The silent giant
While Europeans and Americans celebrate the diplomatic success of the recent NATO Summit and remain very concerned about Russian gas, Moscow is wasting no time: Lavrov has made a propaganda tour of Africa and Putin has met with the "TAN countries" (Kazakhstan etc.) of Central Asia and held an important telematic summit with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). This is all part of an effort to consolidate geographical comfort zones for an uncertain future. Among these countries, India stands out, the world's largest democracy (1.4 billion), which under Narendra Modi is abandoning its traditional policy of non-alignment in favour of more committed options that require it to take sides and do some tinkering, because its steps are closely watched by Beijing, Moscow, Washington and Karachi. It is not easy.
India's main problem has always been China, with which it has territorial disputes in the Himalayas and with which it struggles for influence in its immediate neighbourhood (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal) and also in Central Asia. To gain leverage in these areas, China is using the enormous resources of the Silk Road with which India cannot compete. China is taking the upper hand in both regions and India is understandably worried and annoyed.
It fares no better with Russia, its traditional ally, supplier of 80 per cent of its armaments (it has just bought the S-400 surface-to-air missile system, the most modern in the world), its counterweight to China and its main supporter in the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. That is why India does not condemn the invasion of Ukraine and has increased its oil purchases from Russia, from 23,000 barrels/day in 2021 to almost 800,000 barrels/day. Of course, it is squeezing prices, because here whoever doesn't run, flies. But the invasion of Ukraine changes everything because Russia has fewer weapons to sell and is also moving closer to China, and New Delhi knows that from now on it will not be able to count on Moscow in its struggle with Beijing.
India is also apprehensive about Russia and China's rapprochement with its traditional enemy Pakistan, with which both are engaged in major infrastructure projects and military manoeuvres, as they are with Iran, because both countries help them with the Taliban in Afghanistan, who smuggle their cocaine to Russia in industrial quantities, and who are neighbours of the troubled province of Xinjiang, where Beijing subjugates the Uighurs. India fears that the Taliban will protect terrorist groups carrying out attacks in Kashmir. Nor is New Delhi's relationship with Myanmar's military coup plotters easy because if it is complacent it will irritate neighbouring Bangladesh, which has taken in a million Rohingya refugees, and if it is not it will drive them into the arms of a China that is not very fussy on human rights issues.
All this forces India to tread very carefully. What it would really like to do is remain comfortably non-aligned, but reality dictates and it is beginning to look towards Washington with interest, as a necessary counterweight to China's growing influence in Asia. More out of necessity than taste. And the US wants nothing more than to draw India into its camp, as it makes clear in its recent "Indo-Pacific Strategy", published last February, which is why it is turning a blind eye to India's failure to condemn the Russian invasion or its growing hydrocarbon purchases. Washington seems to be succeeding because India has joined the Quadruple Alliance (Quad) with the US, Japan and Australia, and has also joined the very recent US-inspired "Indo-Pacific Prosperity Economic Framework" as part of the "invest, align and compete" policy designed by Toni Blinken to contain China, which is Washington's real concern. And for this policy to work, it needs India... which, despite everything, is still begging, as shown by its recent participation in the BRICS telematic summit. This is what is known as holding one candle to God and one candle to the devil... or keeping all its options open while the horizon becomes clearer. It is understandable.
Jorge Dezcallar, Ambassador of Spain
Published in Diario de Mallorca, el Periódico de Catalunya and Cadena de Prensa Ibérica on Sunday, 31 July 2022.