The following article originally appeared in The Hindustan Times on 27 July 2018.
In India, we often poke fun at Pakistani depictions of
their relationship with China. The two countries’ ties — including nuclear and
missile cooperation after the 1970s and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
— are regularly described in baroque termsby them: “iron brothers” whose
friendship is “higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans.” Yet it’s
clear that China has rarely bailed Pakistan out from a tight spot. During the
Kargil War in 1999, Beijing criticised Pakistani adventurism and recklessness
and has subsequently snubbed Pakistani requests for financial bailouts, as in
2008.
While Pakistan’s faith in China may at times seem naïve,
there are sometimes echoes of it in Indian characterisations of relations with
Russia. Diplomatic niceties aside, India-Russia ties have always been
transactional.
India’s relations with the Soviet Union were slow to take
off after independence. Anxiety about Soviet support for domestic communist
revolutionaries led to an Indian wariness that only began to subside in the
mid-1950s. Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 paved the way for Moscow to provide
economic and technical assistance to non-communist countries such as India. At
the same time, the US and UK roped Pakistan into the Baghdad and Manila Pacts.
Only then did India begin to align with Soviet positions on international
diplomatic matters, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. (At the time,
Indian journalists lambasted New Delhi’s position as shameful sycophancy to the
Soviet rulers and kowtowing.) After some initial Russian defence purchases in
the late 1950s, India agreed to buy MiG-21 aircraft in 1961, facilitated by
technology transfers and mindful of deterring China. Indo-Soviet defence ties
accelerated after the United States suspended military assistance to both India
and Pakistan during the 1965 war.
But despite this growing bonhomie, Moscow’s support for
India was never unconditional. After some hints of neutrality, the USSR
eventually leaned towards Beijing during the 1962 India-China war, in part to
ensure its support during the Cuban missile crisis. After 1965, the Soviet
Union positioned itself as a neutral broker between India and Pakistan, hosting
the summit at Tashkent and even supplying military assistance to Pakistan in
1968.
Relations assumed a clearer direction with the 1971
Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation (modelled on a similar
arrangement between the USSR and Egypt), which was prompted by the US-China
rapprochement and their support for Pakistan. As a consequence, India’s defence
ties with the USSR deepened and cooperation eventually extended to the war in
Afghanistan. The relationship also broadened: by the early 1990s, the Soviet
Union was India’s largest trade partner and Indian students of medicine and
engineering had gone in sizeable numbers to the Soviet republics. Still, ties
remained business-like: India regularly rebuffed Soviet attempts at closer
military contacts. Later, in the 1990s, Russia initially joined the United
States and China in condemning India’s nuclear tests.
Today, the relationship has become one-dimensional,
centred on arms sales by Russia to India. Between 2000 and 2014, 73% of India’s
imported military equipment came from Russia. But India’s imports from Russia
halved overnight following its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and have remained
lower at about 50-60% amid international sanctions. Meanwhile, overall
India-Russia trade has been slight, rising from $6 billion in 2014 to $10.7
billion this year. Although energy relations are deepening, the overall
economic relationship remains narrow, not helped by the poor performance of the
Russian economy. Just five years ago, Russia’s GDP was 20% larger than India’s;
today, India’s is 70% larger than Russia’s.
Under these circumstances, what explains India’s
high-profile and sustained engagement with Russia this year? One, India still
needs Russia for military spare parts just as Moscow needs New Delhi for
revenue. Two, there are certain technologies that Russia is willing to provide
— such as nuclear-powered submarines — that the likes of the United States
never will. The defence relationship will therefore remain vital for the
foreseeable future. Three, as in years past, Russia wields a powerful veto at
the UN Security Council, and multilateral cooperation extends to BRICS and the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Four, there are deep and abiding concerns in
New Delhi about Russia’s post-2014 relationship with China and its exploratory
ties with Pakistan. For all these reasons, engaging with Russia at the highest
levels is absolutely necessary. Major deals — including last year’s
multi-billion dollar deal involving Rosneft and Essar or this year’s
negotiations towards the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system — are likely to continue,
even if they risk attracting the ire of Europe and the United States.
But India-Russia ties would also benefit from a dose of
realism, a Bulgakovian realisation that no one’s fate is of any interest to you
except your own. There is little indication that Putin views India in
sentimental terms, unlike an earlier generation of Russian officials
exemplified by former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov or the late Russian envoy
Alexander Kadakin. India’s high-profile and sustained outreach to Moscow in
2018 is not a reversion to an imagined past. It is a hard-nosed attempt at managing
a transactional relationship over the medium-term future to secure vital Indian
security interests and preserve a favourable balance of power.