The Russian & Indian Militaries Secured Logistical Access To One Another’s Facilities

Their newly ratified Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics (RELOS) agreement can help midwife tri-multipolarity, bolster Russia’s Sino-Indo balancing act, and possibly even facilitate its renascent “New Détente” with the US depending on the degree of future coordination between their policymakers.

Russia ratified the Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics (RELOS) agreement with India in early December practically on the eve of Putin’s trip there, which is why news about this was lost in the media shuffle. As the name implies, RELOS gives each country’s troops, ships, and planes logistical access to the other’s facilities, but it importantly doesn’t give them their own military bases in the other’s territory. The purpose is to ease the organization of joint exercises with a view towards holding them more frequently.

In practice, the Indian Armed Forces might start drilling in the Arctic and become a more regular sight in the Russian Far East while Russia’s will be seen more often in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), thus informally expanding each’s presence there in a symbolic joint display of their rising influence in Eurasia. As was explained here ahead of Putin’s trip, Russia and India envisage midwifing tri-multipolarity as the stepping stone to complex multipolarity (multiplexity), and RELOS is one of the means to that end.

To elaborate, Russia won’t consider giving China the logistical access to its military facilities that it just granted India since it doesn’t want to lend false credence to pernicious Western media speculation that they’re mutual defense allies, which could then make Russia the US’ intractable foe. By contrast, India has sought to bridge the divide between Russia and the US ever since Narendra Modi’s ascent to the premiership in May 2014, which was right when their ties began to deteriorate.

Although his own country’s relations with the US unexpectedly deteriorated over the summer for the reasons explained here, they’re far from irreparable, and the renascent Russian-US “New Détente” set into motion by Trump’s 28-point Russian-Ukrainian peace deal framework can help improve them. As detailed in the recent analysis about “How A Rapprochement With Russia Helps The US Advance Its Goals Vis-à-vis China”, the US doesn’t want Russia becoming disproportionately dependent on China.

That dark scenario would turbocharge China’s superpower trajectory via unlimited access to Russian resources and thus intensify its systemic rivalry with the US, but this could be averted by a post-Ukraine Russian-US strategic partnership centered on energy and critical minerals cooperation. Trilateralizing this through India’s inclusion would help Russia avoid dependence on the US while further reducing the already far-fetched chance that Russia weaponizes its control over these resources to blackmail the US.

RELOS fits into this framework by functioning as a friendly military complement to the expansion of Indian economic influence in Russia’s resource-rich Arctic and Far Eastern regions. The resultantly increased transit of its navy through the South and East China Seas en route to foreseeably more frequent drills with Russia could be presented by India as an unprovocative response to the expansion of China’s own naval influence in the IOR without worsening tensions. That might please the US.

Its new National Security Strategy calls on India to play a greater role in the South China Sea, which Delhi is reluctant to do to avoid provoking Beijing, but the aforesaid increased transit of its navy through those waters could represent a compromise that might then help repair ties with the US. Through these means, RELOS can bolster Russia’s Sino-Indo balancing act while also facilitating its “New Détente” with the US, but this requires unprecedented coordination between Russian, Indian, and US policymakers.