40 years of Indian independence, uh there are two other effects that this that the these China and Pakistan challenges uh uh manifest themselves in.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: One is India and Nehru at that time, you know, wanted to support the developing United Nations and takes the issue of Kashmir, which was the contentious both India and Pakistan claimed it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: He took it to the United Nations.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but found that while he was taking it as an international order issue, this could be sorted out at this new body, uh, that their geopolitics shaped how, for example, Britain and the United States uh uh uh dealt with this issue.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so you saw India regretting to this day taking that issue to the United Nations.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not that India doesn't support the UN system after that, but you see that it gets, you know, that that balance of power issue, the geopolitics starts to uh shape its understanding of how even these international order issues and international organizations would operate.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It eventually also ends up in India uh partnering with the Soviet Union, which for many years helped veto things that were considered anti-India.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that was part of how India and Soviet Union built this relationship, was the Soviet veto become became an important uh uh aspect of that partnership.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the one other thing I think I would say is you see that growing China challenge from about the mid to late 1950s for India eventually uh resulting in a in the 1962 war.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's eventually sorted out, but the the constant concern about China and the need for an insurance policy, uh, that some India would have a patron or partner that would help it if China attacked India again, that led to India actually aligning initially in the 1960s with the United States, and then after 1971 with the Soviet Union.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so you did see these two aspects mean that India had to be flexible.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it wouldn't ally with either of these countries, uh, but it would align very closely with these countries to be able to deal with the China challenge that grew for India over time.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a number of huge figures of obviously in Indian history and Indian foreign policy.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: You already mentioned uh Nehru, but it brings us on to the the, if you like, the next huge figure, which was Indira Gandhi.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that point you made about the 1971 war uh with Pakistan, which of course led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh, uh, was incredibly significant.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: How did Indian foreign policy emerge um and and develop under under Indira Gandhi over over the well I guess the next decade and a half?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: She first comes to power in kind of the mid to late 1960s, and she's actually dismissed as a figure, saying, you know, they the phrase that some of the other Congress party um folks would use for her.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they let her become the prime minister, or they they enabled it, thinking that she would be the phrase they use translated to dumb doll.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she outsmarted all of them, but one of the ways she did that is she moves towards the left economically.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, on foreign policy, she's actually much more consistent initially, and her instinct is still uh to maintain that diversified portfolio of partners, not wanting to align, not wanting to give either the Soviet Union or the US extra leverage on India.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you see that she's fairly pragmatic.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: When India needed food and economic assistance, um, she uh she she comes to the US and she makes uh uh all the right noises uh to be able to get that aid.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: But then she goes to the Soviet Union and she works.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she balances out the US, uh uh the the closeness with the US at that point as well.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So her instinct is still to remain maintain that kind of freedom of action.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so initially, when she comes in, even though she's moving to the left economically, on foreign policy, when the Soviet Union goes to her, at this point, uh their own relationship with China had deteriorated.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: The Sino-Soviet split is in full, uh in full play.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they have these uh direct clashes in 1969.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, the Soviet Union to kind of wanted to tie up with India, and so they take a treaty to her uh and want her to sign a Sino-India, sorry, a Soviet-India-Soviet treaty.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: She actually says no initially.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so she doesn't want to move away from that kind of more independent role or become more dependent on the Soviet Union or upset the West beyond the point, which was still not just the US, Europe as well, a partner for India economically in particular.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what she does is uh she she maintains both these ties.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: But in 1971, when there is an impending India-Pakistan war, uh, with the prospect that, like in the 1965 war, that the Chinese would uh threaten to intervene on behalf of Pakistan.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: When that becomes imminent, India goes to the US and says, look, we we've had this implicit security assurance from you uh that you would, if China attacked India, we would engage in mutual consultations to deal with that.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Does that assurance still stand?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the signal India has given is no, it would not, because this comes up in 1971, when the US is in the middle of a rapprochement process with China.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so when India then needs a new insurance policy against the Chinese, that's when they dust off the draft of this India-Soviet treaty.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then you see this uh it is really the turning point in the India-Soviet relationship, where you see after that, for the next kind of 20 years, an India, Russia or Soviet and then Russia relationship uh that becomes quite close.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, mind you, uh Indira Gandhi's never quite comfortable with that overdependence.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so she does a few things in the 70s and then the 80s.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: She tries to diversify, you know, reset ties, improve ties again with the US, which had reached a real low point when the US backed Pakistan and China during that 1971 war.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: But she tries to repair those ties uh and stabilize them, so does to her successors.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then you also see another thing that happens, which is uh she also tries to deepen ties with other Asian countries.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but India makes another move, which is that is when the decision really to make to move ahead with uh India's had had a nuclear program, um, even going back to the 50s and 1960s.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a decision made in uh 1972 or so uh to to kind of pursue the nuclear weapons option.