Gradually the Russian invasion of Ukraine and flagrant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty are affecting nations far and wide. The effects range from severe economic crises like imported inflation and breakdown of established trade channels leading to another supply chain crisis like 2020. It has also led nation-states to revise geopolitical calculus and spend considerable time managing diplomatic relations. The US has been upping the ante against Russian unilateral aggression and trying to craft an order of nations to oppose Russia economically & politically. It believes sanctions will cripple the Russian economy for some time and a commodity-exporting powerhouse cannot sustain its shunning of global trade channels. Thus the US has been pushing Germany which is overwhelmingly dependent on Russian energy exports to re-strategise its trade amid such catastrophic actions by Russia. In the same pursuit though with less vigour, the West has been nudging India to condemn Russian actions and re-orient its defence ties along with any economic purchases. This American diplomatic pursuit reflects the US’s ambition of a tighter and stronger transatlantic partnership with NATO guarding a sovereign & free order against autocratic Russia. Also in the Indo-Pacific such a strong relationship to guard against Chinese fancied unilateralism.
Now we come to the crux of my argument. I view that the Russia and China axis of a “no limits partnership” and the American construct of a democratic nations bloc to oppose it will have huge ramifications for the Indian subcontinent. This is not an easy salami slicing of geopolitical order as it looks. First, Russia and China have started to equate the West with liberalism, an antithesis to their political order. Everything western for them is liberal though the far-right in many European nations has consolidated itself as a contender for power. These parties want to break away from the EU and the NATO security consensus along with structurally weakening the liberal order that Europeans pride themselves in. In a similar vein, many nations including India have been at the crosshairs of liberal ethos that the West propagates. Hence this straitjacket division will crumble with ideological contestations at various junctures. The American diplomatic assault should rather be fired on the security and sovereignty aspect of these transformational developments. The identity threatening actions that Russia initiated in the form of invasion has rather had a chilling effect on smaller nations. Singapore, Taiwan, Baltic nations, Sweden & Finland have reconsidered their sole focus on socio-economic trajectory and have made noises regarding safeguarding their independence and sovereignty.
One can make sense that nations across the board will now be understanding of India’s position because our contested borders with China and granular economic dependence on it complicates strategic choices. Therefore if the US succeeds in convincing the majority of nation-states about this peril or at least many in Europe and Asia, it will achieve in crafting a new bloc without ideological underpinnings and solely resting on protecting their independence. America has already achieved reprioritising security in the manufacturing powerhouses of Japan and Germany. Both the nations have embarked on heavy defence budgets and trained defence forces. Thus, if the US paints this simply as a unilateral assertion by autocratic powers China and Russia to usurp sovereignty, it will achieve a more powerful security order which will be defending sovereignty and not economic goals. As we know and have witnessed in Afghanistan and Ukraine, nationhood and nationalism have their primordial instincts intact.
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