Ukraine war: Chronicling India’s management of diplomatic fallout in the West | World News

But one country befuddled the US.

India, a member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) was neither buying the story, nor was it willing to take a position against Russia. Senior American officials then told HT that as a council member, “staying on the sidelines” was not an option for New Delhi and Russia must not be allowed to divide the democratic world when it had to face the challenge of the future — China.

The geopolitical test

On the day the war broke out, exactly a year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged President Joe Biden — as Biden recalled during his visit to Kyiv on Monday — to gather the world’s leaders in support of Ukraine.

America’s effort to get India on board intensified. The US mission at the United Nations in New York began sending negative reports about India’s stance to bosses in Washington, for Delhi had abstained from resolutions condemning Russian actions. In turn, Washington ramped up the pressure on Delhi. After all, story of how the democratic world had come together to oppose Russia would be incomplete if the world’s largest democracy stayed out.

But India was also a friend, a critical partner in the Indo-Pacific, a member of the Quad, a potential net security provider in the Indian Ocean, the bulwark against Chinese expansionism in the region, a growing economy, and the source of one of America’s most influential diaspora groups. Burning bridges would not help.

Even as Washington was puzzled about how to deal with the India question, the dilemma in Delhi about how to deal with the Russia question was deepening.

Russia was a friend. It had vetoed resolutions attacking Indian interests at the same Security Council for decades. Delhi had an overwhelming relationship of military dependence on Moscow. Russia helped not just with maintenance and spares of existing systems, but it was also more willing to collaborate on advanced military technologies than any other country. There was a broader strategic dimension at play. Moscow had remained neutral during the India-China tensions on the border; it had even served as a venue for talks between the two sides in 2020 and kept up its military supplies to Delhi at a critical time.

Deserting Russia at this juncture would push it even closer to China, including when it came to the Beijing-Delhi rift. And there were enough in the Delhi system who argued that Ukraine had been traditionally Russian sphere of influence and there was a complex and long history behind the tensions — why take a critical position when Moscow could well emerge as the victor?

At the same time, the top political leadership knew that Russia had crossed a line on February 24. An outright invasion, the violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of another country was wrong. And this was not the hill for which India was entirely willing to sacrifice its critical relationship with the West — New Delhi’s political trust with DC had grown; US technologies, capital, intelligence, and goodwill were essential for India’s rise in the global system. India also had a more urgent challenge. Over 20,000 students were stuck in Ukraine; Delhi needed to keep channels open with Kyiv and Moscow to get them out safely.

It was a fork in the road. Would the US subject the growing and multifaceted bilateral relationship to this single test, pressuring India in private and condemning it in public? Would it revert to the patronising reprimands of the Cold War, for it was Delhi’s relationship with Moscow that proved to be a thorny issue for decades in the India-US relationship? Would India take a confrontational stance, deploying its nationalist arsenal and telling the US off to prove its “strategic autonomy”? Would Delhi’s dependence on Moscow, a legacy of the past, prove too crippling in deepening its ties with Washington, the relationship of the future?

Or would the two countries be adults and let realism win? Would they learn lessons from the past, and find a way around the differences? Would Delhi and Washington show that their relationship had become so resilient, so mature, so robust that they could have differences, yet remain friends?

The power of diplomacy

A year later, the answer is clear. Despite Ukraine, and in some parts because of it, the 2022-23 period has proved to be among the best years for not just the India-US bilateral relationship but India’s ties with the broader western bloc. And there in lies a case study in wise political judgment and smart diplomacy.

What enabled the differences to be bridged was first the fact that habits of cooperation had been built over the past two decades. Both sides talked, and both sides knew how to talk to each other. Neither retreated into a corner sulking.

In the days leading up to the war, external affairs minister S Jaishankar had spent time in Europe, including at the Munich Security Conference, getting a sense of the churn in the continent’s security dynamic and conveying his views. Once the war commenced, if secretary of state Antony J Blinken was speaking regularly to Jaishankar, India’s ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu was relentlessly reaching out to White House, State Department, and influential members of the US Congress.

If US undersecretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland, a critical voice and a hawk on US’s Ukraine policy, visited India just a month after the war commenced, Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh were in Washington in April for a 2+2 dialogue with their counterparts. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a virtual Quad meeting with President Joe Biden days after the war started in early March, they again got together on a video call before the formal 2+2 dialogue with their top advisers and ministers. Just weeks after the war, the ministry of external affairs and Observer Research Foundation invited the top European leadership to Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship foreign policy conclave. Outreach, engagement and communication was the first step, especially with those with whom one disagreed.