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and part of that is uh not wanting to be overdependent on any external partner, whether that was the US or Soviet Union, because it comes to India's mind that they're just fundamentally unreliable.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: So India needed an independent nuclear deterrent.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I think you know that that is obviously a huge uh development in in so many ways.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think it also sort of ties in with the end of the Cold War.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we we get to sort of like 1990, uh, the Soviet Union is collapsing, obviously finishes in 1991.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um that fundamental relationship that India had had with the Soviet Union is obviously sort of comes to an end.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: You you'd sort of spoke a little bit about Russia, but also, you know, it was confronted with an entirely new world.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it didn't declare as a nuclear power uh until sort of later later in that decade.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: But how how did that end of the Cold War really affect how India saw the world and how it interacted with with other countries?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you look back at kind of India's uh first, you know, the first um maybe um I would say the first 50 years of India's uh uh being an independent state, what you see is two shocks to the system uh that people often highlight.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: One was the 1962 war with China.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which, and it's a shock because India is defeated.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: If it had, you know, uh come out, if there'd been a draw of India had won, maybe it wouldn't have had that impact.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the second uh really turning point in some ways uh was not just the breakup of uh kind of the Warsaw Pact, but then the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, India had already started to reform uh in the 1980s.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: It had also started to diversify its partnerships uh with the you know, uh uh kind of repairing ties with the US, deepening ties uh with some European countries, trying to look for alternate sources of military equipment.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, the Soviet Union had been India's, had become India's primary supplier of defense equipment, but India had started to explore France, the UK, and others.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um you'd seen that process start, but when the Soviet Union collapses, uh it and it's also when it happens.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: It happens around the time uh that the Gulf War, the kind of the first Gulf War, the uh Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, a spiking of oil prices, and India imported even then a significant portion of its oil.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you see is the collapse of the Soviet Union um putting, making a big shock or uh one stress on kind of India's foreign policy because it had been India's primary partner.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Even despite these attempts to diversify, it had remained so um because there weren't too many other countries interested in India.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you see on the foreign policy side, suddenly you go from this bipolar world to this unipolar world that India then has to grapple with.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the second thing that was happening is because the Soviet Union had been an economic partner for India as well.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And on top of that, you see these oil, this oil price spike.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: It leads to a major financial crisis in India, a balance of payments crisis, that essentially pushes India to liberalize its economy in a much more fundamental way.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see in this kind of 1989 to 1991 to process these two kind of strains.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: One, India needing to uh review and diversify its foreign policy uh for a unipolar world.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it had to adapt to that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it and second, to liberalize its economy, including through attracting foreign investment and trading more.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that meant a very different outlook to the world, uh, rethinking the US, uh, rethinking, adapting to the new Russia.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was frankly, as far as India was concerned, far more interested in the West than it was India, and then having to think about what to do about China, as well as things starting to see most of East Asia and Southeast Asia as a source of where to kind of develop economic ties.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a real, it's a real turning point.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually those steps, even the disappearance of the Soviet Union and uh uh Russia's interests in the West, it leads to India eventually, and and you know, India's China and Pakistan problems haven't disappeared.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you see in the 1990s, uh, eventually a couple of times India tried to test nuclear weapons, and then in 1998, it really does, it goes ahead and tests those nuclear weapons, becoming a de facto at least nuclear weapon states.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that you can see is perhaps it would always happen, but perhaps accelerated by this idea that your main patrons had had patron head or partner had disappeared.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you you mentioned um the difficulties of uh adjusting from that bipolar world to that unipolar world, and I I think that sort of brings in that that element of that change relationship with the with the United States, and and how did that evolve um uh throughout the 1990s and at the turn of the millennium?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: That you know, having lost the Soviet Union, which had been such a vital partner, uh, trying to navigate into the world, and and and perhaps some of the other relationships.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned about Europe, for example.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how did India begin engaging with the European Union, which of course by that point was becoming also uh a more cohesive actor in terms of foreign policy?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you see is the 1990s are kind of a period of flux for, I suspect, everybody in some ways.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's that time between uh the collapse of the Soviet Union and uh another kind of turning point, at least globally, which was the September 11th attacks and uh uh how that changed some of the situation, including in South Asia, of course.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: But what you see is this period in the 1990s where India is interested in doing more with the US, but the US is far more interested in China than it is it was in the 80s as well.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also the other thing that the Bush the Clinton administration in particular, the focus had been on, you know, some of these issues, there were interventions, military interventions in many parts of the world.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was sorting out the post-Cold War European kind of the borders, the, you know, the wars in out of the collapse of Yugoslavia as or the breakup of Yugoslavia as well.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you'd also seen an emphasis in the Clinton administration on kind of global issues, including uh uh non-proliferation and a big focus.