India-US Entente: A Russian Perspective

Recently there have been many speculations about the likely future of India-US relations and their impact on the Indian posture within the emerging new world order. Indeed, the India-U.S. interaction represents one of the most important bilateral relationships in the modern international system.

Not surprisingly, its current vibrant dynamics generate a lot of expectations, hopes, concerns and even outright fears in various parts of the world. The recent trip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States added more fuel to these very active, sometimes quite emotional, and politically loaded discussions.

Naturally, Russia is not an idle bystander in the ongoing debates; in Moscow, they follow developments in India-US relations with an understandable interest and sometimes also with outright discontent and jealousy. Many Moscow- based analysts maintain that any progress in these relations can be achieved only at the expense of the traditional Indian-Russia friendship and that the United States is gradually succeeding in ‘high jacking’ India from Russia.

What is likely to happen?

The US-India military cooperation is going to expand further. India remains the largest global importer of military hardware; according to SIPRI, it accounts for 11 per cent of the world’s imports. Though Russia remains the main Indian partner in the defence sector, New Delhi is actively trying to diversify the sources of its imports. Naturally, U.S. defence corporations will continue to actively compete for lucrative Indian markets.

The bilateral trade and U.S. direct investment in India will increase. Though today the United States is already one of the leading Indian trading partners, the potential for growth in bilateral trade is by no means reached its culmination point. This includes both the Indian exports to U.S. and the Indian imports from U.S. and extends to a large spectrum of sectors – from agricultural products to machine building to electronics to a broad range of services. A large Indian diaspora in U.S. is likely to serve as an important facilitator serving this growing trade.

Geopolitically, the Indo-Pacific partnership will go ahead. India has already developed strong political bonds with the United States through an intense bilateral political dialogue at various levels and through several multilateral arrangements. The United States will encourage India to strengthen its ties to the leading Arab states of the Gulf, as well as to Israel. Over time India might build stronger ties to NATO through some customized “NATO+” format and to AUKUS, especially if the tensions in India-China relations get stronger.

India and U.S. will continue to promote liberal democratic values together. It is common in the U.S. to label India as the “largest democracy in the world”. Indian leaders are invited to the “summits for democracy” staged by the Joe Biden Administration. The example of India is one of the most convincing confirmations that the validity of the liberal political model is not limited to the Western world only.

What is not likely to happen?

U.S. is not going to replace Russia as the main supplier of military hardware. Many in Moscow are deeply concerned about the future of Russia’s position in the Indian defence markets. Indeed, the Russian share in these markets is gradually going down: over the last ten years, it fell from 64 per cent to 45 per cent, while the combined share of France and U.S. rose to 40 per cent.

However, most defence-related contracts have powerful inertia and are not likely to be terminated overnight. One should not forget the significant cooperation momentum accumulated over seven decades of a successful partnership between Moscow and New Delhi. Moscow has several visible advantages ranging from long-term institutional and even personal ties with Indian partners to prices, which are usually significantly lower than those of American or European suppliers. Of course, a lot depends on the ability of Russia to meet rapidly growing Indian demands regarding offsets, quality control, post-production maintenance, and so on. In short, though the quest for diversification within the Indian defence markets will continue, Russia will likely remain India’s principal defence partner for many years.

Nothing like a free trade zone between U.S. and India is likely to emerge. Though India has various preferential access, economic cooperation and free trade agreements with more than fifty countries, it remains a relatively protectionist nation.

There will be no political or defence US-Indian alliance. There are two reasons for such a prediction. On the U.S. side, there is no tradition of joining political and/or military alliances with equal foreign partners. Despite their formal multilateral nature, Washington has always had leadership positions in any of the alliances it has entered after WW2 (such as NATO or AUKUS). India is clearly not ready and will not be ready anytime soon to become a junior partner to U.S. Second, a fundamental feature of the Indian foreign policy is a commitment to carefully balancing its ‘Indo-Pacific’ aspirations and its ‘Eurasian’ priorities. India might have reservations about BRICS or SCO, but these two organizations are essential to balance Quad and other formats of growing cooperation with the West. Furthermore, a deeper engagement with Washington will not likely prevent New Delhi from maintaining its traditional friendships in Eurasia and exploring new opportunities with Russia or Iran. Evidently, India will not wish to stand together with the U.S. in its approach to Tehran or Moscow and will avoid complying with U.S. sanctions whenever possible.

