India: From Crossroads to Crosshairs

Since gaining its independence from the British Empire, India has strived to define itself as a neutral, nonaligned nation. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, India has transitioned away from the nonaligned model to one where it has sought to align itself with both sides of an increasingly polarized world — taking a leadership position in the newly emerging global multipolarity symbolized by the Brics alliance, while actively participating in the promotion of the US-led singularity referred to as the “rules-based international order.” There is no doubt that the world’s most populous nation, possessing the fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the third largest by purchasing power parity, casts a large geopolitical shadow. But India’s efforts to straddle both sides of the fence may be a case of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it, too.

The importance of India in the emergent global entity known as Brics is right there in the name — India is the “I” in the acronym reflecting the former core membership of the multipolar economic forum (the other core members being Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa; since a 2023 expansion, Brics has added four new members — Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates). Brics is the ideological continuation of an effort by India and China that took form in 1955 at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia. This sought to gather nations in Africa and Asia that were emerging from the chains of colonialism into a nonaligned “third way” that would operate outside a global order otherwise dominated by the bipolar reality of the Cold War, with nations being compelled to choose between a US- or Soviet-led bloc.

While the Bandung Conference did help accelerate the demise of colonialism in the world, it was less successful in establishing the viability of a global nonaligned movement. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War-era bipolarity was replaced a US-led singularity that has come to be known as the rules-based international order, derived from the network of organizations and institutions imposed by the US on the Western world in the aftermath of World War II. India, like most developing nations in the nonaligned movement, undertook policies that sought to conform to the realities imposed by the rules-based international order.

In the early years of the emergence of the post-Cold War US global hegemony, India was able to operate with few or no changes in its world alignment. For instance, India was able to maintain and sustain its relationship with Russia when it came to procuring military equipment without fear of invoking the wrath of the US, which was willing to turn a blind eye to this economic relic of the Cold War in exchange for making inroads into other aspects of the Indian economy. In later years, this involved exploiting India’s historical tensions with China to draw India into a US-led effort to contain an increasingly expansive China that began to challenge the US in the global market. From the US perspective, India was a pro-Western ally that was firmly ensconced in the web of the rules-based international order. However, the Indian perspective was different — it was drawn into the rules-based international order by necessity, not necessarily choice, and the spirit of Bandung continued to define the Indian national identity as a nonaligned nation.

US Tensions

Western perspectives regarding the reality of Indian geopolitical orientation has been skewed by its willingness to actively participate in security-oriented groupings such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad. Conceived in 2007 during the tenure of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Quad dissolved the next year over internal disputes regarding increasing tensions between the US and China. The Quad was revived in 2017, when US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi (who replaced Singh in 2014) agreed that something needed to be done regarding China’s increasingly aggressive posture in the Indo-Pacific region.

The notion of US-Indian agreement on a worldview that had India operating in a subordinate fashion to the US was quickly laid to rest, however, with India’s purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles. The deal was brokered in 2016, during a summit of the Brics forum, with initial deliveries due to begin in 2020. The US voiced its displeasure over the deal from the start, and in early 2021, the Biden administration threatened to sanction India if it took possession of the S-400 — something that India did later that year.

But perhaps the most serious divide between India and the US came over the global economy. In many ways, India’s modern identity is defined by its economic relationships. India is a founding member of the Brics forum and a leader in the competing G20 forum (India hosted the G20 summit in 2023). But India does more than simply straddle the global economic fence. The fact that India was not invited to be a party to the abortive US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership and opted out of becoming a member of the Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership underscores that it has sought a level of economic autonomy and independence little understood in the West, especially the US, which views geopolitical relationships in the context of a zero-sum game.

Independent Line

In the end, India’s utility as a member of the Quad was marginalized by the economic realities of the geopolitical situation that has emerged since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While the US has sought to leverage its relationship with India into a tool to help isolate Russia through sanctions, India has responded by expanding diplomatic and economic relations with Russia. To make the 2024 Brics summit in Kazan succeed, Modi not only travelled to Russia, where he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also worked to resolve long-standing border disputes with China that had hampered the potential for multilateral consensus at the Brics conference.

India emerged from the 2024 Brics conference increasingly confident in its role as a global consensus-builder in the Global South. At the recent COP29 UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, India took a leadership role in brokering consensus among the Brics members, even though Brics had yet to be recognized as a formal party to the conference. But it is this independence that makes India a threat to the US. The recent decision by the US Department of Justice to unseal a criminal indictment charging Gautam S. Adani, an Indian billionaire whose $146 billion economic empire is at the heart of the Indian economy, with conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud is seen by some observers as a politically motivated act by the US government to undermine the political fortune of Prime Minister Modi, a close friend and ally of Adani.

The Adani scandal, when seen in this light, is a cautionary tale for Modi and India that, while its position at the crossroads of global intercourse has its rewards, this status may see India being placed in the crosshairs of those powers, like the US, who want to contain such independence.

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