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: So initially, you actually have uh an India that sees the US, yes, as a partner, it would like to tie up to attract more US investment, but a difficult partner um because of India's uh uh uh American concern about um uh Indian, uh India potentially testing its nuclear weapons.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then eventually, when in 1998, uh, when India tests, uh you do see um um the US and Europe uh uh uh as a whole, but almost all the P5, uh, with France being a notable exception, criticizing India for those nuclear tests, and then sanctioning India, at least the US and Europe sanctioned India.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so you start from a point where actually this is kind of another low point in US-India ties.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: But what that does is it opens up a conversation.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a conversation that then flows from uh those nuclear tests between India and the US.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: On the US part, in some ways to try to roll back India's nuclear weapons program.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: The US never succeeded in putting the genie back in the bottle.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what it does do is it from 1999, it really in the law, and this has been true from 1999 to 2024, you saw a progressively deepening relationship where the US, for many reasons, becomes more interested in India.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: In the 2000s, a growing economy, growing at 7, 8, 9, 10%, even as we were going through a global financial crisis.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: You see an India that is becoming one of the largest militaries in the world, a nuclear weapons power, space power.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: And an India that was always active in international organizations, but now had the capabilities to back it.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: US companies more interested in India as a market as well.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then people-to-people ties start to develop as the Indian diaspora and India the number of Indian students in the growth.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: So for the US, it's partly India starting to grow and a recognition that India's diplomatic choices, its economic choices, would hurt or uh harm in US interests, and so it was worth engaging, even more worth engaging.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that, and and for India, the US because starts to become crucial for its economic and technological transformation.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see the deepening.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: But so you have, and again, the people-to-people driver as well.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a fundamental thing that really drives, I think, at least I have argued, driven this relationship to be as close as it became over this 25-year period from 1999 to 2024.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: What was missing in especially the latter half of the Cold War between the US and India was yes, there was interest, yes, there were ties, yes, there was cooperation, but you didn't see strategic convergence.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what strategic convergence did, for example, you know, India had a partnership with the Soviet Union, the US had a relationship, at least for the first 20 odd years with Pakistan, and that meant for each country's strategic priorities, the other was often a problem, not an enabler or not a help.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: What you start to see progressively in a 25-year period, is that as the US and India both become concerned about a not the rise of China per se, but a rising China's assertiveness, it gives them that strategic convergence that helps do two things at least, which is one, it helps drive cooperation, including in the most sensitive domains of defense, security, intelligence cooperation.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And second, what it does, it incentivizes both sides to manage differences over Russia, over Pakistan, over trade.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what you saw is the transformation of a relationship.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if you see graphs, you see this in terms of from the year 2000 to 2024, 2025, even today, uh, just a fundamental change in this relationship in pretty much every domain.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, in some ways, even though this relationship goes back to even before India became independent, the American encounter with India goes back, it's really this 25-year period that uh it's fairly new as a relationship, uh, and it develops for India into perhaps its closest partnership.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that sort of brings us on, if you like, to the next staging post in the story, which is, you know, we've already talked of a couple of the huge figures of Indian uh politics and and how they shape foreign policy, which of course was the arrival into power of Narendra Modi in in 2014.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm aware of the controversies of the politics in internally, but it does certainly seem that he has um driven an India which has become so much more sort of self-confident, ambitious on the world stage.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how has that also shaped foreign policy?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that you know we're in a very, very curious period of flux at the moment, which we'll come on to maybe in the next question.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: But certainly that sort of that decade or so, what sort of effects did he have in reality on foreign policy?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, there's been both continuity and change since Narendra Modi has been India's prime minister uh since 2014.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think on the one hand, you've seen continuity and perhaps doubling down on that diversification strategy uh that I mentioned.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it is really the most consistent element of India's foreign policy.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't mattered which government, uh, and it's shown up in different forms.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: In the Cold War, it used to be called non-alignment.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Modi government calls it multi-alignment.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, it's a diversification strategy of maintaining a diversified portfolio of partners, which is included, and you'd asked about Europe.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Europe has always been, though it used to be that was more, India had more comfort level with individual member states and the old directoire, uh, Britain, France, Germany had closer relationships rather than the EU.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: You've seen that change too, and I'll come to that.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: But you you've essentially seen the Modi government continue uh that.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: What I think has changed over time, including this 25-year period, uh uh where you've seen that I mentioned between 99 and 2024, 20, uh where you saw essentially within that diversified portfolio progressively, and and Prime Minister Modi did this even more so, is the weight of the West within this uh portfolio grows uh pretty considerably.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh part of what happens is uh that you see uh China grow as well from about 2000, uh they start trading with each India and China start uh trading with each other for the first time, uh at least in any significant way.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Modi comes in and says he also wants to attract Chinese investment.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you see that not only does the weight of the West grow, but China starts growing.