Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Sadanand Dhume just published a piece about how “The India-Russia Relationship Is Less Than Meets the Eye”, with the lede being that “As Moscow grows more dependent on China, India has no choice but to draw closer to Washington.” His argument is simple: China’s trade with Russia dwarfs India’s at $240 billion to $65 billion, thus Russia will become dependent on China so India must “draw closer” to the US in response. It’s not that simple though.
It was explained earlier this month how “Modi’s Trip To Moscow Was Much More Important Than Most Observers Realize”, namely because it completed the recalibration of Russia’s Asian balancing act away from its drift towards Sino-centricity over the past year, which was detailed here. His visit followed President Putin’s trips to North Korea and Vietnam, and it came on the heels of Russia and India making tangible progress on clinching their long-negotiated military logistics pact.
The combined effect was that Russia showed the world that it’ll preemptively avert potentially disproportionate strategic dependence on China by multi–aligning with other Asian countries. North Korea is China’s ally, Vietnam is its “frenemy”, while India is its strategic rival, each of which plays unique roles in Russia’s Asian balancing act while Russia plays a unique one in their own such acts vis-à-vis China. India is the most important though due to its socio-economic weight and status as a major power.
As the world’s most populous country, the Voice of the Global South, and the fifth largest economy, India commands immense influence across the world, hence why the US has sought to recruit it to AUKUS+ China containment coalition, albeit with no success. India proudly defends its strategic autonomy and that’s why it’ll never do anyone else’s bidding, let alone risk becoming their junior partner. This riles the US-led West to no end and accounts for why it’s been waging a vicious infowar campaign against it.
Dhume takes for granted that International Relations have already reverted back to the state of Sino-US bi-multipolarity that imperfectly characterized the last half of the preceding decade, but that’s a premature conclusion since Russia and India are jointly working to accelerate tri-multipolarity processes. Their policymakers regard the world as currently being divided into three groups: the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino–Russo Entente, and the unofficially Indian-led Global South.
If it wasn’t for the special and privileged Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership, then China and the US would inevitably dominate the world through either their competition or cooperation (“New Détente”) with one another, which is why the interplay between the first pair is of global significance. Russia and India prevent the other’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China and the US respectively, which would lead to bi-multipolar were it to happen, by playing crucial roles that the second pair can’t.
Russia is India’s most trusted military partner, cooperating with it in spheres that the US won’t even consider and thus helping it keep China at bay at their disputed border, while India’s massive purchase of Russian oil makes it impossible for China to ever instrumentalize its own purchases for political gain. Each also relies on the other to prevent China from dominating BRICS and the SCO, which could give it the upper hand over them in ways that could lead to junior partner status were it to happen.
These roles aren’t visible to the untrained observer, especially since neither Russia nor India talks about them openly due to the sensitivities inherent in their ties with China and the US respectively, but Dhume isn’t an untrained observer. He knows exactly what they’re doing and why but deliberately misportrays it in order to push an agenda since he’s just one of the many Indian faces of the Western media who exploits his ancestry to lend false credence to his criticisms of India.
Informed of this insight, average folks shouldn’t let themselves be misled by him and others who claim that Russian-Indian relations are weakening or don’t have much importance in today’s world. If there was any truth to those claims, then they’d have neglected their ties and fully pivoted towards the other’s rival, but instead Putin hosted Modi right after he recalibrated Russia’s Asian balancing act vis-à-vis China and the Indian leader agreed to these dates despite them symbolically coinciding with the NATO Summit.
The Alt-Media Community (AMC) would greatly benefit if more of its members drew attention to the role that the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership plays in keeping Sino-US bi-multipolarity at bay and turbocharging tri-multipolarity processes with a view towards jointly midwifing complex multipolarity. Few feel comfortable doing so though since many are sympathetic to China and fear being “canceled” by gatekeepers for defying the community’s dogma that Russia and China are “allies”.
Those two jointly cooperate on some of the world’s most important issues, and both want to hasten the decline of unipolarity, though they also fiercely defend their respective national interests but are very careful not to do so at the other’s expense. Such is the case when it comes to the Kashmir Conflict, where they’re on opposite sides as is explained here, and it’s the same with regards to their role in the global systemic transition too.
The relationships of complex economic interdependence that China has cultivated with practically every country place it in a prime position to influence the emerging world order more than anyone else, but Russia and India are afraid that this might come at the expense of their hard-earned strategic autonomy. That’s why they’re working together to give one another and other leading Global South countries a greater say in shaping this process so as to gently balance China’s outsized sway.
There’s nothing wrong with candidly discussing these differences of vision between Russia-India and China as long as it’s done responsibly without an intent to drive a wedge between them like the US wants. Those who aggressively gatekeep the AMC’s discussions about this are therefore doing a disservice to their community by depriving members of the insight that they need for understanding this historic moment and making sense of major developments like Modi’s first trip to Moscow in five years.
