India and the Global Centres of Power

India and the United States

The relationship between India and the United States has undergone one of the most remarkable transformations in contemporary international relations, evolving from decades of mutual suspicion and estrangement to what both governments now describe as one of the defining partnerships of the twenty-first century. The intellectual and cultural connections predate independence. Henry David Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience inspired Gandhi's strategy in South Africa and later in India, while Gandhian non-violence in turn became a major inspiration for the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. Swami Vivekananda's visit to America in 1893 left a lasting impression of India's philosophical traditions.

In the early decades after independence, India's non-alignment meant that the United States was not a priority in Indian foreign policy. The American decision to admit Pakistan into CENTO and SEATO created an impression in India that Washington did not stand by Indian interests. The United States in turn perceived India as too close to the Soviet Union, whose model India partly adopted for economic planning and from whom it obtained defence supplies and diplomatic support including Soviet vetoes on Kashmir in the UN Security Council. The relationship reached its nadir in 1971 when the United States supported Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War and moved the Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal in an attempt to intimidate India. The 1974 Pokhran nuclear test and India's continued closeness with the Soviet Union deepened American suspicion.

The end of the Cold War created conditions for a new beginning. India's economic liberalisation from 1991 onward aligned India more closely with the market-oriented world order that the United States championed. President Bill Clinton's visit to India in March 2000, the first by an American president in twenty-two years, set in motion a new phase of engagement. Prime Minister Vajpayee described India and the United States as natural allies. The relationship suffered a significant setback when India conducted five nuclear tests in May 1998 and the United States imposed sweeping sanctions including on key Indian defence and scientific organisations. However, the sanctions were progressively lifted through diplomatic engagement.

The defining transformation came with the signing of the India-US Civil Nuclear Deal in 2008. This agreement ended what India had long described as nuclear apartheid by granting India an exception in American law that allowed it to engage in civil nuclear commerce without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Dennis Kux had earlier described India and the United States as estranged democracies, and the nuclear deal symbolised the end of that estrangement. Prime Minister Modi articulated the new relationship's depth by stating that India and the United States had overcome the hesitations of history. External Affairs Minister Jaishankar captured the qualitative shift by observing that India and the United States earlier used to deal with each other and now they work with each other.

Defence cooperation has become the most consequential dimension of the transformed relationship. At the apex of the bilateral dialogue architecture is the 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, pioneered in 2018, which is co-chaired by the Ministers of External Affairs and Defence on the Indian side and the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense on the American side. Below it sits the Defence Policy Group, the apex official-level mechanism. India has signed all four foundational defence agreements with the United States: the General Security of Military Information Agreement in 2002 enabling sharing of military intelligence; the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement in 2016 permitting use of each other's military facilities for resupply and repairs; the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement in 2018 enabling secure communication and exchange of information on approved equipment; and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement in 2020 permitting exchange of geospatial data. The United States has also designated India as a Major Defence Partner and placed it on the Strategic Trade Authorisation-1 list easing export controls for high-technology sales. India has procured more than twenty billion dollars worth of defence equipment from the United States since 2008, including C-130J and C-17 transport aircraft, Apache and Chinook helicopters, MH-60R maritime helicopters, and P-8I maritime patrol aircraft. The Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, announced in May 2022 and launched in January 2023, covers co-production in defence, semiconductor supply chains, space, and next-generation telecommunications.

India and the United States conduct the largest number of bilateral military exercises between any two countries, including Yudh Abhyas for the Army, Vajra Prahar for Special Forces, Malabar for the Navy, Cope India for the Air Force, and the tri-services exercise Tiger Triumph. Both countries are also members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as QUAD, alongside Japan and Australia, which focuses on maintaining a free, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific in the face of Chinese assertiveness. As Harsh V. Pant has observed, India is key to the United States' ability to create a stable balance of power in the larger Indo-Pacific.

Economic relations have deepened substantially. In financial year 2023, the United States emerged as India's largest trading partner with total goods trade of approximately 128 billion dollars and services trade of around 58 billion dollars. India runs a trade surplus with the United States in both goods and services. About sixty percent of the revenue of Indian IT firms comes from the United States. The Indian-American diaspora of approximately 4.4 million people constitutes an important bridge between the two countries, serving as an influential political constituency, a source of investment, and a vehicle for cultural and educational ties.

China has become an increasingly important factor shaping the India-US relationship. Both countries share an interest in managing China's rise and neither wants a China-dominant Asia. India's own China strategy involves external balancing through partnerships, and Washington figures centrally in this calculation. At the same time, both New Delhi and Washington are careful about a relationship that is defined solely by China, recognising that a partnership exclusively based on shared concerns about Beijing is neither desirable nor sustainable on its own terms.