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and by the time Modi comes in, China is, if not, India's largest trading partner, second largest trading partner.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then you see, you know, Russia still very much part of it.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you see this, on the one hand, this continuity of the diversified portfolio of partners.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think you also see continuity in India's broader objectives, which have always been kind of fourfold: security, prosperity, rightful place, India taking the rightful place on the world stage, and then finally strategic autonomy or freedom of action.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: You see that, those objectives as fairly consistent.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as I said, you see the way to get there through diversification and building India's own capabilities.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the two routes to where India sees meeting this goals, uh, you know, kind of uh capability building at home and uh a partnership building uh in a diversified way.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you see that consistency.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: You see certain things, though, that change either because of Modi himself uh or because the strategic environment changes around India.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: On the one hand, you see certain issues that uh uh Modi sees differently.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: One is, or or his party, by uh which had evolved even from when they had been in power in the late 90s and early 2000s, it evolves.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: One is uh you just see uh Hindu nationalism perhaps a little bit more forward-leaning in the sense that as he's talking about, for instance, uh he will uh in the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, uh, he will go there and one of the things he will highlight is the opening of a temple there.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes a priority, that there's a large Indian diaspora, and it's something that becomes a priority.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: You've seen this most recently in France, and it's been a little bit controversial for different reasons, but again, a temple inauguration in France where you know the prime minister will appear virtually at the inaugurations.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: But that wasn't, it wasn't just about Hinduism.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes a broader emphasis on cultural connections.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you see, for instance, you know uh this as an emphasis with Southeast Asia, highlighting India's historical and cultural ties, but then a little bit of tempering of that understanding that no Southeast Asian country wants to be told, you know, your culture is derived uh from another country's.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you see this also in the emphasis on Buddhism, that India is was kind of the birthplace, along with Nepal perhaps, of the birthplace of Buddhism.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Some of this emphasis is also part of India's geopolitical and ideological competition with China, but nonetheless that.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then you see things like, you know, international India paying, putting diplomatic bandwidth and capital towards uh starting kind of an yoga day, or emphasizing that yoga is has roots in India and uh Hinduism to some extent.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see this emphasis on cultural uh factors or cultural elements.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the second thing you start to see is uh how India thinks and treats the diaspora, uh, which between people of Indian origin and and uh Indian citizens abroad uh you know is near, you know, anywhere from 25 to 30 million.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um Nehru and governments since had taken a very different approach from Mao in China.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Mao and China had taken the approach that if you're ethnic Chinese anyway, you're still Chinese.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Nehru government and all Indian governments since that, it's not that they didn't care about the diaspora, they still did, and as India's capabilities developed, you know, evacuating hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens when necessary from the Middle East.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those things had happened in the 1990s, etc.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's not that India didn't uh care about the safety of its citizens, but what you saw is India largely had this view that if you are in Indian abroad, you should be uh loyal to that government.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: You should look to that government, your host government, uh, as the primary interlocutor.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if there were issues even about safety and security, India would take it up with that government.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the and that if you were Indian anywhere, you weren't necessarily, you know, you didn't, you shouldn't look to India necessarily.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason they did that is one, India did not want uh those Indians abroad uh uh to face dual loyalty questions.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and second, they did not want the diaspora creating a problem for them with those foreign governments.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so you essentially saw India take that route.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: What you see with Modi is a change where suddenly you do see a lot more engagement directly with the Indian diaspora.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the most uh visible manifestation of these is these large rallies that Prime Minister Modi does when he is in various uh parts of the world, in the US, in Britain, even in places like France, which have a smaller diaspora, you still see these diaspora events that are much more significant.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: But that also comes with some downsides, which is you see the spillover of Indian domestic politics uh into these countries at times.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, that's another change.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other, and this is the final point I'll make on this, which is the strategic environment changes.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a Prime Minister Modi Zet uh comes in.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, mind you, he had been under uh visa sanctions in the US.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: He had not been allowed to come in.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: President Obama at the time had made the call that India was too important and had democratically elected uh Prime Minister Moli.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: He lifts those uh uh restrictions, or at least uh even if they're not legally restricted, he says that the US needs to reach out and he calls Prime Minister Moli.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the US uh continues to be back in play, and Prime Minister Moli is very pragmatic about this.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: He looks at uh the kind of relationships that India has and says the US had for India's economic and technology goals, the US was going to be crucial.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so he doesn't hold it against the US.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's a little bit of a change on the US side is that he's the first prime minister that perhaps comes in that isn't kind of a knee-jerk US skeptic.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: He had traveled in the US uh as a civilian, he had had experiences, the state he comes from, there are a lot of members of the diaspora from that state of Gujarat.