The SCMP Is Wrong: India’s Military Diversification Plans Shouldn’t Be Anti-Russian
It's in India’s interests to ignore Ganguly and Kapur’s proposal since doing what they suggest would sabotage its grand strategy in the emerging Multipolar World Order.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) published a piece on Wednesday by distinguished experts Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur from Indiana University and the US Naval Postgraduate School respectively. Titled “How India can square the circle of Russia with the US and other Quad partners”, the authors propose that India “announce its intention to diversify its weapons acquisitions and buy more from the US and other partners, so as not to be too dependent on any one state” during next week’s Quad meeting in Tokyo. According to them, “This wouldn’t denounce Russia directly, but the international community in general, and the Quad members in particular, would understand the implicit criticism.”
Ganguly and Kapur insist on this course of action since they believe that India’s practice of principled neutrality towards Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine “has caused consternation within the Quad.” In their view, “If one state evinces indifference to major violations of liberal principles of international behaviour, even if that violation occurs far away, it undercuts the purpose of the [Quad].” They also fear that it might embolden China to attack India. For these reasons, they shared three arguments for why India must urgently diversify its military supplies from Russia by replacing them with Western wares.
First, they claim that “Russian equipment is often subpar.” Second, they write that “relying on Russia gives it too much leverage over Indian foreign policy”. Finally, Ganguly and Kapur believe that “buying more from the US and other partners would increase India’s military integration with them, as well as other like-minded customer states.” They acknowledged that their first point isn’t perfect as proven by high-quality S-400s. As for their second, they think that Moscow is pulling Delhi’s strings and that India’s policy of principled neutrality isn’t independently promulgated. Concerning the third point, it suggests a scenario where India might be pressured to participate in regional Quad military operations.
Having clarified the primary shortcomings of their three points, it’s now time to constructively critique the spirit of their proposal for India to publicly announce its military diversification plans during next week’s Quad summit. Frankly speaking, there’s no need to draw attention to this process that’s already been underway as proven by Kartik Bommakanti and Sameer Patil in their latest analysis for the Observer Research Foundation titled “Explained: India’s arms imports from Russia”. They concluded that “The dependence on Russian exports will most likely disappear if current TIV trends continue.”
The fact of the matter is that India has already been diversifying its military suppliers but without obnoxiously drawing maximum global media attention to it in order to avoid inadvertently sending an unfriendly signal to Russia. There’s nothing wrong with military diversification in principle so long as it isn’t weaponized for the purpose of harming the interests of any given country’s partners. What Ganguly and Kapur are proposing, however, is that India openly politicizes its existing policy at next week’s Quad summit in order to do precisely that: send an unfriendly signal to Russia in exchange for Western applause.
It's unlikely that Delhi will do that since it would be contrary to its special and privileged strategic partnership with Moscow that was unprecedentedly energized after India decisively intervened to preemptively avert the scenario of Russia’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China following the US-led West’s unprecedented sanctions against it. Military ties between those two are important but their relationship is actively diversifying into other spheres and has a game-changing grand strategic component to it nowadays in the context of the New Cold War.
This was explained more at length here, here, here, and here, but can be summarized as their joint desire to assemble a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”) for the purpose of creating a third pole of influence in the global systemic transition’s intermediary bi-multipolar phase in order to comparatively reduce the American and Chinese superpowers’ presently oversized role in International Relations. By functioning as Russia’s irreplaceable valve from Western pressure, India ensured that Moscow wouldn’t become disproportionately dependent on Beijing, thus preserving the Kremlin’s strategic autonomy.
Delhi’s own strategic autonomy is also preserved through these means since Moscow functions as India’s own valve from the Western pressure that this South Asian Great Power is coming under to submit to becoming the US’ junior partner for “containing” China. While Bommakanti and Patil proved that the share of Russian arms to India has shrunk over the years, this was the result of a natural process related to Delhi’s understandable desire to diversify its military partners in order to maximally maintain its strategic autonomy and wasn’t ever intended to send an unfriendly signal to Moscow.
Be that as it is, Ganguly and Kapur want India to openly politicize this process in order to send precisely that unfriendly signal which it had hitherto done its utmost never to convey in order for it to be interpreted positively by the US-led West and thus assuage their concerns about Delhi’s commitment to their unipolar liberal-globalist worldview. That would be triply counterproductive for India since it would burn bridges with Russia, risk that Eurasian Great Power becoming disproportionately dependent on China as a result, and thus also place India in a position of junior partnership vis a vis the West.
For these reasons, it’s in India’s interests to ignore Ganguly and Kapur’s proposal since doing what they suggest would sabotage its grand strategy in the emerging Multipolar World Order. Delhi can’t afford to send any partisan signals to anyone since its global soft power is predicated on being the consummately neutral Great Power in the New Cold War. It’s also relying on Russia to assemble the Neo-NAM, which is meant to create a third pole of influence in the global systemic transition’s intermediate bi-multipolar phase. Abandoning that plan would capsize India’s multipolar dreams and thus be to its ultimate detriment.