U.S. will not regard India as a mature democracy. Many in U.S. have serious reservations about the overall evolution of the Indian political system—they claim that the system is moving away from liberal democracy to a more authoritarian model. U.S. politicians and experts raise concerns about the rights of religious minorities in India, the new media regulations, the shifting role of civil society institutions, and the recently changed status of Kashmir.

The leadership of India, in its turn, is hesitant to replicate the Western liberal political model without adjusting it to Indian realities. On top of that, India and the United States have different positions on a number of important global problems, such as climate change.

The Indian society retains certain mistrust towards the U.S. that stems from the complicated history of bilateral relations. This mistrust is fuelled by the U.S. policies in the region, which are not always discreet and sensitive to India’s interests—such as manoeuvres of U.S. warships in close proximity to the Indian coast, sometimes without preliminary coordination of their activities with India.

In sum, it would be wrong to underestimate the untapped potential of the India-US cooperation that is not limited to the containment of China but has its own powerful dynamics. The India-U.S. partnership serves some fundamental interests of both sides and is likely to continue in future irrespectively of possible political changes on both sides. At the same time, it would be an oversimplification to argue that India will take unambiguously pro-U.S. or pro-Western positions in the new emerging global order.

Like Russia, India is likely to resist the evolution of the international system towards a rigid U.S.-China bipolarity since such an evolution would inevitably deprive New Delhi of the freedom of manoeuvring that it enjoys now.

Most importantly, Russia does not have to panic as the India–U.S. cooperation is expanding in a number of areas. So far, this has not posed immediate threats to Moscow as it is largely a challenge for Beijing. The U.S. has been rather understanding in its attitude to Russia– India military-technical collaboration, believing it to be a form of balancing China’s dominance in Asia.

Geopolitically, Russia tends to associate the notion of “the Indo-Pacific” with U.S. endeavours to preserve its strategic hegemony in the Pacific and Indian oceans in the face of China’s growing power. However, India has a somewhat different perspective on this, believing “the Indo-Pacific” to be an opportunity to expand its political and economic presence east of the Strait of Malacca. As far as this standpoint goes, the central place in the emergent mega-region is assigned to the ASEAN nations rather than the U.S.

Recently there have been many speculations about the likely future of India-US relations and their impact on the Indian posture within the emerging new world order. Indeed, the India-U.S. interaction represents one of the most important bilateral relationships in the modern international system.

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Not surprisingly, its current vibrant dynamics generate a lot of expectations, hopes, concerns and even outright fears in various parts of the world. The recent trip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States added more fuel to these very active, sometimes quite emotional, and politically loaded discussions.

Naturally, Russia is not an idle bystander in the ongoing debates; in Moscow, they follow developments in India-US relations with an understandable interest and sometimes also with outright discontent and jealousy. Many Moscow- based analysts maintain that any progress in these relations can be achieved only at the expense of the traditional Indian-Russia friendship and that the United States is gradually succeeding in ‘high jacking’ India from Russia.

Moreover, it is often stated that the U.S. strategy toward India is aimed at depriving this country of an opportunity to fully integrate into the broader community of Eurasian nations, to which India naturally belongs due to the Indian geography, history and culture. How grounded are these alarming conclusions? Do we see a real strategic shift in Indian foreign policy, or the above-mentioned concerns and fears are blown out of any reasonable proportion?

Let us try to present a brief inventory of what we should and what we should not expect from the growing India-US cooperation. Of course, the suggested time horizon is very important in any such projections.

The author would like to limit himself to the trends that are likely to take place over the next five to seven years; therefore, his projections might not necessarily be relevant in a more distant future, when the current international trends may change in the most radical way.