India and China

India and China are among the oldest civilisations in the world and their interactions stretch back to antiquity through trade routes also travelled by pilgrims including Fa Hien, Hsuan-Tsang, and Bodhidharma. In the modern period, both nations gained independence from European influence around the same time, with India becoming independent in 1947 and the People's Republic of China established in 1949. The relationship has experienced profound fluctuations across more than seven decades, moving through phases of friendship, betrayal, rivalry, and cautious engagement.

The early years after 1949 were marked by the formula Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai. India was among the first non-communist nations to recognise the People's Republic in December 1949 and consistently championed China's representation in the United Nations. When China occupied Tibet in 1950, India confined itself to a formal protest. The April 1954 trade agreement between India and China incorporated the Panchsheel or Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai visited India in June 1954 and Nehru visited Beijing three months later. Both leaders met at the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian nations in April 1955, together shaping what seemed to be a common approach for developing countries in the Cold War.

The relationship deteriorated sharply in the late 1950s. China's annexation of Tibet and India's grant of asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 following the Tibetan uprising created deep animosity. China raised border claims, rejected the McMahon Line as the legitimate India-China boundary in the east, and claimed the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh as part of its Xinjiang province. It also began to challenge Kashmir's accession to India and demanded self-determination. On 20 October 1962, the Chinese army invaded disputed territory along the border in Ladakh and across the McMahon Line in the northeast. Chinese troops pushed Indian forces back significantly, capturing territory in both sectors. A month later, China unilaterally declared a ceasefire and withdrew to positions effective at the time of the ceasefire. The 1962 war was a severe blow to India's self-image as a leader of the developing world, exposed the weaknesses of Nehru's foreign policy assumptions, and prompted India to appeal to the United States for military assistance, compromising the spirit of non-alignment. After the war, China established close relations with Pakistan and signed a border agreement with it in 1963 that included the cession of the Shaksgam Valley in Pakistani-occupied Kashmir to China, making China a party to the India-Pakistan territorial dispute.

The India-China boundary spans approximately 3500 kilometres and is divided into three sectors. In the eastern sector, China refuses to recognise the McMahon Line drawn by British India and Tibet at the 1914 Shimla Convention and claims approximately 90,000 square miles of territory, the area that constitutes most of Arunachal Pradesh. India accepts the McMahon Line as the legal and geographical boundary. In the middle sector between Nepal and Bhutan there is no active dispute. In the western sector, China has occupied Aksai Chin since 1962, a region India claims as part of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan's illegal cession of the Shaksgam Valley to China added 2170 square miles to Chinese control from occupied Kashmir.

The twenty-first century brought rapid growth in bilateral trade, rising from 339 million dollars in 1992 to 60 billion dollars in 2010 and approximately 114 billion dollars in 2023, making China India's largest trade partner by value. However, the relationship remained structurally asymmetric, with India running a large trade deficit and unable to gain meaningful market access in China. Strategic competition deepened alongside commercial interdependence. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and has been strongly objected to by India as a violation of Indian sovereignty. China's activities in the Indian Ocean, described by Western analysts through the metaphor of the String of Pearls referring to Chinese naval facilities and commercial ports across the Indian Ocean littoral from Djibouti to Myanmar, have raised concerns in India about strategic encirclement.

The Doklam standoff of 2017 marked a significant escalation. Chinese troops began extending a road southward in Doklam, a territory disputed between China and Bhutan, prompting approximately 270 Indian troops to cross the Sikkim border to stop the construction. The standoff lasted seventy-three days before both sides announced a disengagement. In June 2020, Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a violent clash in the Galwan River valley, resulting in the deaths of twenty Indian soldiers and approximately forty Chinese soldiers in the worst military confrontation between the two countries since 1967. The Galwan clash fundamentally reset the bilateral relationship. India banned hundreds of Chinese mobile applications, restricted Chinese investment, and accelerated efforts to diversify away from Chinese supply chains. The Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh has remained a zone of heightened military presence since 2020.

The broader strategic context makes India-China relations one of the most consequential bilateral relationships in the world. China is the second largest economy and is rapidly expanding its military capabilities. India has achieved the status of the fifth largest economy and its growth rate and population have both surpassed China's. Together India and China host approximately thirty-five percent of the world's population. The twenty-first century is often described as the Asian century, and how India and China manage their competition and coexistence will be among the most important factors shaping the international order.