The Indian message to the US was simple. It articulated its reasons for its position and did not shy away from expressing its vulnerabilities — on defence, on the need to ensure the safety of its citizens, on its energy requirements, on the wider destabilising consequences of the war. It told Washington that instead of the language of redlines, the most constructive approach would to be work together to mitigate those vulnerabilities and deepen cooperation. A public slanging match would erode the goodwill that the US had built in India and revive bitter memories of the past. Delhi pointed to the unmistakable trendline of diversification from Russia, but also that this could only be a gradual process. And it conveyed its concerns about what a deeper Russia-China relationship vis a vis India implied for Delhi’s security; keeping up ties with Moscow was important.

But none of this meant India was happy about the war; it would convey its concerns to Moscow but naming and shaming Russia publicly wasn’t productive, nor was it something that India would do. At the same time, as an Indian minister told HT last April, India’s top political leadership told America’s top political leadership that Delhi would not do anything that hurt America’s “core national interests”.

Finding common ground

The US listened.

Washington understood that public posturing on the issue would only spark a nationalist backlash, make future conversations difficult and interrupt an organic debate within India where the mood among informed strategic elites, even if not on social media, was clearly shifting on Russia. Barring a few exceptions when either US spokespersons or officials who didn’t understand the big picture and adopted too critical a tone, the administration at large instead invested energy in underplaying the differences with India.

There was also genuine empathy for the Indian priority for rescuing its citizens and the US even offered quiet support in this exercise. On defence concerns, Nuland, during her March 2022 visit, had taken a step in reframing the issue by asking what the US could do to help to reduce Indian military dependence, instead of pretending that India’s concerns weren’t genuine. Blinken went further than any American official had, publicly acknowledging during the 2+2 presser that India’s military dependence on Russia was a legacy of the past — a result of America’s decision during the Cold War not to be a military partner of India. On energy, in the initial months, top officials in the US knew that India’s energy imports from Russia were minimal — by the time it shot up later in the year, Washington was aware that this was actually helping stabilise energy markets.

And of course, underlying all of it was the recognition that the real theatre of the future was Indo-Pacific. If the Cold War estrangement, as Dennis Kux showed in his seminal book on the India-US relationship, was because India and the US fundamentally disagreed with regard to their national security interests, the Ukraine episode did not reflect a fundamental rupture. Delhi wasn’t backing Moscow or acting against the western alliance even if it was not a part of the West’s exercise to isolate, punish and fight Russia; more importantly, India and the US had a convergence on a shared challenge, China.

The Americans also began viewing the European and Indo-Pacific theatres as an integrated space — Beijing and Moscow had, in early February 2022, agreed on a no-limits friendship understanding — and urged their partners in both continents to deepen collaboration. India was willing to engage with Europe, with a mix of reassurance (we don’t support the Russian invasion), rebuke (you never paid attention to the Chinese belligerence in our region) and resolve (let’s deepen ties with future common challenges in mind).

What helped was a rethink in India.

As the war progressed, India’s own position evolved, as seen in its categorical commitment to the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty and the UN charter. As Russian war crimes came to light, India voiced its support for an independent investigation. As Moscow embarked on nuclear brinksmanship, India made it clear that this wasn’t acceptable. As the food and fertiliser crisis deepened, India played a constructive role in the Black Sea Grain initiative. As developing countries began to articulate their concerns about the consequences of the war, India became the most forceful champion of the global south on international platforms and the voice of peace. And as Russia’s military setbacks on the ground became visible, it showed to Indian policymakers that Moscow would, irrespective of how the war ended, be a diminished power and India’s own strategic autonomy could not be left hostage to Russian revisionist actions.

And when the Russian president met the Indian PM in Samarkand, Modi became the first leader from a friendly country to tell him — to his face, with the cameras recording the message — that this was not the era of war. This resonated from the halls of the UN general assembly to the G20 in Bali. And India did all of this while safeguarding its relationship with Moscow, not allowing the West to dictate the terms of its engagement, and enhancing its energy imports.

In conversations with top UN officials in New York and American policymakers in Washington in recent months, it has been clear that the western view on India and the war has changed. There are constituencies that remain unhappy of course but those engaged in the everyday business of diplomacy have come to believe that it is useful to have India as a possible bridge which can talk to Moscow at the highest levels, exercise pressure when Putin is behaving particularly unreasonably and intervene on specific issues even if a macro peace deal is elusive.

In the US, there is an even greater commitment to deepen ties with India. Take one example. While the challenge from China was a key driver behind the recent India-US initiative on critical and emerging technologies, it was also motivated by an American desire to engage in tech partnerships with India to align the two systems for the future and prevent the mistake of the Cold War when US absence locked India in with Russian systems.

The public sphere has been more argumentative. If the US press, much of the think tank community and some elements on the Hill continued to castigate India, many in the Indian strategic community continue to, wrongly, blame US and NATO for the Ukraine war. But governments had shown they are far ahead of the commentariat and have together passed the most difficult of tests that the India-US relationship encountered in recent years. The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not disrupt India’s ties with the western world; instead, it led to an intensification of ties and opened new doors of friendship. Washington can pat itself for being mature; Delhi can pat itself for offering the world a masterclass in diplomacy.