What is likely to happen?

The US-India military cooperation is going to expand further. India remains the largest global importer of military hardware; according to SIPRI, it accounts for 11 per cent of the world’s imports. Though Russia remains the main Indian partner in the defence sector, New Delhi is actively trying to diversify the sources of its imports. Naturally, U.S. defence corporations will continue to actively compete for lucrative Indian markets.

The defence partnership with Washington should help India not only to contain Beijing but also to upgrade Delhi’s power projection capabilities in the Indian Ocean and beyond. With India’s ambitions to become a truly global power and with the rapid diversification of Indian foreign trade and investments overseas, New Delhi considers these capabilities an essential component of its future national foreign policy instruments.

Aside from diversification, India is interested in using its military ties with the United States to gain access to some of the most sophisticated American technologies India badly needs- AI, 5G, quantum computing, aerospace, and so on. The United States might become an important source of economic modernization, including key civilian sectors—transportation, IT, pharma, robotics, and many others. In sum, the US-India defence- related cooperation is likely to grow and deepen over years.

The bilateral trade and U.S. direct investment in India will increase. Though today the United States is already one of the leading Indian trading partners, the potential for growth in bilateral trade is by no means reached its culmination point. This includes both the Indian exports to U.S. and the Indian imports from U.S. and extends to a large spectrum of sectors—from agricultural products to machine building to electronics to a broad range of services. A large Indian diaspora in U.S. is likely to serve as an important facilitator serving this growing trade.

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On top of that, many American corporations operating in Asia are likely to relocate their production sites from China to India, which fits New Delhi’s “Made in India” strategy and will undoubtedly increase the overall numbers of U.S. direct investment in India. The ongoing rapid growth of the Indian middle class generates new opportunities for all foreign partners, and the U.S. is not an exception. India might become the prime Asian economic hub for the United States, serving U.S. businesses in adjacent counties of South Asia and the Middle East. It is also highly likely that India will significantly increase the scale of its direct and portfolio investment in U.S. One could imagine further diversification of India-U.S. economic ties’ formats, including building joint production and R&D chains and other advanced forms of industrial cooperation.

Geopolitically, the Indo-Pacific partnership will go ahead. India has already developed strong political bonds with the United States through an intense bilateral political dialogue at various levels and through several multilateral arrangements. This process will undoubtedly continue. In particular, one can envisage further institutionalization of Quad leading to a more diverse multifaceted collaboration between India, Japan, Australia and U.S. A broader agenda for “the four” would ensure greater stability for the multilateral cooperation, fostering it through involving the nations of Southeast Asia (the so-called Quad+) interested in engaging the Quad but reluctant to jeopardize their current relations with Beijing.

Apparently, India’s leadership will adopt a similar stance on Quad-2, the emerging multilateral collaboration in West Asia featuring the U.S., India, Israel and the UAE. The United States will encourage India to strengthen its ties to the leading Arab states of the Gulf, as well as to Israel. Over time India might build stronger ties to NATO through some customized “NATO+” format and to AUKUS, especially if the tensions in India-China relations get stronger. The United States will encourage India to deepen its relations with other U.S. partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand. India might also work closer with the key U.S. European partners—particularly with France and the United Kingdom—in pursuing common security goals in the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

India and U.S. will continue to promote liberal democratic values together. It is common in the U.S. to label India as the “largest democracy in the world”. Indian leaders are invited to the “summits for democracy” staged by the Joe Biden Administration. Moreover, in Washington, India is often perceived as a natural interface between the West and the Global South, expecting India to advance liberal values among developing nations and assist the United States in opposing the growing Chinese influence in various parts of the planet. The importance of India for the United States is likely to increase, given the ongoing rise of illiberal and authoritarian political regimes in the world that one is witnessing today. The example of India is one of the most convincing confirmations that the validity of the liberal political model is not limited to the Western world only.

