India’s Minilateral Hedging in the Indo-Pacific: Diluting or Diversifying Strategic Avenues?
Overview
New Delhi has historically maintained a strong policy of non-alignment concerning great power competition. As a result, they do not belong to any formal alliances with other states. Instead, India deploys a more equivocal, à la carte diplomacy, to achieve sovereign ambitions without being hemmed in by formal alliances.
However, growing Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region has pushed India much closer to the United States over the past decade. On top of this, the pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of multilateral architecture. Subsequently, India like many other states has begun to see the comparative efficacy of minilateral groupings in forging a balancing act of foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific region. However, the Ukraine crisis of 2022 puts India in a precarious position, owing to its close diplomatic relationship with Russia. Since the fall of the USSR, India has endeavoured to maintain the balance between its bilateral relations with the US and Russia. It is this endeavour which is being tested by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
India’s approach to the Indo-Pacific power dynamics, therefore, is somewhat on the fence, comprising membership in the US, Russian, and Chinese minilateral groupings. New Delhi resorts to a multipolar foreign policy approach in order to retain relations with key players in the Indo-Pacific region, instead of committing fully to any one block. Amid recent conflicts with China and the international reaction to Russia’s war in Ukraine however, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain such a delicately balanced minilateral web.
Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific
The post-war rules-based international order has revolved around large multilateral organisations like the United Nations, World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, and - more specific to Asia - ASEAN and APEC. These groups largely involve (virtually) universal membership and often defer to multilateral consensus building. This universality is valuable as it prevents single states from hegemonizing one’s foreign policy agenda, turning such platforms into facilitators of power politics. In the past decade, however, such multilateral systems of governance have been losing their efficacy owing to the rising inward-looking foreign policy of states.
Concurrent with potentially weakening multilateral architecture, minilateral platforms have become prominent in the Asia-Pacific region. States have begun to realise the value of engaging in smaller, interest-based groups to target specific contentious issues, to increase the comparative efficacy with which they address them. Minilateral groups, therefore, less burdened than more diverse multilateral platforms, have emerged to realise shared Indo-Pacific ambitions of interest-aligned states. A number of these groups illustrate, although largely unofficially, an active response to an increasingly assertive China in the Indo-Pacific region, and its own minilateral initiatives like the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). These include the Quad 2.0, AUKUS, and an India-Australia-France trilateral ministerial dialogue, which have been criticised by China as possessing anti-China or cold-war mindsets.
Between the Eagle, Bear, and Dragon
Given India’s proximity to China and Russia and its bilateral proximity to the US, it endeavours to engage with all three countries according to its own priority. Further, due to its relative imbalance of military power compared to these three states, it must effectively hedge to its advantage, as great(er) power politics unfold. While historically non-aligned, given the lowest denominator outcomes ascribed to ‘consensus-based’ multilateralism by observers, India recognises the necessity of a level of mutual foreign policy interests. Minilateral relations provide an effective avenue through which to more decisively address specific issues, regarding Indo-Pacific ambitions. India has engaged with multiple minilaterals including the Quad, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and the SCO, thus engaging with all three of the above greater powers. These strategic partnerships allow India, whilst maintaining characteristic non-alignment, to experiment with comprehensive diplomatic engagement and strategically use unravelling regional geopolitics to their advantage.
More recently, however, this diplomatic balancing act between powers, under the strain of intensifying Indo-Pacific competition, appears to be shifting closer to the US than before. India has engaged more earnestly with the Quad, a quadrilateral dialogue between four democracies (US, India, Australia, Japan), most recently attending the second in-person leaders' meeting in Tokyo. In 2020, India also agreed on the Australian Navy’s participation in the Malabar exercise, along with the remaining Quad members. Additionally, compared to other minilateral relations, their memberships with groups like the SCO appear more defensive, participating to keep Russia from drifting closer to China and avoid leaving the mechanism to rivals China and Pakistan. On the other hand, India’s Quad membership is based on collective goals and overlapping ideologies for the Indo-Pacific region. This is likely to have accelerated as a result of increasing aggression stemming from Beijing, particularly during the 2020 Galwan River clashes and confrontation along the Line of Actual Control. This has likely significantly affected New Delhi's cost-benefit calculation, justifying its increasing diplomatic proximity to the US specifically through Quad participation, despite the risks of somewhat isolating Russia.
India’s strong ties with Russia however, remain a significant foreign policy asset which they will not wish to compromise. In 2021, India and Russia signed a number of trade and arms deals during Putin’s visit to the country. The two nations reinforced ties with a decade-long military and technical pact, which included Russian wishes to supply S-400 air defence missile systems. Therefore, despite a growing need to contain China, India must be wary not to act over hastily and jeopardise Russian relations. However, the current conflict in Ukraine and recent resurgent imperialistic undertones in Russian rhetoric put India under international pressure to distance itself. Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and the subsequent humanitarian crisis, were a point of focus of an online Quad meeting in March. It is important to note however, that India remains the only Quad member that has not imposed sanctions on Russia nor condemned Putin’s actions, reluctant to damage diplomatic relations. Therefore while Russia's violation of rules-based order continues in Ukraine, it would be wrong to conclude from India’s settling more earnestly into US minilaterals that this means a secure Indo-US alliance. This hesitancy, while maintaining good relations with Russia, perhaps highlights the difficulty with maintaining India’s web of strategic relations, signalling a potential lack of dependability in the eyes of its other security partners.
Risk Outlook
India’s strategy, therefore, remains a geopolitical chess match. Endeavouring to strike a strategic balance between the US and Russia to achieve sovereign foreign policy goals, which currently largely comprises contending with China. The Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in his book The India Way, describes India’s way forward as “advancing [its] national interests by identifying and exploiting opportunities created by global contradictions… to extract as much gains from as many ties as possible”. According to Jaishankar, concerning India’s position relative to the US, Russia, and China, “the weaker player solicits or manipulates stronger forces to [its] advantage… In this world of all against all, India’s goal should be to move closer towards the strategic sweet spot”. To this end, India appears content within its multifarious minilateral arrangements. However, in times of intensifying geopolitical dynamics such as Russia’s current war in Ukraine, it may become more apparent to others that India is possibly the slowest moving partner in these arrangements. Consequently, this involvement with possibly contrary partnerships may hurt its perceived dependability in the eyes of diplomatic partners, potentially proving problematic in future with regard to the effectiveness of India's strategy.