India and Russia

India and Russia share a relationship described by External Affairs Minister Jaishankar as that of a valued and time-tested partner from which both countries have benefitted enormously. The foundations of the relationship rest on four pillars identified by scholars: a path-dependent weapons relationship built over decades; a common goal of establishing a multipolar international order; a desire to counterbalance against dangerous neighbours, particularly China and Pakistan in India's case; and a persistent mistrust of the United States, particularly acute on the Russian side.

In the Cold War, the Soviet Union was crucial for India's economic development and security. Soviet assistance helped establish heavy industries and provided defence equipment at lower costs than Western alternatives. The Soviet Union vetoed multiple resolutions on Kashmir in the United Nations Security Council and supported India's position on the issue. The convergence of interests arising from shared security concerns about China and the United States led to the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation in 1971, which provided India with a strategic umbrella during the Bangladesh Liberation War. The treaty remained in force until the collapse of the Soviet Union and was replaced in 1993 by the Treaty of Indo-Russian Friendship and Cooperation, which did not include the security provisions of its predecessor.

The post-Soviet 1990s initially saw Russia focus its foreign policy on relations with the United States and Western Europe, leading to a degree of neglect in the Russia-India relationship. The appointment of Yevgeny Primakov as Russian Foreign Minister, a sceptic of American unipolarity and an advocate of closer ties with Asian nations, reversed this trend. The Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership was formalised in 2000 with signing of the Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership Agreement, which attracted support across India's political spectrum. During President Medvedev's 2010 visit to India, Russia described India as a Privileged Strategic Partner. Russia has consistently supported India's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and backed India's membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, granted at the Ufa Summit in July 2015.

Defence cooperation has been the strongest pillar of the relationship, with Russia serving as India's largest arms supplier for decades. Key joint projects include the BrahMos cruise missile, the fifth-generation fighter aircraft programme, and the Akula-class submarine lease. India has also received S-400 air defence systems from Russia despite American pressure to desist. Russia's dominance in India's arms imports, which stood at approximately seventy-five percent of total imports between 2009 and 2013 according to SIPRI estimates, has gradually reduced as India diversifies procurement towards the United States, France, and Israel, and pursues indigenisation under the Make in India initiative. Russia has also played an important role in India's civil nuclear programme, providing the reactors and financing for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in India.

The bilateral economic relationship has remained below its potential. Trade hovered around fifteen billion dollars annually in the years before 2022, far below India's trade with the United States or China, hampered primarily by logistics, distance, and the dominance of state enterprises. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 created both opportunities and complications. India significantly expanded its purchase of discounted Russian crude oil, pushing bilateral trade to approximately fifty billion dollars in financial year 2023. India has also identified specific product categories where it can expand exports to Russia to replace goods previously supplied by the US and EU. However, India's public stance shifted somewhat, with Prime Minister Modi telling President Putin at the SCO summit in Samarkand in September 2022 that this is not an era of war, the first public criticism of Russian actions, and India voted in favour of allowing Ukrainian President Zelensky to address the UN General Assembly by video, the first wartime vote in which India did not support Russia or abstain.

C. Raja Mohan has observed that India's sentimental attachment to the Moscow relationship has been replaced by a sense of realism in the Modi administration about the two countries' increasingly divergent regional and global trajectories. Russia's deepening dependence on China as a consequence of Western sanctions has complicated India's calculation, since a Russia excessively dependent on China is less useful as a strategic hedge. India is therefore managing its Russia relationship with pragmatic realism, maintaining defence and energy ties while carefully distancing itself from Russian positions that conflict with Indian interests.

India and the European Union

India and the European Union together account for approximately two billion of the world's population. Both are committed to democracy, rule of law, and cultural pluralism domestically and to multilateralism in international affairs, providing the foundation for their relationship. India established formal ties with the European Economic Community in 1963 and the first India-EU Summit took place in Lisbon in June 2000, marking the beginning of a structured summit-level engagement. The fifth India-EU Summit in 2004 upgraded the relationship to a Strategic Partnership, taking just over thirty years for India to ascend from the European Commission's designation as non-associable to the status of strategic partner.

Trade and economic relations form the core of the partnership. EU-India trade turnover grew from 4.4 billion euros in 1980 to 60.9 billion euros in 2008 and approximately 124 billion euros in 2023. The EU is one of the largest sources of foreign direct investment in India, with stock reaching 96 billion euros in 2021. The EU-India Free Trade Agreement has been the most contested element of the strategic partnership. Negotiations were launched in 2007 but stalled after sixteen rounds in 2013, primarily over disputes on pharmaceuticals, automobiles, agricultural products, intellectual property rights, and government procurement. Negotiations resumed in 2022 along with separate tracks on geographical indications and investment protection. The EU-India Trade and Technology Council, launched in February 2023, represents the latest institutional innovation, aimed at boosting bilateral cooperation in strategic technologies, digital governance, clean energy, and resilient value chains. It is the EU's second such council after one with the United States, signalling the growing strategic importance of India to Europe.