This trend will likely continue, especially if Democrats stay in the White House after 2024 and the Indian political system demonstrates its ability to successfully handle many modernization challenges that the country confronts today. The liberal political system in India also creates plenty of additional opportunities for more bilateral cooperation with U.S. at the non-state level involving political parties, universities, independent think tanks, media and civil society institutions—something that the United States could hardly achieve with more politically centralized systems, like the one in China.

Finally, as an English-speaking country, India can claim a comparative advantage in building diverse relations with U.S.

What is not likely to happen?

U.S. is not going to replace Russia as the main supplier of military hardware. Many in Moscow are deeply concerned about the future of Russia’s position in the Indian defence markets. Indeed, the Russian share in these markets is gradually going down: over the last ten years, it fell from 64 per cent to 45 per cent, while the combined share of France and U.S. rose to 40 per cent.

It is also argued that the Russian special military operation in Ukraine might impose additional limitations on Russia’s arms supplies to India because the Russian defence sector will prioritise the needs of its army above the needs of Moscow’s foreign partners. Pessimists also argue that the India-Russia defence cooperation might be further constrained by the U.S. pressure on India and the Chinese pressure on Russia, respectively.

However, most defence-related contracts have powerful inertia and are not likely to be terminated overnight. One should not forget the significant cooperation momentum accumulated over seven decades of a successful partnership between Moscow and New Delhi. Moscow has several visible advantages ranging from long-term institutional and even personal ties with Indian partners to prices, which are usually significantly lower than those of American or European suppliers. Of course, a lot depends on the ability of Russia to meet rapidly growing Indian demands regarding offsets, quality control, post-production maintenance, and so on. In short, though the quest for diversification within the Indian defence markets will continue, Russia will likely remain India’s principal defence partner for many years. Besides, in the Indian defence markets, the U.S. will likely face strong competition from other suppliers, including France, the UK, Germany, Israel, South Korea, etc.

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Nothing like a free trade zone between U.S. and India is likely to emerge. Though India has various preferential access, economic cooperation and free trade agreements with more than fifty countries, it remains a relatively protectionist nation. For instance, New Delhi stayed away from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that united almost all the other Asian-Pacific economies. Protectionism will likely limit India’s openness to U.S. investments and trade. Today, India is negotiating free trade agreements with two major Western economies (UK and Canada), but the outcomes of these negotiations are still unclear. One should also note that the Indian trade with U.S. is highly unbalanced in India’s favour.

This is likely to fuel continuous U.S. discontent and might trigger further Washington’s attempts to get unilateral trade concessions and benefits from New Delhi in exchange for stronger bilateral ties in the security domain. India has its grievances in trade and investment vis-a-vis the U.S., with New Delhi often preferring to seek arrangements with the EU rather than the U.S. Many Indian authors note that the current U.S. strategy regarding India entails no significant programmes for the U.S. to assist in modernizing India’s economy. During Donald Trump’s presidency, U.S.–India relations were supposed to serve narrowly defined U.S. business interests rather than strategic goals of Indian modernization, and this approach has not changed in any radical way under Joe Biden.

There will be no political or defence US-Indian alliance. There are two reasons for such a prediction. On the U.S. side, there is no tradition of joining political and/or military alliances with equal foreign partners. Despite their formal multilateral nature, Washington has always had leadership positions in any of the alliances it has entered after WW2 (such as NATO or AUKUS). India is clearly not ready and will not be ready anytime soon to become a junior partner to U.S. Second, a fundamental feature of the Indian foreign policy is a commitment to carefully balancing its ‘Indo-Pacific’ aspirations and its ‘Eurasian’ priorities. India might have reservations about BRICS or SCO, but these two organizations are essential to balance Quad and other formats of growing cooperation with the West. Furthermore, a deeper engagement with Washington will not likely prevent New Delhi from maintaining its traditional friendships in Eurasia and exploring new opportunities with Russia or Iran. Evidently, India will not wish to stand together with the U.S. in its approach to Tehran or Moscow and will avoid complying with U.S. sanctions whenever possible.

