August 31, 2025 ☼ The Intersection ☼ geopolitics ☼ foreign policy

This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint.

The past six months have shown that India is not a swing power. We could not deter China from providing active assistance to Pakistan during a military conflict. Our weight proved insufficient to dissuade the United States from singling us out with atrocious tariffs. We have been shown the limitations of India’s national power relative to the United States and China. We should recognise this hard reality if we have to change course.

First let us get the political blame game out of the way. We are where we are because the substance of our foreign policy for the past two decades has been consistent, even if the decorations were different. The trend has been toward closer partnership with the United States, wariness of China, enthusiasm for plurilateral arrangements, de-prioritisation of the subcontinental matters and the developing world. This became the dominant view of India’s strategic establishment — both in Delhi and elsewhere in the country — punctuated only by pro-Russian views that become stronger after Putin invaded Ukraine. Whatever partisans might now say, there has been bipartisan consensus on India’s geopolitical strategy since the turn of the century.

In a world where the United States is still the strongest global power and China is its challenger, it remains in India’s interests for the gap between the two to remain large for as long as possible. The reasons for this are so deep in differences of strategic culture between India and China as to be structural. The dispute over the Himalayan frontier are a tangible manifestation, a visible symptom of the underlying cause. “One mountain cannot accommodate two tigers” as the Chinese proverb goes, which suggests that a Sino-Indian bloc against the West can only come into being when India stops being a tiger. On the one hand, since we are unwilling to accept a subordinate status that China expects, the two countries cannot come together enough to challenge the West. On the other, India has an interest in creating a countervailing coalition to Chinese dominance in the region. To the extent that the United States shares that interest, there is a case for an alliance.

It is therefore in India’s interests to be a swing power: allied with neither but able to have its way with either side by leveraging its own weight. India is also in a position to be a swing power. Europe and Japan cannot swing because they are in a formal military alliance with the United States. Russia has decided not to, perhaps because of it too has reasons of strategic culture. Brazil and South Africa are outside the focal geography of the great power contest. Saudi Arabia remains an oil exporting economy and dependent on Washington for its security. India is the only state that is strong enough and autononous enough to be a global swing power.

Just because it is in our interests and we are in a position to be one doesn’t make India a swing power. To be effective India must pass two conditions: first, New Delhi must enjoy better relations with Washington and Beijing than they have with each other. Second, it must be able to demonstrate the ability to deliver both pleasure and pain to the two countries. In other words, winning India’s support must become essential for them to achieve their policy objectives. Clearly this is not only difficult but also a moving target. Not only must India’s political economy be supportive, but New Delhi requires the appropriate policy capacity — diplomatic, military, trade and technology — to pull this off. We have fallen short on these fronts. A fundamental review of India’s geopolitical strategy must answer how we will fulfil the prerequisites of becoming as global swing power.

I first made the case for swinging around 15 years ago in the wake of improved India-US relations and Beijing’s increasing assertiveness. However, after Xi Jinping came to power and decided to shape bilateral relations on China’s terms, it became difficult to sustain the swing power argument.

How could India take sides with Beijing when its People’s Liberation Army was pushing the envelope of China’s ambition at India’s expense? And how could India reject Washington’s offer of a closer defence and economic relationship that strengthened India’s ability to resist Chinese hegemony? External events made a pro-US tilt attractive. Maybe at some point we crossed a line and became more dependent on the United States than they on us. To be fair though, it would have been considered ridiculous to hedge against the risk of the United States pursuing policies that cause serious harm to its own interests.

Our response to the moment should be to wipe off the dirt and glitter from our realist lens and work out how to not just become stronger, but in the right places. It is obvious enough that New Delhi must improve ties with both Washington and Beijing. The less obvious and more challenging task would be to figure out how to develop leverage and when to use it. And how to press on with the strategy even when it becomes counterintuitive like it did in the past 10 years.

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