Why India Walks a Tightrope Between US and Russia

As the Cold War split the world into two camps starting in the 1950s, newly independent India became a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement — a group of countries that officially sided neither with Washington nor with Moscow. Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has advanced an inverted version of the policy, picking and choosing relationships that he believes best suit India’s interests. Most notably, the South Asian nation is deepening security links with the US — with which it shares concerns about an increasingly assertive China — while snapping up military hardware and cheap crude oil from Russia. The question is, how long it can stay close to both sides while they themselves pull further apart over the war in Ukraine? With India chairing the Group of 20 nations this year, the dance has become more delicate.

India and the US have been strategic partners for at least two decades, meaning they can build relationships and cooperate militarily but aren’t formal, treaty-bound allies. While they have much in common — both large, heterogeneous democracies — New Delhi doesn’t feel bound to sync its worldview with Washington’s. For a long time, India was leery of the US, largely because of its close military and security ties with Pakistan, India’s neighbor and archrival. But the relationship has improved in large part due to China’s emergence as a new, rival power. The US has enlisted India as a member in the so-called Quad grouping, an alliance of democracies in the Indo-Pacific that share economic and security interests. (Japan and Australia are the other two members.) This year, the US and India laid out a plan to share more advanced defense and computing technologies.