India Is Multi-Aligned But Non-Allied

What most in the Alt-Media Community struggle to accept is that multipolarity doesn’t imply a geopolitical utopia wherein problems between all non-Western countries immediately disappear due to their shared interest in moving past the US-centric unipolar system.

India’s Deputy National Security Advisor Vikram Misri reaffirmed over the weekend during the Shangri-La Dialogue meeting in Singapore that his country’s multi-alignment policy doesn’t mean that it’s anyone’s ally. In his words, “India does not believe in partnering in military alliances. We are, however, a partner for many countries including in the military and defence field. Alliances are very different allusions to it and (have) a very different interpretation to it. We are not part of any military alliance.”

This is a crucial clarification since many in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) are under the false impression that India’s membership in the Quad makes it America’s military ally against China despite the plethora of evidence proving that it’s retained its hard-earned strategic autonomy in the New Cold War. As a case in point, Delhi has proudly defied Washington’s pressure to distance itself from Moscow, not to mention to vote against its strategic partner at the UNGA as well as impose sanctions.

If there was any truth to the claim that India is the US’ military ally against China, then Russia’s arming of it to the teeth would mean that the Kremlin is in cahoots with the White House to jointly contain the People’s Republic. While there’s no denying the continued Sino-Indo impasse on their border dispute and the bilateral tensions that have persisted as a result, it’s absurd for anyone to believe the preceding conspiracy theory since it implies that the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine is just theater.

Furthermore, those who subscribe to this twisted interpretation of those two Asian Great Powers’ rivalry must also accordingly believe that China is sabotaging its own grand strategy by remaining in BRICS and the SCO despite India supposedly undermining it every step of the way at the US’ behest. Neither supplementary conspiracy theory can stand up to scrutiny, which thus discredits the primary one claiming that India is the US’ military ally against China.

The reality is that Sino-Indo tensions are purely bilateral, and while their origin lies in the era of British colonialism that’s responsible for this decades-long border dispute, the nature of their rivalry has evolved over the years and entered into a seemingly self-sustaining cycle free from third-party meddling. To be sure, the US is actively trying to involve itself in their tensions so as to exacerbate them to the point of a provoking a large-scale war for divide-and-rule purposes, but both have thus far resisted this.

What most in the AMC struggle to accept is that multipolarity doesn’t imply a geopolitical utopia wherein problems between all non-Western countries immediately disappear due to their shared interest in moving past the US-centric unipolar system. China and India have the same goals of speeding up financial multipolarity processes through BRICS and opposing terrorism, separatism, and extremism through the SCO, but this cooperation hasn’t led to them resolving their border dispute.

Likewise, most of those who rely on the Mainstream Media (MSM) for guidance on global affairs are under the false impression that intra-NATO disputes like those that the US has with Hungary and Turkiye over Russia are the result of Moscow’s meddling. Those who subscribe to this conspiracy theory must also believe that the Kremlin told Budapest to sanction it and Ankara to sell Kiev lethal drones, which is just as absurd as those in the AMC who think Russia is in cahoots with the US to contain China via India.

Both media camps’ supporters generally refuse to recognize other countries’ sovereignty, which is why their knee-jerk reaction to any disagreements within NATO or the non-West is to wildly speculate that one of the two parties is their rival group’s puppet that lacks any independent agency whatsoever. After all, acknowledging their right to hold different views than their partners’ shatters each side’s narrative that their preferred world order is supposedly a geopolitical utopia free from internecine disputes.

Gatekeepers within the AMC and MSM aggressively police compliance with their side’s dogma by accusing those dissidents among them of being their rival’s “agents”, which pressures their respective communities to self-censor out of fear that those who speak up will be digitally lynched. These never-ending “inquisitions” have made it impossible for either media camp to have respectful debates among their members about sensitive issues within their ranks such as the examples that were earlier shared.

Returning to the topic of this analysis, the result is that many in the AMC refuse to question the false dogma that India is the US’ military ally against China despite the fact that it proudly refused to sanction Russia and is also armed to the teeth by that same country, which is one of China’s closest partners. All key players in the global systemic transition are actively multi-aligning in their own ways, yet the AMC and MSM have vested narrative interests in oversimplifying everything as black-and-white.

Instead of parroting their respective gatekeepers’ slogans about one or another state supposedly being their rival group’s puppet, whether due to them sincerely believing this or out of fear that they’ll be digitally lynched if they dare to dissent, folks on both sides shouldn’t shy away from digging deeper. More often than not, the truth is that whatever internecine dispute it may be has legitimate origins even if third parties are seeking to exploit them, exactly as is the case with the Sino-Indo border impasse.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/india-is-multi-aligned-but-non-allied