Buttressed by a surge in hydrocarbon prices after 2003, the watershed event came in 2006 when Russia for the first time regained its 1990 level of the real GDP. However, it was only with the events of August 2008 in the Southern Caucasus that India’s strategic community began to take Russian resurgence seriously. What the Georgian conflict produced was a global realisation that Eurasian security cannot be achieved without an acknowledgement of vital Russian security interests and policies.
The past year has also witnessed an infusion of realism in Indian security discourse. There is an emerging consensus that bandwagoning with a declining hegemon is insufficient to attain a higher international profile for India and address its regional security questions. It is against such a backdrop that Moscow and New Delhi conducted their annual summit last month. And while this was the Prime Minister’s sixth visit to Russia, a slew of agreements, including a civil nuclear framework agreement (a comprehensive nuclear deal without strings attached) and an extension of military-technical collaboration to 2020 (including a successful resolution of the Gorshkov issue), indicates a renewed focus on the relationship and a belated acceptance of Russia’s return as a global actor.
The joint declaration identified specific policy themes. Both sides agreed that the “fight against terrorism cannot be selective, and drawing false distinctions between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban would be counter-productive.” This convergence of views becomes especially relevant in the context of a segment of the western commentariat that holds open the option to forge a bargain with the Taliban with the Pakistani military serving as the conduit. Both Moscow and New Delhi are united in opposition to a stabilisation of the Hindu-Kush that returns a radical proxy regime into power in Kabul. Furthermore, with Washington exploring greater coordination with Beijing in its AfPak plan and encouraging a regional role for China, Russia and India will discover growing opportunities to coordinate their Afghanistan policies.
The joint declaration also focused on Asia, noting “the growing efficacy of close bilateral and multilateral interaction in the Asia-Pacific region as a means to enhance economic cooperation and to maintain regional peace and stability to confront global challenges of security and development of the 21st century.” Clearly, this was a reference to strive for a geopolitically plural and an open security architecture for Asia. What is interesting is that both sides appear to be shoring up each other’s presence in the Eurasian region: Russia supporting India’s membership in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and “full membership in the SCO”; India supporting Russia’s involvement in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).
In fact, the allusion to the Asia-Pacific region is timely as the debate over Russia’s evolving role in Asia assumes more clarity. A perception that Russia’s “westernisers” have irrevocably steered Russia away from Asia has gained currency in Russian foreign policy discourse. It is argued that a “European choice” and “the preservation of a predominantly European orientation of Russia” will preclude it from pursuing its objectives in Asia.
The reality, however, is more complex. As Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has himself noted, the so-called conflict between the Western and Eastern vectors of Russian policy is “artificial and far-fetched”. In fact, what is remarkable is the extent to which Russian foreign policy has come to rely on a non-ideological approach to the West. Geostrategic considerations – Moscow’s resolve to prevent the revival of an anti-Russian trans-Atlantic consensus while restoring Russia’s influence on its periphery – and geoeconomic realties (energy and technological interdependence with Europe) imply Russia’s Western vector is driven largely by realpolitik. Russia is poised to play a major role in Asian security in the coming years after the present phase of transition in completed. Russian strategists are not uninterested in the evolution of the Asian balance of power. The emergence of the RIC and BRIC formats attest to this fact.
As Lavrov argues, “Russia’s energy, scientific, technological and intellectual potential” ensures an important role for it in Asia’s economic rejuvenation. Furthermore, the fact that a majority of Russia’s mineral and resource wealth lies east of the Urals in Asiatic Russia implies that Moscow cannot avoid the challenging task of developing East Siberia and the Russian Far-East. But most importantly, Russia is finally overcoming its “China first” policy – viewing Asia through the Chinese prism – towards more diversified relationships in South-East and East Asia.
The structural logic for greater Indo-Russian cooperation also stems from the construction of a complex interdependence between the United States and China over the past decade. The discernible coopting of China by the West has introduced an additional variable into Moscow’s and New Delhi’s foreign policies. For New Delhi, the recent patronising Obama-Hu joint statement, declaring South Asia as an object of common concern, underscored India’s diplomatic vulnerability to the possibility of Sino-US collaboration on regional geopolitics. Similarly, in the global strategic triangle (US-Russia-China), it is China that enjoys a relative advantage in that the China-Russia and China-US bilateral dyads are more substantial than the Russia-US equation. Indeed, one of Russia’s principal dilemmas has been to overcome this relative disadvantage by stabilising its own relations with Washington and an effort at the construction of new interdependencies with the US at the global level (though the entrenched attitude of US security elites indicates that a policy of Russian constrainment remains active).
Suffice it to say, India and Russia would need to expand their interactions both for purposes of strategic insurance vis-à-vis an ascendant China and as a leverage against expanding US-China collaboration on issues of global governance and Eurasian security.
The realities of international life have ensured that nations can rarely claim to have more than uncertain partnerships. The relative permanence of the Indo-Russian relationship must then surely be an outlier in diplomatic history. Moscow and New Delhi are on the cusp of crafting a partnership that transcends the vestiges of the Cold War. Strategic planners in Moscow and New Delhi would do a disservice to their own countries if they do not provide adequate material and intellectual support to this process.
The writer is an international relations analyst at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi.
Source: The Tribune, Chandigarh, India.
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