Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his hosts in Kyiv on Friday, one month after his visit to Moscow, he was committed to playing a personal role in trying to mediate in the over-2-year-old conflict between Ukraine and Russia, urging both sides “to sit together and look for ways to come out of this crisis”.
However, before and during his meeting with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on the same day, Indian Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh showed the Modi government is ready to take advantage of the United States for its own narrow ends at the cost of rising tensions in its neighborhood.
Speaking to a gathering of Indian-Americans in Washington on Thursday during his four-day visit to the United States, Singh spoke of India’s commitment to strengthening its strategic partnership with the US, while warning New Delhi’s neighbors about the emergence of a more assertive nation. “Previously, some of our neighbors thought they could trouble India at will, but India is no longer weak. We are now counted among the world’s strongest nations.” Although Singh and his hosts singled out no country, there is no doubt which country was high on their minds during their exchanges. Austin said after the inking of some new agreements on strengthening bilateral military cooperation in supply chains, weapon innovations and regional operational coordination, “We share a vision of a free and open ‘Indo-Pacific’, and our defense cooperation continues to grow stronger and stronger”. That defense cooperation also includes the US’ geopolitical tool, the Quad which groups Australia, Japan and India with the US.
The Indian defense chief, who knows much better than anyone else how far the Indian military is from the modern level, will also be well aware the latest security agreements, like their predecessors, can only be described as broad but shallow. But despite the US’ apparent intent to take advantage of India’s border disputes with China to support its China-containment strategy, and its desire to explore the feasibility of treating India as an alternative to China in both manufacturing and market, Washington is uneasy about New Delhi’s close ties with Moscow and India-Russia trade that has swelled remarkably along with the ramping up of US-led sanctions on Russia.
The practical cooperation between India and Russia is of more strategic significance to the former than its practical cooperation with the US. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia provided 65 percent of India’s weapons purchases, totaling over $60 billion, in the past two decades.
And Russian oil now accounts for over two-fifths of India’s oil imports.
That means even if the US views India as an outsourcing alternative to China for US companies and a playable piece in its geopolitical game with China, the mutual trust between New Delhi and Moscow is clearly deeper than that between New Delhi and Washington. Washington will therefore be cautious about choosing which industries and technologies can work together with those of India, and which weapons can be sold to India.
US policymakers’ scruples in working with India in both the economic and military fields do not come from the latter being a power but its opportune tightrope walking between Russia and the US. Washington will never allow itself to be treated as one side of the bread some can choose to butter or not at will. Claiming “India is no longer weak” and “India and the US are the two forces which can bring peace, prosperity and stability in the world” in Washington, the Indian defense minister was just telling the world the opposite.
