IndiaScope: India, Russia, America: Summits & Consequences
The Indo-Russian relationship, though it has fallen from the pinnacle of Cold War importance during the Indira Gandhi era, appears to be weathering the changes rather well, notes TINAZ PAVRI. The same cannot be said about the U.S.-Russian relationship.
At President Biden’s “Summitfor Democracy” in December 2021, hundreds of countries were invited. Broad topics were covered between Biden and Modi, on which there seemed easy agreement: the environment, democratic values, climate change, stopping the spread of Covid-19 through mutual policies. Both agreed upon the relationship moving to a “transformative decade,” indicating greater meaningfulness, greater heft.
But these more facile statements seemed to mask what was not said, and what must be at the core of what constitutes any country’s main preoccupations— security and trade issues, for instance, issues that India certainly holds very dear, reeling as it is from severe economic dislocations arising out of the pandemic. In conversations with friends in Mumbai recently, I was peppered with questions about things that appear to be making Indians uneasy about the U.S. I was asked about America’s nearly thirty trillion dollar debt, and what plans we had to deal with it before we derail the rest of the world’s economies someday. As Omicron was ramping up its spread in India and the country was moving as quickly as it could to vaccinate more citizens, there was bemusement about the apparent overflow and hoarding of vaccines in America. Is it really true, I was asked, that Americans get paid to take the vaccine? The irony of the gross inequality was not lost. Neither was this irony lost: that a country, having spent an insane amount to stop the spread of Covid, had at the end of 2021 run out of the tests that were at the heart of their pandemic-fighting strategy, and was now shifting its health policies to fit this reality on the ground. It seemed that in India, as in other parts of the world, they were catching on to their decades-long ally, and the emperor’s clothes seemed to be wanting. And there is this additional irony: that the U.S. would hold a “summit on democracy” in the midst of great concern in its own country about the role of technology companies usurping the traditional channels of free speech and compromising democracy, and that India, whose government has had its own free speech and democratic values problems (in 2021, Freedom House downgraded India from “free” to “partly free” status), would be the one to point this out.
One would think that the other summit in December 2021—the one between India and Russia—would be more problematic than a U.S.- India meeting. After all, India has moved closer to the U.S. for decades now, and this has come at the cost of its staunch Cold War ally, the former Soviet Union. And there are new and weighty problems that create a wedge between the two countries. One of them is China, and Moscow’s relative closeness to a country that India almost went to war with over Galwan in 2020. India continues to have serious border disputes with China. And yet, this Modi-Putin summit was much more substantive. Trade and defense issues were on the agenda, as well as the situation in Afghanistan, which of course has been created by the vacuum left by the hasty American withdrawal. The Asia-Pacific region, a region of interest to the U.S., was discussed. Almost thirty bilateral agreements were signed that spanned these issues, and weapons sales were inked. Sales included the S-400 Missile system, which India was warned against purchasing by the U.S., based on current American policy that punishes countries who make weapons purchases from Russia.
It remains to be seen whether India’s newer relationship with the world’s remaining superpower, with all its potential and allure for India, will continue to strengthen or whether it will suffer from too much broadness and too much lip service to big questions that, while certainly important, sometimes seem to remain in the abstract. Or, will India start to rebalance its relationship with its old ally Russia, whom many Indians, and certainly those from the old guard of the foreign policy bureaucracy, still seem to regard rather fondly. Inking deals and agreements seems to suggest that the relationship is alive and poised to grow, despite America’s displeasure. The devil, in the end, may well be in the details.
Tinaz Pavri is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Asian Studies Program at Spelman College, Atlanta. A recipient of the Donald Wells Award from the Georgia Political Science Association, she’s the author of the memoir Bombay in the Age of Disco: City, Community, Life.
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