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so he has a pretty international view and one that is not have doesn't have this knee-jerk skepticism in the US.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he also had this view, not just about the US, even when it comes to Israel-Palestine, which is if you have these ties and relationships, why are you hiding them?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bring them to the front.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Acknowledge that you have a close relationship with the US, acknowledge that you have a two-state solution, including a close partnership with Israel, but also that you recognize the state of Palestine.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't kind of hide it under diplomaty.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a Modi that's forward-leaning, but where you see the US also seeking India partnership.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: On the flip side, Modi who comes in wanting to deepen ties, especially economic ties with China, finds that Xi Jinping in office, uh, but also just after the global financial crisis, you see a China that's more assertive, not just in the region, but towards India.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then after Xi Jinping comes in office, the border dispute between India and China, that had been largely dormant since the early, late 1980s, early 1990s, suddenly there are multiple border crises that take place, and India accuses China, especially in the Modi government's case, it's been three or four crises, accuses China of violating the agreements that between the two countries and trying to change the status quo on the ground.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that Indian attempt, Modi's attempt to not just attract, he saw China as an economic opportunity.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: He then comes to see China as, and not just him, previous government.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that evolves over the Modi government's uh tenure in the last 12 years, which is seeing China more as an economic vulnerability than an economic opportunity.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then, second, that China was not going to be that Asia for Asian partnership was not uh going to be possible, and that India needed a much more robust partnership, not just with the US, but other like-minded, like Japan, like Australia, and eventually Europe as well, uh, needed those set of partnerships, not just economically or strategically, but even in the technology domain, that India has made certain choices that essentially leave China out of the Indian Indian market largely.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you see over Modi is different in part because he is different, uh, but he also evolves and not just on foreign policy, he starts to evolve on things.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: He comes in saying, I don't like trade agreements, I don't like investment treaties, to in the last few years, as he becomes, as he wants to grow, he needs to enable job creating growth, but also as he wants to take advantage of companies or countries trying to diversify from China, he starts to understand that you need to have these trade agreements.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: So in but he doesn't want to do large global agreements because of India's large deficit with China.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh essentially what he does is you see a series of trade agreements with largely Western countries, but uh countries that are large export markets, including a Europe-India free trade agreement that some of us had thought would not happen a lifestyle in our lifetimes.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it one happens because India needs to, but you also see then to now in the last few years or last couple of years of of the Modi term, that investment in the US that he had made, uh significant uh um uh investment enabled by US help to India in crises with both China and Pakistan.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: You see now questions arise because Trump 2.0 administration is has been pre putting pressure on India.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: But also raising questions in the US about in India about US uncertainty and red reliability.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's so interesting because you you gave a really good picture of, you know, uh what I think for a lot of people seemed a fairly clear trajectory of Indian foreign policy.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and of course, all that has been upended in the past five years.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and you you've you've mentioned a little bit about Trump, but I I'd almost take a step back and say, I think for many in the West, the the key questioning of the direction India was taking was with the war with Ukraine.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that at a time when Europe and the United States were lining up to put on sanctions on Russia, then India said, well, we're going to buy oil.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I think sort of how much of that ties into that traditional relationship that India had with Russia.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um but of course, the the other thing which has been stunning to see is at the same time as the tensions with Trump 2.0 uh are kicking in, that that also leads to what appears to be an opening of relationship with with Beijing.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do we really understand this five-year period when it suddenly seems um that India is taking such a different direction?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: So for India, it's the real turning point is not five years ago.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, the inflection point is six years ago, um, in 2020, when there's a uh significant India-China border skirmish.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a 22, uh 2020 was a one-two punch for India, where not just is there a fallout economically in many other ways of COVID, um, but second, you have uh this border crisis, which had been was the first fatal clash, military clash at the border between India and China in 45 years.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: The first shots fired at the border, which had largely been dominant.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: They'd managed that border dispute.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you see, and they'd had sc had skirmishes or kind of uh crises in 2013, in 2014, even in 2015 to a extent, and then at the Bhutan-China-India tri-junction in 2017.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: But in 2020, you really see this significantly uh more assertive uh clash between the two countries, and and India accusing China of essentially uh uh throwing uh the agreements between them into the dustbin.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you start to see in India that starts assessing almost all issues through a China prism, as well as its other kind of so essentially it had before that, even even despite differences, thought that you know, um uh deepening ties, as I said, would economic ties with China was a good thing and would benefit India, it then starts to question whether uh on balance uh uh uh this dependence on China was a bad thing for India.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: So 2020 is a is a year where not only does India, and the other thing, and and I'll come to the Russia point, because it is a little bit like 2022 is a is a pivotal inflection point for Europe, for India it's 20 uh 20.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And part of it is that means when India then sees the US, and this was a uh Trump 1.0, it sees the US as a country that is also competing with China and therefore a country with whom it should deepen ties.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it sees Japan and Australia similarly as countries that were also concerned, and so you see not just bilateral ties develop, but the the India then agreeing to deepen the quad or this minilateral uh that was focused in some ways on balancing and deterring China.