Rebalancing India’s Great Power Ties

India’s Participation in the Quad Leaders’ Summit
• Narendra Modi’s participation in the sixth Quad Leaders’ Summit in the U.S. has boosted hopes of consolidating security cooperation among the Indo-Pacific’s leading maritime democracies.
• India’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, held high-profile meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, focusing on resolving the four-year military standoff with China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Role of Peace Maker
• India’s security managers and diplomats are balancing great power diplomacy with New Delhi’s interest.
• Doval’s Doval-Putin meet may be seen as India’s attempt to cross the psychological Rubicon in great power diplomacy.
India’s Russia Dilemma
• India’s strategic relationship with the U.S. is relatively new, but its long-standing relationship with Russia has endured for over six decades.
• The war in Ukraine has triggered Russia’s total break with the West, and Moscow’s pivot toward China has become more pronounced.
• India’s independent foreign policy comes with a normative cost, as the West views India as indifferent on issues crucial for the remaking of the global order.
Russia’s China Embrace and India’s Foreign Policy
• India’s foreign policy under Modi’s leadership has been characterized by a friendly, cooperative relationship with the U.S. and a non-adversarial, non-ideological relationship with Russia.
• Russia’s ambitions of posing a serious challenge to American primacy by asserting a leadership role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS remain unfulfilled.
• The Ukraine war has complicated Russia’s task of managing its relationship with India, leading to a rebalancing of India’s great power relations.