Opinion | Why India Must Keep Aces Up Its Sleeve While Dealing With West

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a busy global schedule over the next few days. First, the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, on May 20 where he will meet US President Joe Biden on the sidelines. Then, in between a stopover in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the island strategically located north of Australia in China’s Indo-Pacific backyard, a series of engagements in Sydney, including a bilateral with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Next month Biden will host Modi for a four-day state visit in Washington, beginning June 22, with a black-tie banquet dinner at the White House thrown in. It’s only the third state visit Biden has hosted for a foreign leader since he took office in January 2021.

What lies behind the US charm offensive? India has to be careful not to be swept off its feet. Washington needs India for three reasons: China, China and China.

The West’s break with China is existential. Economic ties are being loosened. Alternative supply chains are being set up. China will remain the world’s factory for some time to come. But the unravelling has begun.

Beijing’s deepening support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added to the West’s conviction of the economic and security threat China poses to a Western world order. That threat is serious enough for Washington to forgive India for shipping Russian crude to Europe as refined fuel, including diesel, thus evading sanctions.

Europe is less forgiving. This week in Brussels the European Union’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borel said that India should be penalised for avoiding sanctions in this roundabout manner.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal looking on at a press conference in Brussels soon after Borel’s comment, minced no words in calling out Europe’s double standards: “Look at EU Council regulations. Russian crude is substantially transformed in a third country and not treated as Russian anymore. I would urge you to look at Council’s Regulation 833/2014.”

Jaishankar had called out Europe’s hypocrisy earlier as well: “Our trade with Russia is at a very small level — $12-13 billion, in comparison with European countries. I don’t think people should read more into it other than the legitimate expectations of any country to increase its trade. I would urge you to look at these figures. There is a website called Russia Fossil Fuel Tracker that gives you country-by-country data of who is really importing what and I suspect that might be very, very helpful.”

Washington has prosecuted the war against Russia with the same uncompromising ruthlessness that enabled it to colonise the new world, push indigenous Americans into impoverished Reservations, and use African slaves shipped across the Atlantic by European slave traders to create the world’s most powerful country.

The US has wielded its hegemonic power on behalf of the West for over a century. America’s foreign and military policy from 1950 onwards was tailored to defeat the Soviet communist threat. That mission was accomplished in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But the West missed seeing in plain sight the rise of China.

By the time it woke up to Beijing’s economic, technological and military threat, the rules had changed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave America the pretext to use Ukraine and Western weaponry to terminally weaken Russia.

The tactic has worked, at least partially. Russia has been terminally weakened. But it has given rise to an unintended consequence: an even greater threat to the West — a China-Russia axis.

One of the reasons Biden is wooing India is to persuade it to keep the Global South on the West’s side. The West’s recurring nightmare is large countries like South Africa and Brazil moving from neutrality towards closer economic ties with the China-Russia alliance.

As a leader of the Global South, the West recognises that keeping India on its side is critical. With a GDP approaching $4 trillion, it’s a matter of time before India overtakes Germany ($4.1 trillion) and Japan ($4.3 trillion) to emerge as the world’s third-largest economy.

Outside China, India is also the world’s biggest consumer and internet market. It has an established legal system, a vibrant democracy, and English as the primary language of business. There are few US and European companies who want to miss being part of the India story.

But Indian policymakers must be under no illusion. The West is interested in India for its utility value. When India wasn’t seen as useful in the 1950s-1990s, the US treated New Delhi with indifference.

India today finds itself in a sweet spot: a pivot in the emerging triad of axes: the US-led West, China-Russia, and the Global South.

Just as the West uses India for the economic and security advantages it offers in the Indo-Pacific and beyond, so must India strategically use the West for the advantages it offers. What are these?

First, defence linkages through multilateral alliances. The I2U2 alliance between India, Israel, the UAE and the US is one example. The Quad, despite its waffling agenda, is another. The trilateral initiative with France and the UAE too holds promise.

Second, technology. China stole US technology for 30 years and reverse-engineered it. India has developed indigenous technology — from space to digitisation. It must use its relationship with the US to leverage the sharing of critical technologies. The high-level dialogue held in Washington earlier this year between India and the US on the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (ICET) is a move in the right direction.

Third, trade. The West habitually uses international institutions like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), apart from various tentacles of the United Nations (UN), to set global rules in its favour. In return for cooperating with the West on geopolitical pressure points, India must ensure rules governing, for example, action on climate change and free trade agreements are fairer than they have historically been.

When you deal with the West, keep your aces up your sleeve. But never hesitate to play them when needed.

The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed are personal.