It would be fair to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to India for a bilateral summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi achieved the immediate objectives of both the nations. The visit, clearly, was to underline shared assessment of Moscow and Delhi that the multipolar world is now a fait accompli and that intermediate powers have strategic options to exercise in a world being shaped by US-China competition.
It is, therefore, perhaps apposite to jog the memory of thinkers and practitioners in the Indian strategic and foreign policy community by reminding them of the lasting value of the net assessment exercise undertaken to define India’s strategic foreign policy by Rear Admiral Raja Menon (Retd) and Dr Rajiv Kumar 15 years ago. Published as The Long View from Delhi (2010), the volume followed the net assessment analytic framework of Andrew W. Marshall, ‘the man who won US the Cold War’ as strategic folklore has it. In it, Menon and Kumar postulated alternate scenarios for the Russian Federation’s trajectory over the next decade.
The first scenario, titled ‘The Idea of Russia’, foresaw a rejuvenation of Russia premised on a synthesis of East and West in socio-cultural terms, which would include a return to traditional values, the emergence a stable Russia, the flourishing of its repository of poetry, literature and ballet, an emphasis on education, curbing rampant alcoholism and, critically, arresting the demographic decline which began in the 1990s, a period of economic hardship after the breakup of the Soviet Union that sent fertility plummeting.
This scenario also projected that Russia’s technological levels would be restored by the 2020s, job creation and adequate housing prioritised, and see agriculture and manufacturing contributing to the GDP in normal ratios. In Russia’s external environment, Moscow would settle into a more-or-less easy relationship with China and the West (including closer ties with the EU), while domestically the armed forces would be modernised and structured around a nationalist ethos sans great power pretentions and consequently limit Moscow’s power projection capability. Russia’s leadership would play its role in all the above.
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In the alternative ‘Hard Outside, Soft Inside’ scenario, of which Russia’s war with Ukraine may now be seen as a trigger, none of the ills of the Russian state are seriously tackled, but the government survives by talking up the external threat, which is seen as a manifestation of the West’s desire to destabilise Russia. This scenario projected that Moscow would see the West as an adversary which wanted to convert Russia into a pliant and weak coalition of democratic parties with the objective of apportioning Central Asian energy resources for the West at lower prices. Therefore, it was assessed, the Russian state would present a hard exterior, but as societal problems would not have been solved and domestic structural issues not addressed, Russia would continue to hollow out from within. This being so, Russia would lose much of its geostrategic significance.
What has indeed come to pass in Russia 15 years after these alternate scenarios were presented is, in a manner of speaking, a bit of both. Ergo, for all the bonhomie and potentially substantive cooperation in critical areas between Russia and India which the Putin-Modi Summit generated, Delhi will surely be thinking through its strategic – as opposed to tactical – engagement with Moscow.
It is evident that Russia remains an ally for India on the global stage for the moment, especially in terms of vetoes exercised in our favour in the UNSC, but how long this state of affairs will last is the question. For, as the Sino-Russian alliance deepens with the latter as the clear junior partner, Russia’s attempts to retain its status as a relevant global actor will impact India significantly.
Whether on a bilateral (likely border) issue with India, or to counter the Indo-US strategic partnership, Beijing is likely at some point to turn the screws on Moscow vis-à-vis its ties with Delhi. Through the Cold War, the USSR’s relationship with India rested on Soviet arms sales (and later energy supplies), aid, and the USSR-India versus the US-Pakistan-China geopolitical alignment. Of them, only Russia’s defence relationship with India, especially as an arms and weapons systems supplier despite the competition it now faces, is still robust. On energy supplies, the India-Russia relationship is more opportunistic, and Delhi is right to diversify its sources of energy procurement as India’s growth is non-negotiable.
The new areas of cooperation identified and agreements signed during the Putin-Modi Summit are, thus, excellent first steps in the long journey to define the contours of our strategic ties. On balance, the sheer geographical size of Russia, its role as an energy/arms supplier, the potential of the revival of its institutes of higher learning, and its albeit aging nuclear arsenal are persuasive arguments for furthering India’s strategic engagement with Russia.
But the risks for India associated with the deepening Russo-Chinese axis need to be parsed and would require a deep understanding of Russian political structures, economic imperatives, and societal changes as they unfold over the next decade.
Some of the questions which would need to be answered are:
* Will Russian power be degraded to an extent that is becomes a client-state of China and/or its primary energy supplier, and what would that imply for India?
* Will Russia’s already waning influence in the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia and the Caucuses become less consequential or even inconsequential?
* Will Moscow be able to exercise sovereignty on its eastern flank in a meaningful manner or will Chinese commercial interests in oil make them the de facto masters of the region?
* As Russia’s population sees a historic decline, will it become an existentialist issue for the country?
* What is the prognosis for a post-Vladimir Putin Russia?
How our strategic and foreign policy establishment approaches and designs a policy framework – and there’s a lot of scenario writing to be done here – to deal with the pluriverse of trajectories Russia may take over the coming decade will determine both the relevance and resonance of Russia-India ties.
The author is Director (Partnerships & Programs) and Senior Fellow, Pahle India Foundation