Within the EU framework, India has developed particularly strong bilateral relationships with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. France is India's most important European strategic partner. The defence relationship includes technology transfers, the Rafale fighter acquisition, space cooperation, nuclear energy cooperation, and collaboration on submarine production. France shares India's vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific and has a strategic naval presence in the Indian Ocean through its base in Djibouti and island territories such as Reunion. France has supported India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and its entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India and France also jointly launched the International Solar Alliance in 2015. Some commentators suggest that from India's perspective, France can be the new Russia as a trusted defence partner willing to provide advanced technology. Germany is India's largest trading partner within Europe and one of India's most important industrial partners. The UK-India relationship, described by C. Raja Mohan as having shifted from entrenched pessimism to expansive new possibilities, encompasses trade, technology, diaspora ties, and security cooperation. The large South Asian diaspora in Britain creates both political complexity and cultural depth in the bilateral relationship.

India and Japan

India and Japan have developed a Special Strategic and Global Partnership that has grown rapidly in the twenty-first century, driven by shared democratic values, complementary economic strengths, and a common concern about China's rising power. Diplomatic relations were established with the signing of Japan's Peace Treaty with India in 1952. India assisted Japan's reintegration into the international community by inviting it to the first Asian Games in New Delhi and to the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955. India supplied iron ore and minerals as Japan rebuilt its economy after the devastation of the Second World War.

The Cold War period constrained the relationship. Japan aligned with the Western bloc while India chose non-alignment. India's tilt toward the Soviet Union meant deteriorating relations with American allies including Japan. Japan maintained neutrality during the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the India-Pakistan conflicts. India also regarded Japan as an ardent follower of the United States, limiting direct engagement. The relationship hit a low point after India's nuclear tests at Pokhran in 1998, when Japan strongly condemned the tests, joined the UN Security Council resolution calling for a halt to nuclear activity, and suspended grant aid to India.

The relationship began transforming after the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to India in 2000, which Japan described using the term global partnership it had previously reserved for the United States. The convergence of interests arising from China's rising power and the importance of the Indo-Pacific drove both sides toward closer engagement. Prime Minister Abe was Chief Guest at India's Republic Day in January 2014. Abe proposed expanding the existing trilateral security framework with Australia to include India, creating the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or QUAD. Abe also articulated his vision of the Confluence of Two Seas linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans into what he called a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, with India as an anchor. Prime Minister Modi called Japan a param-mitr or friend forever.

Economic cooperation has been substantial. Japan signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with India in 2011, committing to remove approximately ninety-four percent of tariffs over ten years. Japan ranks third among countries in terms of investment in India, particularly in automobiles, electrical equipment, telecommunications, chemicals, and financial services. Official Development Assistance from Japan has financed major Indian infrastructure including the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail corridor, the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor with twelve industrial townships, and the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor. However, bilateral trade remains below potential. India's exports to Japan account for less than two percent of India's total exports. India has run a consistent trade deficit with Japan, which reached approximately eleven billion dollars in financial year 2023.

Defence and security cooperation has deepened significantly. Japan's National Defence Program Guidelines have identified India as a priority partner in maritime security. The two countries conduct the JIMEX bilateral naval exercises. Japan's decision to reinterpret Article 9 of its constitution to permit collective self-defence expanded the scope for security cooperation. Japan eased its self-imposed ban on exporting military weapons in 2014, opening new avenues for defence industrial cooperation with India. Both countries are members of QUAD and share concerns about freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the broader Indo-Pacific. India and Japan have also collaborated in third countries through the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor programme aimed at providing an alternative model of infrastructure development to China's Belt and Road Initiative.

The ADB projects that by 2050 Asia will account for more than half of global GDP and that China, Japan, and India will be among the top five economies globally. In this context, the India-Japan partnership serves multiple strategic purposes: it strengthens each country's position relative to China, provides Japan with a strategic partner outside the US alliance system, deepens India's engagement with the Indo-Pacific, and creates a model of democratic partnership in infrastructure and technology that offers alternatives to Chinese-led initiatives. As Prime Minister Abe articulated, a strong India is in the best interest of Japan and a strong Japan is in the best interest of India.