For more than a decade, a strategic consensus had taken shape in both New Delhi and Washington—that their partnership was the best bet to manage a rising China. The United States saw India as a bulwark to prevent Chinese hegemony in Asia, while India sought a partnership with the United States to balance China by the time it emerged as a great power. This grand design, however, has hit a roadblock.
The setback in U.S.-India relations after President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs, coupled with New Delhi’s détente with Beijing following a five-year border standoff, has thrown a curveball for observers of Indian foreign policy. After the pandemic, India appeared firmly in its comfort zone: its economic recovery was swift, it withstood Chinese coercion at the border, managed the West deftly on the Russia question, enjoyed a slate of favorable governments across the neighborhood after some hiccups in the initial years and some concerted efforts to improve ties, upheld a ceasefire with Pakistan, and asserted its great power aspirations during its G20 presidency.
That geopolitical sweetspot has since turned sour. India’s position in the subcontinent has weakened over the past year. The revival of U.S.-Pakistan relations, China’s expanding geoeconomic influence, and regime change in Bangladesh and Nepal have challenged New Delhi in the region. India’s ties with Moscow have been the only constant; the integration of Indian firms into global oil supply chains following increased crude imports from Russia, such as in refining and cargo insurance, and potentially exploring Arctic drilling together has offset the hiccups in military sales.
The moment calls for revisiting India’s fundamental geopolitical outlook and taking a pause to assess its strategy. Where is India’s foreign policy heading? What choices does India have in a changing strategic environment? Referred to as “multi-alignment,” India has preferred a bloc-averse foreign policy of cultivating issue-specific partnerships with multiple powers in the past few years, even with those having mutual conflicts. Has multialignment delivered for New Delhi and can it continue to?
“The moment calls for revisiting India’s fundamental geopolitical outlook and taking a pause to assess its strategy. Where is India’s foreign policy heading? What choices does India have in a changing strategic environment?”
Indian Geopolitics 101
India’s strategic goals have remained fairly consistent since independence, shaped by its colonial experience and civilizational memory. Firstly, it seeks sustained economic growth to uplift a vast population. Secondly, it aspires for regional hegemony in Southern Asia. Drawing from Mearsheimer and Kindleberger to understand India’s objectives as a regional hegemon, New Delhi seeks to minimize military and internal security threats emanating from its neighbors, while promoting regional stability through economic integration and the provision of public goods. The challenge lies in pursuing both goals in a hostile security environment, while also preventing neighbors from drawing outside powers into the subcontinent.
India resisted South Asia’s descent into Cold War rivalry while today, it is wary of an assertive China in the subcontinent. Yet it cannot fully align or bandwagon with any single superpower. Though India’s inclination toward nonalignment is often cited as a reason for this, a deeper rationale is geography: if any non-resident power is to ever single-handedly dominate the continental and maritime portions of the subcontinent, it is unlikely to do so without undercutting India’s geopolitical aspirations. To safeguard its interests, India must therefore lean primarily on internal balancing, supplemented by cautious external balancing.
Internal balancing rests on building economic and military power while external balancing relies on making alliances. India values those partnerships that directly enhance its internal balancing across four pillars: defense indigenization, technology transfer, economic growth, and human capital development. Together, these form the material base for India’s great-power ambitions.
As a result, India prioritizes partnerships that strengthen its capacity for self-reliance. Under the Narendra Modi government, this has translated into partnerships with France, Russia, and Israel for defense indigenization; Japan for technology transfer, investment, and skilling; West Asia, Europe, and Australia for trade and connectivity; and a comprehensive partnership across multiple domains with the United States.
On the other hand, India’s alignments have been driven by two factors: securing at least one permanent member’s veto at the UN Security Council against hostile resolutions on Kashmir, and offsetting China’s superior power. For instance, during the Cold War, India’s alignment with the Soviet Union was motivated by these imperatives. But with the fall of Soviet Union, America’s importance for India has grown in the unipolar international system. Although as France and Russia already provide a veto cover today, India’s ties with the United States after the Cold War have primarily been shaped by the need to balance China.
Despite a wide array of partnerships, India avoids collective security pacts and exclusive trade blocs. Instead, it prefers a flexible, issue-based approach. Appreciators of Modi’s foreign policy often describe it as multialignment: a strategy rooted less in commitment and more in India’s geopolitical realities.
