AA Edit | Strategic Autonomy May Be Paying Off For India

India’s recent diplomacy moves have not been as smooth as dancing the tango, at least not with the USA which has blown hot and cold much like its President Donald Trump is wont to do. The one principle that it has learnt to enforce as it faces the unpredictable responses of the US is that of strategic autonomy and that might have given the country the leverage it needed to handle the rough with the smooth.

Pursuing its interests regardless of historical ties or emotional links, which may have proved more detrimental than helpful, India has been reaching out to the world at large, in meetings with the Russian and Chinese supremos besides engaging with the most significant leaders of the UK and Europe.

The German Chancellor’s maiden visit to India, to a warm reception in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, that had also been extended to the Chinese and American Presidents in the past, has become a part of the wider outreach India has been seeking and which has come without any of the coercion or mixed signals of the kind that have emanated from Washington.

Whatever their strategic pressures may be in dealing with their trans-Atlantic ally, major European nations have demonstrated that India is an important partner in defence as well as trade and have pursued all issues with India with a well-marked sense of equity. This was made apparent in the way the talks went between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The pacts signed, including a significant one on defence industrial cooperation, are an indication of how much more even these old ties have been as opposed to the often chaotic association with the USA has been, perhaps never worse than in the present time when even a bizarre claim was made most recently that a trade deal did not come about because Narendra Modi did not call Donald Trump in time.

Such are the swinging moods as seen in the signals that the US has been sending, including in Trump endorsing legislation carrying the threat of a 500 per cent sanction on Russian oil buyers who dare to prioritise their national interest, that there has occasionally been positive thoughts by semaphore too.

There might still be some way to go before India and the USA sign the much-vaunted trade deal, but its new envoy Sergio Gor, who took office on Monday in New Delhi, was brimming with positivity about ties. And not only about a trade deal being imminent as talks are about to restart, which he disclosed, but also about India being invited to be a part of its Pax Silica, the US-led tech and supply chain initiative.

It would appear then that India’s pursuit of strategic autonomy and its hunt for diversifying its ties as well as trade while exploring worldwide export sources may be bearing fruit on a parallel track independent of the ups and downs of the diplomatic path to the US. It appears this is just about the beginning of the realisation in Washington that it cannot leave a significant global economy behind. All the unsubtle pressures placed on India by the stance taken by Trump and the rhetoric of some of his close aides may be consigned to history if indeed Gor’s projections of brighter days of cooperation fructify soon.