Weighing India’s Risky Recalibration with Putin and The West

Until India stops mistaking performance for power—and ideology for strategy—it will continue to drift, diminishing its voice

By SAHASRANSHU DASH

KATHMANDU, August 9, 2025 —Indian foreign policy stands at a perilous inflection point. With Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly invited to New Delhi despite an active warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC)—including charges for mass illegal deportation of Ukrainian children—the Modi government appears to be staging a calculated show of strength.

This may be aimed, in part, at sending a signal to US President Donald Trump after his stunning 50 per cent retaliatory tariffs on Indian goods. But it also sends a much more dangerous message—to the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the wider US strategic establishment: that India is willing to sacrifice long-term partnerships for short-term bravado.

It is one thing to seek transactional balance in a multipolar world. But the public optics of hosting Putin, complete with bear hugs and red carpets, risks pushing India from being seen as a strategic balancer to a reckless outlier.

In the current climate—already marked by global economic uncertainty, trade fragmentation, and mounting geopolitical instability—such performative gestures carry high costs.

Until now, India has walked a careful tightrope: securing discounted Russian oil while deepening strategic ties with the West. But optics matter.

Welcoming Putin with warmth will not be seen as pragmatic neutrality. It will be read as alignment with an indicted autocrat and directly undermining the authority of the International Criminal Court.

Despite India not being a signatory, this would severely hamper India’s moral credibility and dilute its leverage with key economic and strategic partners.

The economic risks are stark. The United States is India’s largest export market, accounting for $78 billion in goods in 2023-24. A comprehensive trade deal could increase Indian exports by up to 64 per cent, delivering major gains in GDP and job creation—especially in medium-tech manufacturing, chemicals, apparel, and electronics. These sectors are not just economic priorities; they are political lifelines for India’s aspirational middle class.

The EU is equally central. With €113 billion in bilateral goods trade and more than 21% of India’s FDI stock, the EU is not just a market—it is a gateway to capital, cutting-edge technology, and green industrial growth.

India stands to gain immensely from the long-awaited India-EU Free Trade Agreement, which would align Indian industry with next-generation norms around data privacy, labour rights, and environmental standards. But European leaders—especially in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Scandinavia—are tightly bound by post-Ukraine political consensus and public opinion. Hosting Putin at this juncture risks collapsing FTA negotiations just as they near completion.

Countries like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the UK—pillars of India’s Indo-Pacific vision—will not miss the message either. Each of these countries has staked its future on an open, rules-based order. Defying the ICC by embracing Putin doesn’t read as strength to these partners—it reads as defiance of the very legal and moral frameworks that underpin geostrategic alignment.

Even within the US, the consequences go far beyond Mar-a-Lago. While Trump may respond favourably to strongman theatre, the broader American strategic establishment—spanning the Pentagon, State Department, Capitol Hill, and Silicon Valley—values reliability and shared norms. These institutions have invested in India’s rise for nearly two decades, dating back to the 2005 nuclear deal. A Putin embrace risks unsettling that bipartisan consensus.

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From Strategic Sweet Spot to Structural Squeeze

Just a few years ago, India was in an enviable position in the global order. It had emerged as a swing power—courted by the United States, China, Europe, Russia, and even the Gulf states. Its strategic footprint was expanding through the Indo-Pacific, and its diplomatic stock was on the rise. But that landscape has altered dramatically—and not by accident.

Over the past 42 months, India has moved from the centre of global strategic courtship to a position of increasing pressure, isolation, and vulnerability. A convergence of structural shifts and diplomatic miscalculations has resulted in what might be termed a “strategic squeeze”—a context in which every available option carries major costs, and no axis of alignment offers a clear path forward.

The international system has become far more volatile. The Russia-Ukraine war, the Gaza catastrophe, a weakening global economy, and China’s acceleration toward superpower status have fragmented multilateralism. Between 2021 and 2025, global defence spending surged by over 12 per cent, and bloc politics has returned with a vengeance. Great powers are no longer playing the long game—they are leveraging short-term dependencies and extracting immediate returns.

