India's foreign policy cannot operate in a vacuum divorced from global and regional geopolitical environment. The global regional environment is heavily polarized in 2024 between United States & Allies and the two Communist States, Russia and China.
The Indo Pacific geopolitical environment of which India is a pivotal nation reflects the global polarization even more intensely due to Communist China's predatory aggressiveness against all its peripheral neighbors. chiefly, India.
Perceptionaly, India's pattern of strategic partnerships and engagement present an indisputable picture of India being a 'Natural Ally' of the United States and West.
The above is indisputable especially in the case of India's highly institutionalized security mechanisms with the United States which have evolved over two decades. While both United States and India shy away from terming it as China Threat-centric but the reality is that it is so.
In this heavily polarized geopolitical environment, more sharper after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2023 and China consequently raising its military provocations against Taiwan, the confrontations both in Europe and in India Pacific have intensified.
India's continued 'Strategic Partnership' with Russia is a hangover relict of the heyday of India's Non-Alignment era. This relationship has multiple contradictions when viewed against contextual geopolitical global and regional environment.
Russia is in a 'Military Alliance 'with China but for the name. China figures topmost in India's threat perceptions. Russia is therefore ill-placed to act as India's 'Countervailing Power' against Chinese aggression because of Russia's heavy reliance on China linkages.
Russia also has not displayed any inclination to prevail over China to desist from hostile activities in South Asia inimical to Indian security interests.
Russia's only utility to Indian foreign policy interests is as a source of cheap oil supplies and which utility can be assessed as transactional in nature. With India's reduced reliance on Russian armaments the Russia-India relationship can be at best viewed overall as transactional.
Consequently, the crucial and pertinent question that India's foreign policy planners are posed with is what imperatives exist for India's obsession with a 'multipolar world order' or 'multilateralism' as a foreign policy precept.
Will these two Indian foreign policy precepts be adequate to serve India's national security interests in a heavily polarized geopolitical environment?
What these two foreign policy precepts generate in global geopolitical dynamics is ambiguity on India's strategic directions and postures. 'Strategic Ambiguity' has cost India heavily in the past both strategically and economically.
Should India go down again on that path of Indian foreign policy postulations?
India in last ten years has projected to the world that it intends to play the role of a Major Power in global affairs. Such a national aspiration cannot be achieved nor sustained by multipolarity or multilateralism.
The above Indian 'National Aspiration' can only best be achieved by grappling with geopolitical challenges with exercise 0f 'Hard Power' in strategic coalitions with Major Powers with which strategic convergences exist on threats to Indian security.
Concluding, in the transient phase of India graduating to grapple with geopolitical challenges based more on 'realpolitik' than idealism, it is recommended that India follow France in terms of the dominant foreign policy precept, namely, "Allied but Not Aligned" so asserted by French President Macron. This should satisfy the present proponents of the current foreign policy postulations.
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