Russia’s Perspectives on India & Indo-Pacific

UPSC CSE – SYLLABUS – GS – 3- Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

This year began with Russian foreign minister criticising the idea of the Indo-Pacific at the Raisina Dialogue.
He called it a “divisive approach” to disrupt existing regional structures and contain China’s influence in the region.
The United States (US) Indo-Pacific ploy was an attempt to “reconfigure the existing structures” and to move away from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)-centric consensus.
Accused the West of adopting an “aggressive and devious” policy to engage India “in anti-China games”.
What is extraordinary in these sentiments is that a close strategic partner of India such as Russia is failing to acknowledge how India’s security environment is deteriorating because of China’s unilateral attempts to alter the status quo at the border and the growing anti-China sentiment in India in light of these tensions.
As long as India joins Russia and China in railing against the West, New Delhi can be hailed for its strategic autonomy but if India builds ties with the US and other Western nations, it is merely because there is a devious game at play to ensnare India into relationships that make it an object of other nations’ priorities.

Russian foreign policy is predicated on challenging the West, and every single relationship is assessed through that prism.
Moscow’s relationship with Beijing is critical to give Russia a sense of being some kind of a global power.

For India, the Indo-Pacific is a strategic imperative — a political geography which is the centre of gravity of global challenges and opportunities.
In 2018, Chinese foreign minister dismissed the Indo-Pacific concept as a “headline-grabbing idea” that would “dissipate like sea foam”.
As this year draws to a close, from Oceania to Western Europe, the idea of the Indo-Pacific is being operationalised in foreign and national security policies of nations, something few had anticipated.
This has been one of the biggest diplomatic defeats for Beijing which had tried so hard to discredit the idea and pressured nations into abandoning it.
Instead, India’s commitment towards and a robust defence of a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific saw nations underscoring the centrality of this emerging political geography in their foreign policy agenda.

New Delhi has tried to bring Moscow into the Indo-Pacific ambit much like its support for Russia’s Greater Eurasia, without much success.
Russia’s resistance to acknowledging this reality is perhaps understandable given its dependence on China.
But it does no service to either India-Russia ties or to Russia’s role in the wider region where its approach can lead to its marginalisation despite it having some real stakes in the Indo-Pacific.
India’s ties with Russia cannot escape the Indo-Pacific.

Source:” Hindustan Times“.

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