In response to these shifts, India has doubled down on its principle of strategic autonomy. While historically justified, this assertiveness—particularly India’s refusal to condemn Russia or dilute ties despite the Ukraine invasion—led many in Washington to question the reliability of their long-term bet. As a result, the US approach to India has become increasingly transactional. The Biden administration’s 2023 National Security Strategy quietly removed references to “shared values” with India, instead emphasizing “mutual interests” and “issue-based convergence.”

Meanwhile, optimism around India’s economic and technological promise has dimmed in some Western capitals. Foreign direct investment in India dropped by 16 per cent in FY 2024-25, with many global firms citing regulatory unpredictability and inadequate infrastructure as key deterrents. India’s defence indigenisation drive—critical for projecting itself as a regional security provider—has yielded mixed results. The much-publicised TEDBF (Twin Engine Deck-Based Fighter) project has seen repeated delays. For global partners once willing to make long-term bets on India’s rise, these trends have injected caution.

China’s actions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), particularly the bloody Galwan clash in 2020 and continued infrastructure buildup through 2024, shattered long-held illusions about the stability of India’s northern frontier. For Delhi, the inability to deter or dislodge China has created doubt about the real utility of its US partnership. From Washington’s side, the realization that India lacks escalation dominance in its own backyard has tempered hopes of Delhi emerging as a net security provider.

This has weakened India’s leverage with both Washington and Beijing. The United States sees little incentive to stretch its strategic posture in South Asia when India remains cautious and under-equipped. And for China, the dimming prospect of a strong India-US strategic axis has emboldened more assertive tactics—economic coercion, border provocations, and diplomatic undercutting in the region.

China, which had once exercised relative caution to avoid pushing India closer to the West, now perceives no such strategic risk. Beijing has gradually moved toward placing its bilateral relationship with Delhi on a “hierarchical” rather than reciprocal footing—rejecting India’s “three mutuals” framework (mutual respect, sensitivity, and interest) in favor of hard leverage. Its behaviour post-2022 has included more aggressive airspace violations, continued stonewalling of India at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and deepening military cooperation with Pakistan, including joint drone deployments, missile and intelligence transfers and naval exercises in the Arabian Sea.

From the other direction, India’s neutrality on the Ukraine war—long defended as an extension of its non-alignment tradition—has failed to yield strategic dividends from Moscow. Despite benefiting from discounted oil and continued defence trade, India has received little political cover or security cooperation on its most urgent regional concerns. Russia’s growing alignment with both China and Pakistan is no longer subtle: it is deliberate.

Russian War Crimes: A Reality India Cannot Ignore

Putin stands accused of orchestrating the mass abduction and deportation of over 19,000 Ukrainian children from occupied territories—a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. These children have been forcibly assimilated into Russian society, renamed, and relocated to unknown regions, in what human rights groups and international prosecutors have described as cultural erasure through demographic engineering.

Beyond this, independent investigations by the UN, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have documented:

• Torture and execution of civilians in Bucha, Mariupol, Irpin and Kherson
• Use of cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons in populated areas
• Deliberate targeting of hospitals, maternity wards, and evacuation corridors
• Widespread sexual violence, arbitrary detention, and disappearances

These atrocities are not accidental. Satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and on-ground testimonies confirm that they were coordinated and intentional, forming part of a strategy to terrorize civilians and dismantle Ukrainian sovereignty.

To welcome Putin with open arms in this context—granting him diplomatic respect and media visibility in Delhi—would not just raise eyebrows. It would signal a willingness to ignore international humanitarian law for short-term calculus. India may not be an ICC signatory, but its silence, and worse, its public embrace, would be globally read as tacit endorsement.

Gaza and the Global Divide

Simultaneously, India’s conspicuous alignment with Israel during its Gaza campaign has further isolated it from global sentiment. While the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, rightly drew condemnation, the Israeli response—now stretching into its 23^rd month—has become the most destructive campaign against a civilian population in recent history.

