A Shifting Focus


Written by Chris Cork • Region • February 2010

There is a tectonic shift in the offing in major power relationships. How has this affected Indian foreign policy?Viewed from several perspectives, we are entering a post-American world. For the foreseeable future, America will remain preeminent, but it is not going to do so forever. There are clear signs not only of its eventual decline as a global power but also that other powers are growing to fill the space it will have vacated. India is one of those nations and China another - with Russia still something of a wild card as it continues to evolve as a post-soviet entity.

The end of the Cold War and then the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union followed by the emergence of the Commonwealth of Independent states (CIS) has had a significant effect on the way in which India conducts foreign policy more generally. Prior to the Soviet collapse, India and Russia were substantial trading partners - a relationship that has yet to recover fully though it is well on the way. Russia was by far the biggest supplier of military equipment; it still does supply India but not to the extent that it did and it is significant that India is now exploring the possibility of purchasing a new generation of carrier-borne strike aircraft from Sweden. Russia today is no longer at the cutting edge of military equipment development, and India has become a more sophisticated purchaser with an eye on buying what is best in the pursuit of its own goal of being a regional superpower.

The relationship between the two states was tested in 1971 during the war that quickly led to the loss (for Pakistan) of its western wing and the creation of the new nation of Bangladesh - which has generally enjoyed good relations with its massive western neighbor to which it owes much. During the 1971 conflict, Russia is believed to have supported India to the extent of having a nuclear submarine shadow the American taskforce into the Indian Ocean, a level of support unusual for what at the time was a Soviet client state. Also during 1971 the two signed the Indo-Soviet Peace and Friendship Treaty which has been allowed to lapse; and now both pursue what may best be described as a more pragmatic, rather than an ideological, strategic relationship.

To this end a Declaration on Strategic Partnership was signed in October 2000 and the CIS is now engaged in the development of the Kudankulam nuclear plant which will, when complete, put another 1000MW into India's chronically deficient electric supply infrastructure. In December 2008 during President Medvedev's visit to New Delhi, the two signed a nuclear energy co-operation agreement. GAZPROM is engaged in oil and natural gas development and the two countries have a long-standing relationship in the field of space technologies. Perhaps slightly surprisingly there is a market for Bollywood films in Russia and the burgeoning Indian software industry has close links to the CIS. There is an agreement to increase trade to $10 billion a year and taken all together there is a healthy partnership based around mutual needs and strategic interests that stretch back decades.

But India has other relationships, with America being one of them. It is no coincidence that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the guest of honor at the first state dinner in November 2009 of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. Relations between the U.S. and India have improved dramatically since the end of the Cold War. India is the world's largest democracy which has avoided descent into a corrosive cycle of military dictatorships that have bedeviled the development of its neighbor and adversary, Pakistan. America would like to see itself as the brand-leader for Project Democracy on the global stage and is happy to partner with what it sees as a bastion of democratic governance in South Asia. America and India have a large and growing trade relationship and India, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, has assiduously cultivated diplomatic and trade relationships with the likes of NATO, Canada, France and Germany and has an established defence and diplomatic relationship with Israel - a relationship that not all of its neighbors find comfortable.

Also of discomfort to many is the reality of India being a nuclear-armed state which has refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); but the U.S. and India have managed to find the diplomatic space for that not to interfere with other areas of the relationship. In March 2006 India and the U.S. signed the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Pact on co-operation in the field of civilian nuclear power, much to the irritation of Pakistan which sees the U.S. as playing both ends against the middle. Where the two are collaborating closely is in the sharing of intelligence, post the Mumbai attacks, after which the Indians provided the U.S. with information on the activities of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups operating out of Pakistan. If there is a single item which is going to catch and hold American attention, it is Al Qaeda and anything that may be used to combat it - a card deftly played by the Indians. Bilateral trade between India and the U.S. has doubled in the last five years and America sees India as an essential counterweight to the rapidly developing China - which has its own aspirations.

Against this backdrop of mutually useful relationships between historical enemies (although Russia can hardly be considered in the ‘best friends' group of America) there is a growing perception that after the unipolarity that developed at the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of American hegemony, the region is undergoing a fundamental shift. India is one of the states, China another, which is driving the change in a way in which the world will be balanced in the future. It is not so much that America is in any kind of terminal decline, it is more that other states are on the rise in ways that almost by a cyclic process will shift power - and powers-away from America. The certainties of unipolarity are going to be replaced by a far more dynamic - and probably messier - set of relationships.

Fareed Zakaria, writing in his book-length essay ‘The post-American world' suggests that we are in the third great shift of geopolitical tectonics in the last 500 years. The first was the rise of the West which produced "modernity as we know it: science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the agricultural and industrial revolutions." The second was the rise of the U.S.A. in the 20th century and the third is what we see happening today - the rise of the rest. America needs India in the midst of this rebalancing to be the gyroscope, the device that ensures spatial stability. India needs Russia because it sees a historical ally that has years of usage left in it and Russia needs India because it wants to ensure its own place on the shores of the Indian Ocean. All of them eye China which is about to become the world's largest economy - and a place where the Great Democracy Project, American style, has yet to produce even the merest flicker on the seismometer.