Perks and Perils of Multialignment
Modi’s multialignment is unlike Nehru’s nonalignment. Prime Minister Modi has himself highlighted the difference: while earlier “India had a policy to maintain distance from all countries,” “today’s India is to have equal closeness.” It implies that India engages with all but refuses to choose one relationship at the cost of another. India can be the second largest importer of crude oil from Russia and the largest exporter of diesel to Ukraine at the same time, and refuses to burn ties with Russia for the West.
Multialignment allows India to choose partners and issues of cooperation. There are no permanent enemies, and even rivals like China can be engaged. India can co-develop missiles with Russia, build high-speed rail with Japan, operate ports in Iran and Israel together, and send top tech talent to the United States, all at the same time. Multialignment also hedges against alliance dilemmas: India is unlikely to be dragged into third-party conflicts and is free from the fears of abandonment.
Yet multialignment is a double-edged sword for many reasons. First, it risks hostility when one power sees India’s engagement with its enemy as a challenge to its interests. India experienced this when the West exerted intense diplomatic pressure on New Delhi to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Second, third-party support in a crisis is never guaranteed. Assistance depends not on India’s relationship with the partner but on the latter’s parochial interests. In the border standoff with China, the United States helped India with intelligence and surveillance support, but with the Pakistan crisis, the U.S. behavior was reportedly driven by some vested interests. Third, partners can gain leverage by resorting to issue-linkages during diplomatic tensions. For instance, the Trump administration linked tensions in bilateral trade and claims of crisis mediation to India’s purchases of Russian oil, thereby straining U.S.-India ties.
Based on these observations, the lesson for New Delhi from the predicaments in U.S.-India relations is clear: multialignment helps internal balancing, but it cannot serve as a reliable external balancing strategy. Though it provides India access to capital and technology that directly strengthen its capacity, it cannot substitute for formal alliance commitments in tough times.
India’s Pivot to India
Since multialignment cannot deliver external balancing, India faces a dilemma: concede to the United States or pursue détente with China. For now, it has chosen the latter. Halting Russian oil imports would have compromised energy security, while crediting President Trump for the ceasefire with Pakistan ran against India’s core principle of rejecting outside meddling in the subcontinent. While India’s indigenous air defense and BrahMos missiles proved their mettle in Operation Sindoor, the lack of American sensitivities in this crisis exposed the risk of dependence on Washington for critical technologies like jet engines. These developments underscore the importance of self-reliance in times of crises.
On the other hand, Beijing’s export controls on rare earths and fertilizers, along with its backing for Pakistan, pose equal challenges. But New Delhi has perhaps found it easier to accommodate China after border disengagement to avoid economic repercussions. In the end, the quest for internal balancing seems to have driven India to accommodate a rival but stand up to a strategic partner.
“The lesson for New Delhi from the predicaments in U.S.-India relations is clear: multialignment helps internal balancing, but it cannot serve as a reliable external balancing strategy.”
India’s renewed internal balancing drive was clear in Prime Minister Modi’s latest Independence Day address. Invoking the spirit of the freedom fighters, he urged the youth to embrace the “mantra of a prosperous India.” Self-reliance, he declared, is the bedrock of his Viksit Bharat 2047 vision—anchored in avoiding over-dependence, securing critical minerals, developing the jet engine and air defense shield, advancing deepwater exploration, and accelerating domestic reforms. Thus, internal balancing concerns are expected to be the primary driver of Indian foreign policy in the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
India’s current foreign policy moment is defined by the limits of external balancing and realizing the need to develop internal strength. Multialignment has proven valuable in securing capital, technology, and diplomatic space, but faltered as a source of reliable support from strategic partners during crises. The downturn in U.S.-India ties illustrates the contradiction of multialignment. In such a context, New Delhi is signaling that its future trajectory will be less about picking “trusted partners” and more about ensuring that no partner becomes indispensable.
India will continue to work with the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia, and even China where interests overlap, but on issue-based terms that strengthen its internal capacity. The success of Indian foreign policy will ultimately rest not on alliances or rivalries, but on whether internal balancing can deliver the material foundation for India’s great-power aspirations.
The article appeared in southasianvoices