Recently, especially in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there have been growing doubts in Asia, let alone in India, over how reliable the security guarantees Washington offers to its allies and partners are. There are reasons to believe that the U.S. will not be ready to come to the aid of its friends amid a major crisis, particularly if this entails significant risks and potential costs for the U.S. Even if U.S.–India relations were upgraded to the level of an allied partnership, it is far from apparent that Washington would be ready to extend direct military support to New Delhi in the event of another escalation of the India–China border conflict.

An even less likely scenario is that the U.S. would decisively endorse India should a military confrontation with Pakistan play out. As an example of America’s “low profile” in such matters, we could cite its extremely cautious reaction to the acute crisis between Russia and Turkey in November 2015 after the Turkish Air Forces downed a Russian ground attack aircraft over the Syrian-Turkish border. This uncertainty about the U.S. security guarantees credibility makes the prospects of a US-India defence alliance even less plausible.

U.S. will not regard India as a mature democracy. Many in U.S. have serious reservations about the overall evolution of the Indian political system—they claim that the system is moving away from liberal democracy to a more authoritarian model. U.S. politicians and experts raise concerns about the rights of religious minorities in India, the new media regulations, the shifting role of civil society institutions, and the recently changed status of Kashmir.

The leadership of India, in its turn, is hesitant to replicate the Western liberal political model without adjusting it to Indian realities. On top of that, India and the United States have different positions on a number of important global problems, such as climate change. Washington is prompting New Delhi to commit to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, while India is calling upon the developed nations to curb their emissions ever more radically to redistribute the structure of global emissions to benefit the developing economies. Since, in the near future, India will continue to ramp up carbon emissions, it appears virtually unavoidable that India–U.S. tensions on the issue will subsist.

The Indian society retains certain mistrust towards the U.S. that stems from the complicated history of bilateral relations. This mistrust is fuelled by the U.S. policies in the region, which are not always discreet and sensitive to India’s interests—such as manoeuvres of U.S. warships in close proximity to the Indian coast, sometimes without preliminary coordination of their activities with India. One should not underestimate the influence of the large and successful Indian diaspora in U.S. on the relations between the two countries, but a large part of this diaspora remains quite critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s domestic policies.

Why China matters?

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In sum, it would be wrong to underestimate the untapped potential of the India-US cooperation that is not limited to the containment of China but has its own powerful dynamics. The India-U.S. partnership serves some fundamental interests of both sides and is likely to continue in future irrespectively of possible political changes on both sides. At the same time, it would be an oversimplification to argue that India will take unambiguously pro-U.S. or pro-Western positions in the new emerging global order.

Like Russia, India is likely to resist the evolution of the international system towards a rigid U.S.-China bipolarity since such an evolution would inevitably deprive New Delhi of the freedom of manoeuvring that it enjoys now. Therefore, India will fight hard to get a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, it will aspire to have more influence in such institutions as IMF, IBRD or WTO, but it is highly unlikely to see New Delhi formally joining not only any U.S.-led political or military alliance but also G7 or another exclusively Western club of nations. The Indian foreign policies will be neither pro-U.S. nor pro-Russian; they will rather reflect the changing views of the Indian political class on the desirable new role of the country in the rapidly changing international environment.

The role of the “China factor” in the India-US entente should not be underestimated. Half a century ago, New Delhi might have had hopes that India could contain Beijing without outside assistance. This is no longer the case; the continuous economic, technological and military rise of China has increased the capability gap between the two great Asian nations to such an extent that only powerful outside support could help India to pursue an efficient containment policy towards its mighty adversary.

For apparent reasons, Russia is not in a position to render such support to its Indian strategic partner. In Moscow, they are trying hard to ensure that Russian- Chinese cooperation does not completely overshadow the traditional Russian-Indian friendship. Still, the scale of the Moscow-Beijing ties ranging from the number of summit meetings to the volumes of bilateral trade so far, significantly exceeds the scale of Moscow- New Delhi ties.

Since the European Union is not and will hardly become a great military actor with significant power projection capabilities, U.S. remains an indispensable source of external support to India for maintaining the geopolitical balance between the two leading Asian nations.

