Sumathi Bala
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India\u2019s relationship with Russia remains steadfast as both sides seek to deepen their economic ties. But Moscow has also grown close to Beijing since invading Ukraine, and that raises critical national security concerns for New Delhi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar recently said the country was ready to restart free trade negotiations with Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur partnership today is a subject of attention and comment, not because it has changed, but because it has not,\u201d he said<\/a>, describing the relationship as \u201camong the steadiest\u201d in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russia also wants to \u201cintensify\u201d free trade discussions with India<\/a>, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said during a visit to Delhi. Manturov is also Moscow\u2019s trade minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the display of economic cooperation, India\u2019s leaders are \u201ccarefully watching\u201d as Russia becomes more isolated and moves closer to \u201cChina\u2019s corner,\u201d said Harsh V. Pant, vice president for studies and foreign policy at Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russia\u2019s \u201cweak and vulnerable position\u201d and growing reliance on China for economic and strategic reasons, will definitely be worrying for India, he told CNBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s becoming \u201cmore difficult with every passing day because of the closeness that we are witnessing between Beijing and Moscow,\u201d Pant noted. \u201cThe pressure on India is increasing, it certainly would not like to see that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Delhi will try as much as possible to avoid a potential \u201cRussia-China alliance or axis,\u201d Pant added. \u201cAs that will have far reaching consequences and will fundamentally alter India\u2019s foreign policy and strategic calculation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are national interest reasons<\/a> \u201cwhy India continues to buy cheap Russian oil and trade with them, this FTA is part of that,\u201d said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs in New Delhi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it appears \u201cthis relationship is going down from being a very high-value strategic partnership to a transactional one,\u201d he noted, adding Moscow\u2019s \u201ctighter embrace of China\u201d doesn\u2019t bode well for India\u2019s national security needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India, which holds the current G-20 presidency, still hasn\u2019t condemned Russia over its<\/a> invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its latest foreign policy doctrine<\/a> published in late March, Russia noted it will \u201ccontinue to build up a particularly privileged strategic partnership\u201d with India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Delhi\u2019s longstanding ties with Moscow date back to the Cold War. It remains heavily dependent on the Kremlin<\/a> for its military equipment. This defense cooperation is vital given India\u2019s tensions along the Himalayan border<\/a> with an increasingly assertive China, said ORF\u2019s Pant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Russia hasn\u2019t been able to deliver critical defense supplies<\/a> it had committed to India\u2019s military due to the Ukraine war, which could strain the relationship, said analysts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March,\u00a0the Indian Armed Forces<\/a>\u00a0acknowledged to a parliamentary committee that a \u201cmajor delivery \u201d from Russia \u201cis not going to take place\u201d in a report. \u201cThey have given us in writing that they are not able to deliver it,\u201d the IAF official said. The report did not mention the specifics of the delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRussia has already delayed the delivery of S-400 <\/a>anti-missile delivery systems to India due to the pressures of the Ukraine war,\u201d said the Jindal School\u2019s Chaulia. \u201cSo, there is a big question mark on Russia\u2019s reliability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n India\u2019s reliance on Moscow, historically, was seen as pivotal \u201cto help moderate China\u2019s aggression,\u201d he added, to maintain a stable balance of power against Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, the country cannot expect Russia to play \u201cthe same strategic role for India as it used to prior to the Ukraine war. That\u2019s because of the technological degradation of its military and weakening position as a result of the war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Indian authorities will continue to make every \u201ceffort till last minute\u201d to create \u201csome space,\u201d in the Russia-China dynamic, Pant added, \u201cso that the space could be exploited by India to ensure its leverage over Moscow remains intact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But China is also making moves to strengthen its ties with Russia. In March, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and the two leaders vowed to deepen their relations.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Both sides sealed a\u00a0\u201cno limits\u201d partnership<\/a>\u00a0in February last year \u2014 just before Russia invaded Ukraine \u2014 and agreed to have no \u201cforbidden\u201d areas of cooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A \u201cRussian tilt\u201d in favor of Beijing \u201cwould clearly be bad for India\u201d if war broke out between both nations, noted Felix K. Chang, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even without a war, \u201cChina\u2019s warm relationship with Russia could encourage Beijing to pursue its interests more forcefully in South Asia, whether on its disputed Himalayan border or with India\u2019s surrounding neighbors,\u201d he wrote in April.<\/a> \u201cThat too could shift the power balance between China and India and lead to greater regional tensions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n So India needs to \u201cpick up the pace\u201d in its embrace of the West, Chang added, \u201cgiven how close the Russian-Ukrainian war has brought China and Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The West recognizes the challenge India faces in the Indo-Pacific region, said Pant from ORF, \u201cthat it needs Moscow in managing Beijing in the short to medium term, given its defense relationship with Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat sensitivity is, perhaps, what\u2019s driving the Western outreach to India, despite differences over Ukraine,\u201d he said, adding national security concerns are driving India closer to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join U.S. President Joe Biden and his counterparts from Australia and Japan at the third Quad leaders summit <\/a>in Sydney on May 24.<\/a> The Quad is an informal security<\/a> alignment of the four major democracies that was forged in response to China\u2019s rising strength in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While America sees \u201cChina as the main challenger to U.S. global primacy, it does not see India that way,\u201d said Rajan Menon, director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo the contrary it views India, nowadays, as a partner to counterbalance China,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat overlapping strategic interest explains why Washington has not reacted to India\u2019s alignment with Moscow in the way it has to the \u2018no-limits\u2019 friendship China has forged with Russia,\u201d Menon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Russia, how it balances this evolving India-China dynamic will be its biggest test, noted Pant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019ll be interesting to see how this triangle works. In the past, it had worked because there was this uniform sense among the three countries to talk of a multipolar world, where American unipolarity was the target,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday, for India, it\u2019s China\u2019s attempt at creating hegemony in the Indo-Pacific is the target. For Russia and China, the priorities are different than for India,\u201d Pant added. \u201cRussia\u2019s ability to manage India and China will be under the scanner,\u201d as\u00a0far as New Delhi is concerned. Sumathi Bala India\u2019s relationship with Russia remains steadfast as both sides seek to deepen their economic ties. But Moscow has also grown close to Beijing since invading Ukraine, and that raises critical national security concerns for New Delhi. Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar recently said the country was ready to restart free trade negotiations …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,218,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-issues","category-reports-and-articles","category-172"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6340,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6337\/revisions\/6340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>A reliable partner?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>\u2018No limits\u2019 partnership<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Move toward the U.S.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
(Source: CNBC)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"