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so you see, and this is quite unusual for India to join a coalition like that that's quite focused on uh a specific set of issues.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: You also see India in some ways in that initial phase when India had questions about where Europe stood on China, saying, yes, you know, some European countries are useful, but they're not where, they're not um, they don't have the same, they're not as concerned about China as, say, the US, Australia, and Japan.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: You see that change over time as the US become as Europe becomes more concerned about China.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: You also see India start to worry a lot more about Russia's growing partnership with China.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you see in India that uh thinks about uh its own dependence, continued dependence to this day on Russia for defense supplies.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, India has diversified its import sources.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um today, only about a third of India's imports come from Russia.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: A few years ago, it used to be three-quarters.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: So from about 75-76% of India's defense imports coming from Russia, it's down to now uh about 33%.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: France alone is more than that.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've seen India uh diversify, but nonetheless, because of its existing equipment is still quite of Soviet or Russian origin, large amounts.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: It still has a certain amount of dependence.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: But because of India's China problem, India has to think about Russia as a country that could hurt it in a crisis with China, that it could just stop the supply of equipment uh to India.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh down the line, India will also hope for a Sino-Russian split like they did, like they had earlier.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because for India, a Russia that is balancing and deterring uh uh China adds to that balance, a favorable balance of power for India and Asia.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, whether it is worried about uh Russia, whether it is uh wanting to give Russia a non-China option as a partner, you have seen that as a reason that India has wanted to maintain this partnership with Russia.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the metrics of the relationship, it's far less than it used to be.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the India-Russia relationship of the Cold War.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Arguably, India might even be the senior partner in this relationship now.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's not much of an economic relationship other than the oil imports you mentioned.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: And those are fungible.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: India can do get them from elsewhere.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but you see India both because it wants to maintain that diversified portfolio of partners with Russia there as well, but also because it does not want to push Russia further into Chinese arms and has to protect its equities with Russia.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is not, it was not surprising or stunning to any one of us who works on India that India took the stance it did after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the same stance as China.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I mean, you even think about how much Modi has engaged with uh Zelensky himself, uh, as well as India-Ukraine ties that have developed now over the last few years, or they've rediscovered each other.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: They'd forgotten that they had been connected before.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, compared to Xi Jinping not having met Zelensky even once in these few years.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's different than the China-Russia relationship, but nonetheless, you I don't think any of us expected that India would come out and criticize or condemn Russia directly.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: India doesn't tend to condemn its partners, it's much more pragmatic.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it has expressed concern because that Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a war that has killed Indians, that has affected India's food security and its energy security.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is very price sensitive on energy, and so it will import oil as long as oil is not sanctioned, and it wasn't sanctioned.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you will see in India that's you know, its imports depend on what else is happening in the world.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you see even Europe understanding this to some extent that India had started to reduce oil imports from Russia because the US was going to sanction uh India for those imports, uh, the Trump uh second Trump administration.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: But then with the war in Iran now, and after US and Israeli strikes there, um, because that has now created more or put upward pressure on oil prices, India's oil imports from Russia uh increase again.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you see that India can adjust on that.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: But oil is just, you know, oil is not still, I think, the main driver.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's still that strategic and defense element that I think uh is what keeps India wanting to diversify, uh, wanting to have Russia have a non-China option.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I don't think you're gonna see that uh effect.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't convince India to drop its Russia ties.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you have seen is that India's ties with Europe, India's ties with the US have grown so significantly that now India does factor those in.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And unlike Russia, which isn't, you know, Russia, given its own economies largely kind of as a commodities exporter, it's not really relevant to the modern Indian economy.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: So for India's economic and technological transformation, it is the US and Europe and Japan and Australia and countries like that that are far more significant.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what that has meant is that if you look at India's actual relationships, even where its diaspora is, it's not in Russia.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the West.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so that has, I think, tempered how much, how far that and Russian Russia-China relationships, uh, Russia-China relations has meant that India's relationship with Russia, it will continue.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and nobody should expect it not to.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it is much more tempered than it would have been in the past.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: That I think is a really helpful insight in into trying to understand this relationship between India and Russia, because uh, as I said, I think certainly viewed from Western countries, you know, there's been a lot of confusion as to, you know, what underpinned it.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, why has India taken this position towards Moscow?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, the the other great change, uh, as we've sort of touched upon, has been that relationship with the United States and with China and how it seems there's been uh almost like a 180 uh U-turn on how India has approached both of those relationships.