As of August 2025, Gaza’s Health Ministry reports over 61,258 Palestinian deaths, including at least 18,500 children and 9,800 women. Independent projections from UK-based medical researchers warn that the real death toll may exceed 180,000, once starvation, disease, and infrastructure collapse are accounted for. Nearly 200 people, including 96 children, have already died of hunger, as famine spreads rapidly in the besieged enclave.

Human Rights Watch has documented Israeli airstrikes on designated safe zones—including UN schools and hospitals—using US-made precision bombs. UNICEF reports that one child has been killed every hour on average since the conflict began. The WHO and UN have accused Israel of intentionally obstructing humanitarian aid, fuelling what they call a man-made famine.

In every major democracy on earth, these actions have sparked massive protests, media scrutiny, and political dissent. Yet in India, and only in India—a country that once prided itself on speaking up for the voiceless—there have been no large-scale demonstrations, no public reckoning, and no calls for accountability. Instead, the state has doubled down on its narrative alignment with Tel Aviv, treating moral considerations as either secondary or irrelevant. Even when some Indians do attempt to show solidarity, it is demonised as ‘support for terrorism,’ a charge that now rings hollow even inside Israel itself, with B’Tselem, Israel’s most famous human rights groups, formally calling it ‘our genocide’ and asking for the famine and massacre to stop. India alone stands conspicuously on the wrong side of history.

India’s Moral Posture: Patterns and Exceptions

This pattern is not new. India’s foreign policy silence on human rights atrocities has become a defining feature of its external posture. On Myanmar, India said little after the 2021 military coup, even as civilians were gunned down and Aung San Suu Kyi imprisoned.

On Hong Kong, there was no protest as China dismantled democratic institutions under the 2020 National Security Law. On the Rohingya genocide, India labelled the refugees in its territory as “illegal migrants” and initiated deportations—even as Myanmar’s military committed mass killings and village burnings in Rakhine.

India remained muted on:

• China’s mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang
• The 2023 depopulation of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh
• Sri Lanka’s 2009 war endgame, where between 40,000 and 70,000 Tamils were killed in under four months

To its credit, however, India’s position on Sri Lanka has evolved. It played a central role in bailing Colombo out of its 2022 debt crisis and has since called for full implementation of the 13th Amendment, supporting Tamil self-governance. This diplomatic engagement—while overdue—offers a rare example of India balancing strategic interest with regional accountability.

Likewise, India’s emerging support for Armenia stands as a welcome exception. In the wake of Azerbaijan’s brutal reconquest of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh, India has extended diplomatic, political, and limited military support to Yerevan—not for expediency, but in defense of sovereignty and international law. It is a genuinely principled gesture, offering a glimpse of what India’s global moral leadership could look like.

But these exceptions are rare. The dominant trend remains one of strategic amorality—a refusal to engage with the ethical dimensions of global crises. From Gaza to Ukraine, from Myanmar to Xinjiang, India’s voice has been absent, and its posture increasingly indistinguishable from that of the very authoritarian states it once held at arm’s length.

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The Narrative Deficit: Operation Sindoor and Media Failures

India’s democratic backsliding and moral opportunism have eroded its credibility, culminating in a narrative defeat during Operation Sindoor in May 2025. Despite precise strikes on Pakistani terror camps after Pahalgam, global media largely sided with Pakistan. Of 18 major articles surveyed, ten echoed Pakistan’s framing; only four supported India. This reflects how a decade of rising Islamophobia and silence on global atrocities has shattered India’s image. Among global analysts, India is viewed with growing suspicion. A democracy that abandons its principles at home and abroad loses the benefit of the doubt — with real strategic costs.

The Domestic Roots of Strategic Drift

This strategic erosion cannot be separated from the state of Indian politics. Foreign policy begins at home—and India’s domestic leadership, across party lines, has shown neither the consensus nor the capacity to guide the country through this moment.

