Jaishankar Shared Some Updates About India’s Multi-Alignment Strategy

His latest remarks should put to rest the groundless speculation that Prime Minister Modi’s latest trip to the US resulted in India supposedly dumping Russia and agreeing to become America’s vassal state for containing China.

Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr. Subramanyam Jaishankar updated the world about the state of his country’s multi-alignment on Wednesday while speaking at the India International Centre. Although his words were few, they’re still relevant for clarifying some of the confusion that’s swirled around this policy among some in the press – both the Mainstream Media and the Alt-Media Community – following Prime Minister Modi’s latest trip to the US.

To this top diplomat’s credit, he candidly addressed rising Sino-Indo tensions, which he attributed to the abnormal state of their disputed border. EAM Jaishankar blamed China for departing from previous agreements on this sensitive issue, the resolution of which he said is the most important factor for improving their troubled relations. Nevertheless, he also praised it as “a very significant economy and significant power”, which shows that India accurately assesses its neighbor’s strength.

He then praised his boss’ recent visit to the US as “the most productive in history”, adding that “We have moved into a positive domain with the US for shaping the world for common purposes.” This is likely an allusion to INDUS-X, which is the culmination of their military-technical cooperation over the past decade. Although India isn’t the US’ ally for containing China, these two do indeed have a shared interest in managing that country’s rise, and Washington has finally accepted that Delhi won’t be its vassal.

Indian-EU ties are also excellent and “We are more hopeful than ever” that a free trade agreement will be reached sometime in the coming future, he said. That outcome would be mutually beneficial due to their economic-financial complementarity, not to mention the role that each could play for the other in helping them balance China’s leading position as their top trade partner. EAM Jaishankar didn’t explicitly state the aforesaid goal, but it can be strongly intuited given the larger strategic context nowadays.

Moving along to relations with Russia, India’s top diplomat pushed back against Western observers’ oversimplification of them as supposedly being solely about defense cooperation. EAM Jaishankar reminded everyone that there are significant economic and geopolitical dimensions to their ties as well, which explains why his country has decided to maintain their historical partnership. This vector of India’s multi-alignment policy will clearly remain among its most pivotal and promising.

To wrap it up, EAM Jaishankar’s latest remarks should put to rest the groundless speculation that Prime Minister Modi’s latest trip to the US resulted in India supposedly dumping Russia and agreeing to become America’s vassal state for containing China. Despite the differences that it has with its fellow RICS partners, which are much more serious with respect to China than with Russia, India has proudly maintained its strategic autonomy and is thus on pace to accelerate its rise as a multipolar Great Power.