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in some ways, I think it's less about direction, it's more about the nature and pace of those two relationships.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you have seen is uh initially uh India was one of those countries that said, you know, we're not as worried about everybody else as the for the prospect of a second Trump term.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because they'd largely, I mean, it's what hadn't been without strains, but Trump 1.0 for India had relatively gone okay.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't, you know, as badly hit as many US allies were.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you saw, and that initially it seemed that that judgment would uh would pan out for India.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you saw um a quad ministerial uh on the sidelines of Trump's inauguration, you saw Modi being one of the first visitors to the US to meet with President Trump.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you saw India saying, yes, we're we understand that there's uh you know trade problems, and uh we had started to negotiated, negotiate a trade deal in the first Trump term.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dust that off and in fact go further and let's sign a trade deal.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: But then you see uh a number of things that happened in 2025, including uh uh, you know, terror, India hit by tariffs, the trade deal not go through.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also significantly for India, uh the Trump administration, after there was uh a terrorist attack in India, India accused Pakistan and then struck it.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: The US didn't ask for India to show restraint, in fact, did not criticize India for those military strikes.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: But after that conflict in May 2025, you saw India worry about Trump not just declaring the ceasefire uh, you know, on behalf of both countries, saying that he stopped the war, uh, part of his his uh uh his argument for that Nobel Peace Prize, but also uh separately develop a close relationship with the Pakistani military and civilian uh leadership that deeply worries India.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because for years, India had come to see the US as being uh helpful to India vis-a-vis its Pakistan problem, uh, and especially after the US had stopped sending military assistance to or military equipment to Pakistan, uh, including in the first Trump term, you'd seen India kind of think that, okay, at least the US-Pakistan relationship isn't close.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: It might not have been, and and to just to give you the relative sense, President Biden had not had one engagement, one single phone call meeting with a Pakistani leader in his four years in office.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly you not just have President Trump meeting with the Pakistani field marshal and the Pakistani uh uh prime minister, you have him talking about them as partners again.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so for critical minerals, for cryptocurrency, for a whole lot of other things.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so India's concern about uh Trump 2.0 in Pakistan, there's also a fundamental other issue, which is that strategic convergence I'd mentioned, driven by a shared concern about China.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: India starts to wonder where does President Trump come down on China?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: They worry deeply when Americans talk about a G2 or a US-China condominium.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: They think that will hurt them because they think that not only reduces the priority for India in the United States, but that it makes China more assertive in the region if it thinks that it's comfortable with the US.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you see in India that, and then tariffs uh, you know, they're hit with some of the highest tariffs, uh, a trade deal isn't done, and then President Trump sanctions them uh for oil imports from Russia.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially India ends up having for a brief period 50% tariffs, some of the highest in the world.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you do see that, you know, hit after hit to the relationship, lots of questioning.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: But what you also see simultaneously, and this is perhaps so on the one hand, we all learned that the US-India relationship was more fragile than we might have believed.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: But we also start to see that there's more resilience in the relationship because functional cooperation has not just continued, it has deepened, including in defense and security and technology and intelligence sharing.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as we're recording this, there's the largest ever US-India annual uh army exercise, which is taking place both towards near the China border and the Pakistan border.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: You also have uh the U Indian uh Chief of Defense Staff having just met uh in uh uh in uh Canada with his Australian, American, and Japanese counterparts for a quad defense leaders meeting.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you also see a number of American companies having announced close to$70 billion worth of tech investments uh in India in the last uh year or so.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, in fact, in a space of three months.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you see that the relationship has more uh uh to use the uh different um meat on the bones than it would have earlier.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've seen that functional cooperation continue.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there's still parts of the US administration that have concerns about China.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what you've seen is maybe not uh uh maybe not the direction of that that's changed, but it has the momentum has slowed in the relationship.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there is this question about how long you can continue functional cooperation if there's still these big strategic questions.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think because of this uncertainty, you have seen India uh move to, even though this process started in about October 2024, so before the US election, but the uncertainties about the US have given India added incentive to stabilize its relationship with China.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing has been resolved, but both sides seem to have shown an interest in actually at least managing their border dispute.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there have been a there have been uh reports of a recent face-off, but nonetheless, you just saw Xi Jinping uh go to India for the BRICS, the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now expanded BRICS summit.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you've seen multiple meetings between, and she went, uh, Modi went to China last year for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: But even as you hear a lot about India and China managing ties, uh, the things that China wants from India, let us into your market, let us uh build factories there and export from there, let us into your tech sector.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: These are not things India has wants to agree to.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: It still is wary of deepening economic and technology ties with China.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: And their fundamental uh problems haven't just not got resolved, they've got worse.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, in the India-Pakistan crisis that I mentioned, you saw China help Pakistan with intelligence, with military supplies in a deeper and more significant way than they ever have in the past.