The ruling party’s ideological Zionism—uncritical, theatrical, and rooted in a shared civilizational assertiveness—has fused nationalism with foreign policy spectacle. The deeper affinity between Hindutva and the Israeli right is ideological: a worldview that casts the Muslim citizen or neighbour as inherently suspect; a model of ethno-religious majoritarianism that justifies exceptional violence in the name of national security. The Modi government’s unwavering support for Israel’s Gaza campaign, even as global outrage mounts, is not only about supposed realpolitik—it is an affirmation of this shared vocabulary of dehumanisation.

But the liberal-left, instead of offering a serious counter-model, retreats into its own outdated tropes. Its romanticisation of China and Russia—still framed in Cold War terms of anti-Western solidarity—ignores both countries’ authoritarianism, expansionism, and disregard for international law. Worse, it often reduces India’s foreign policy choices to grievances about American hypocrisy, without proposing any coherent regional or global alternative.

In 2008, both the BJP and the Left tried to torpedo the UPA’s nuclear deal with the United States—a pact that ultimately opened the door to India’s rise as a strategic and economic actor, and its integration into global supply chains.

Today, the Congress Party, which once delivered that breakthrough, risks goading the Modi-Jaishankar-Doval triumvirate into acting on its worst instincts by indulging in old-school anti-West sloganeering. Dated Cold War rhetoric, shallow NAM/Bandung nostalgia, and rhetorical grandstanding are not a substitute for real policy.

Russia provides cheap oil and legacy weapons platforms. It cannot offer India next-gen semiconductors, climate finance, AI infrastructure nor access to premium consumer markets. (It is after all, France, not Russia, that India co-chaired the AI summit with.) China, meanwhile, is not an alternative—despite the recent thaw. Its border provocations, economic coercion, and military support to Pakistan all work against India’s long-term interests.

While Beijing can offer some investment, it actively blocks India’s entry into important power blocs, stops the sale of rare-earth magnets and pharmaceutical inputs at will and undermines India in its near-abroad. Take, for instance, its proposed airbase at Lalmonirhat in Bangladesh, close to India’s narrow ‘Chicken’s Neck’ joining the mainland with the Northeastern states.

In truth, only the US and the EU can offer at scale what India needs: export markets, technology transfers, capital investment and regulatory alignment with the cutting edge of the global economy. Betting on autocracies while alienating democracies is not autonomy—it is isolation and national self-harm.

This ideological polarisation—Zionist admiration on the right, Sino-Russian nostalgia on the left—has left Indian foreign policy hostage to performance, not strategy.

Capacity, Not Choreography

Despite grand rhetoric about leading the Global South, India has fewer than 1,000 Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers—a number that has barely grown since the 1980s. According to official data, the IFS cadre comprises around 940 officers, with just 200-250 typically posted abroad in senior roles.

For a country with more than 200 diplomatic missions and global aspirations, this is a staggering shortfall.

By contrast:

• Singapore, with a population of just 6 million, has over 1,200 foreign service staff, including 550 career diplomats
• China deploys more than 7,500 diplomats, managing over 270 missions worldwide
• The United States has over 13,000 Foreign Service Officers, supported by tens of thousands in diplomatic operations
• France maintains around 6,500 diplomatic and consular officers
• Even Brazil, with a population one-sixth of India’s, fields more than 1,500 trained diplomats

India’s diplomatic corps is overstretched and underfunded, with few language experts, limited policy depth, and minimal regional presence. This explains its silence on the Thai-Cambodian standoff, inaction in Chinese-influenced Laos and Myanmar, and neglect of Africa and Latin America. Without robust diplomatic infrastructure, global ambition becomes posturing — not strategy.

From Illusion to Strategy

Real autonomy is not about resisting alignment. It is about earning influence through competence. And global leadership is not about posturing—it is about institutional depth, policy clarity, and moral credibility.

The invitation to Vladimir Putin is not a bold geopolitical manoeuvre. It is the culmination of a dangerous illusion: that India can always defy global sentiment and international law, and still retain its economic and strategic value. But the world has changed. Performative neutrality is no longer read as strategic autonomy—it is seen as complicity, or weakness.

Until the country stops mistaking performance for power—and ideology for strategy—it will continue to drift, diminishing its voice even as its ambitions grow louder.

(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)

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