Still, in some areas critical for India, Beijing appears to be more important for New Delhi than Washington. Trade turnover between India and China is growing rapidly, as are China’s investments in India. For sure, India limits the access that Chinese companies may have to sensitive sectors of India’s economy (for instance, to the new generation of telecommunication networks). On the whole, though, the volume of economic ties between China and India is comparable to that between India and U.S.

In many aspects, India’s and China’s economies organically complement each other, which means that economic rapprochement between the two great Asian powers will subsist, even if political tensions between New Delhi and Beijing are still there.

The odds are that the future growth of Indian trade and India’s foreign economic activities, in general, will involve China and other Asian neighbours more than overseas partners, U.S. including. In any case, to fully integrate into the global economy, India needs to address a number of fundamental problems—such as inadequate infrastructure, red tape, major regional discrepancies, obsolete labour training practices, and so on. As is the case with many other countries, most of the India’s foreign policy successes or failures will depend primarily on the ability or inability of the Indian leadership to properly address its domestic development agenda.

India has to interact with China in the “shared neighbourhood” countries in one way or another. Although these interactions are primarily those of rivalry, they also have pockets of cooperation. India’s leadership cannot but be apprehensive about China’s largescale military aid programmes to neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh and about China’s increasingly visible presence in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal. However, this is exactly the Eurasian reality that must be reckoned with.

The U.S. can no longer replace China as the principal economic actor in South and Southeast Asia, nor can Washington reverse China’s expanding military-technical cooperation with many countries in the region. Therefore, India will inevitably have to account for China’s presence in subregions crucial to New Delhi. A settlement of India– China border disputes in the foreseeable future appears quite unlikely. We cannot, however, rule out the possibility of a stabilized situation and eased tensions with a range of confidence-building measures implemented in the military area. If this happens, the current incentives to reinforce India–U.S. military cooperation will inevitably lose momentum. A broader détente or a reset in India– China relations cannot entirely be left out of account, and these developments would launch a de-fragmentation of the Eurasian continent that would be bound to end up with constraining the U.S. role as the ultimate arbiter and the strategic balancer in Eurasian affairs.

What does this mean for Russia?

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Most importantly, Russia does not have to panic as the India–U.S. cooperation is expanding in a number of areas. So far, this has not posed immediate threats to Moscow as it is largely a challenge for Beijing. The U.S. has been rather understanding in its attitude to Russia– India military-technical collaboration, believing it to be a form of balancing China’s dominance in Asia. Naturally, competition will further intensify in the markets that Russia prioritizes in India, with this competition not limited to military equipment, which Russia should be prepared for.

The changing rules of the global geopolitical game and the current diversification of New Delhi’s foreign policy priorities make it all the more urgent to explore new avenues in Russia–India partnership. Experts have long stressed that the current foundation for these relations is too narrow to create a solid fabric of social collaboration between the two nations. Biotechnologies, new energy, digital economy, higher education, transport logistics and tourism are but a partial list of the new opportunities that need to be carefully considered.

Geopolitically, Russia tends to associate the notion of “the Indo-Pacific” with U.S. endeavours to preserve its strategic hegemony in the Pacific and Indian oceans in the face of China’s growing power. However, India has a somewhat different perspective on this, believing “the Indo-Pacific” to be an opportunity to expand its political and economic presence east of the Strait of Malacca. As far as this standpoint goes, the central place in the emergent mega-region is assigned to the ASEAN nations rather than the U.S.

Obviously, India will not give up on fostering closer ties with its numerous partners in the Asia-Pacific, ranging from Japan and South Korea in the north up to Australia and New Zealand to the south, and this will be the case regardless of developments and the final outcome of the U.S.–China confrontation. This cooperation follows its own logic and has its own dynamics, which are independent of external factors. Therefore, Russia should consider a more open and more empathetic approach to the New Delhi “Indo-Pacific” narrative than the one that Moscow articulates now.

First published in the Synergia Insights Journal, June / 2023.