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: China and Pakistan, of course, being uh very aligned uh and since the 1960s.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: You've also seen China uh impose export controls on India of rare earth magnets, uh fertilizers, even stopping uh some of their uh uh uh technical experts to go to India to set up factories there.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want this kind of technology transfer.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you've seen in some ways India's China problem, even as it's managing it, has actually uh grown in the last year uh and has got more complicated because now it has questions about whether the US will be the balancing partner that it has in the past.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a much more complex triangle, uh, but the direction of the relationships remain the same.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: A much more competitive relationship with China, a uh still a robust partnership with the US.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tami, I, you know, I'm incredibly grateful for the time you've given us so far.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I've got one last question, which is um India is a hugely important player now on the world stage.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: We we can all recognize that it's the world's most populous country, it's a nuclear power, uh, it's it's got a huge economy, um, it's developing tech sector.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where does India see the international system going?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: What does it want in terms of a global order, if you like, at a time when we're talking about how many of the settled rules that have existed for the past 80 years seem to be breaking down?
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where does India stand on this?
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: What what does it think, for example, on multilateralism, the role of the United Nations, uh, some of these issues of where does India as a potential great power, as a global leader, what does it want to do, what does it want to see and how how can it bring it about?
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think India is not the quickest way of putting this is India doesn't want it's not revisionist, it doesn't want to revise the international order, but it does want to reform it.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it it talks about reformed multilateralism, and one of the reasons it says that the international order is not working is it is it is not representative of the realities of the world today, and it doesn't reflect the problems or come up with solutions uh that much of the developing world, for instance, or India for that matter specifically, uh that they are confronting.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see in India that says, you know, the United Nations Security Council still reflects 1945, uh, not 2025 or 2026.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've seen India say that, look, if you don't reform the multilateral system, you will see that these alternative mechanisms will emerge or countries will do things in places like, you know, these new minilaterals or interest-based coalitions, of which India used to be a skeptic and now has signed on to as well, because it feels that that multilateral system, it doesn't have adequate voice.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so you've seen India uh talk about reform multilateralism.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: It also talks about being, it says it aspires to be a leading power, but it does say it is currently a bridging power.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so can be the liaison, you know, is not, it's not trying to shove the West out or compete with the West in some ways.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, its competition, for example, with the global south is with China.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in its fact, working with European, American, uh, Japanese, and Australian partners to offer alternatives, higher quality alternatives in much of the global south to China's offerings.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, what you see is that India is saying, you know, the the phrase that the Indian foreign minister used is, you know, when they said, Are you a member of the global south?
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I am north, I am south, I am east, I am west, that I stand at the crossroads because of my links, because of my geography, because of my country's kind of interactions and history, uh, that it will maintain ties with all countries.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you see this even at, you know, whether it's a uh a BRIC summit where India is not just, you know, hosting its rival China, uh, uh, but you also see it uh having the ability to host both the UAE and Saudi Arabia uh while it's also hosting Iran.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that doesn't mean India's ties with all these countries are it are equidistant.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these are not equal partnerships, but India is talks about itself as you know wanting not to overturn the order, uh, but reform it, have it be more representative, uh, and recognizing that it can uh talk a good game, but it has to, if anybody's going to take it seriously on these issues, including being a leading power, bridging power, India has to develop the capabilities and its independent capabilities.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the thrust of it is India wants this reformed order, uh, but it also realizes that to have that voice, it needs to be strong.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it needs to be strong and have its own capabilities, and it wants to develop those capabilities in part uh by engaging a number of partners who can enable its economic and technological transformation.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: Tammy, I I don't know where to start to say thank you, because I I think, you know, I've been doing this series on on with different countries, and in a lot of cases, we tend to have a fairly good idea uh about the the direction of their foreign policy and and some of the forces that drive it.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's obviously lovely to go into the granular detail, but I think India has been such an eye-opener for so many countries, the way that it, you know, it it's increasing its significance on the world stage, but how misunderstood uh many of the factors driving its foreign policy really are, and how um the element of history plays into it.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and so thank you so much for casting such an interesting and an informative light on this.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Really, it has uh been incredibly interesting talking to you about all of this.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, James, for having me uh on the show and to give me the time to expand in a way that often doesn't happen.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I appreciate you covering the history bot as well, because it's it pervades uh Indian foreign policy and its actions to this day.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this episode, I'd be grateful if you considered following, sharing, rating, or leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: It makes a real difference and helps me to grow and invite new experts.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to join a lively membership of international relations enthusiasts, head on over to my Patreon or YouTube channel where you'll find additional video essays, polls, monthly QA's, as well as thoughtful commentary that continues the conversation.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the links in the show notes below.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Many thanks again for joining me and catch you in the next episode.