Managing Multipolarity: India's Security Strategy in a Changing World

Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War, India has steadily improved its relative power position both in the international system and in the theater of primary concern to New Delhi—Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral—thanks to economic reforms and the resulting high-growth rates, which reached an impressive 9% per annum in the mid-2000s. The global economic recession that enveloped the world in 2007 and the fading will in New Delhi for economic reforms slowed the nation’s growth to about 7% in 2011. Even at this reduced pace of growth, India is likely to consolidate its position as one of the world’s leading economies. The country will most certainly move further up from its ranking in 2011 as the ninth-largest economy in the world. With more rapid growth came the necessary financial resources to craft a more ambitious national security strategy. A faster pace of economic development meant that India had the resources for a significant modernization of its armed forces and the development of a range of instruments to convert its growing capabilities into influence. As it broke loose from many of the constraints that had held it back for decades, New Delhi had the opportunity to simultaneously improve relations with all the great powers and the major regional actors in Asia. The image of an emerging India ready to take its rightful position on the world stage gained ground. Yet India will confront significant new challenges arising from the changing nature of the international system.

This essay focuses on one of the challenges at the systemic level—a major change in the distribution of power. Although India’s own emergence as a global power contributes to the reordering of the international hierarchy, the faster and more dramatic rise of China, the relative decline of European powers and Japan, and growing doubts about the United States’ ability to sustain its primacy after the global financial crisis are generating an international environment that will test many of the current premises of Indian foreign and national security policy. This essay is divided into six sections. The first section reviews the unfolding redistribution of global economic power and implications of the emerging multipolar world for India’s international prospects. The second and third sections deal with India’s changing great-power relations. The second section assesses the evolution of India’s ties with Russia, Japan, and Europe after the Cold War, while the third section focuses in particular on the triangular relationship between New Delhi, Beijing, and Washington, which is emerging as the principal dynamic of India’s national security strategy. The fourth section examines the intersection between the triangular dynamic and the geopolitical situation in India’s neighborhood—from Southwest Asia to East Asia through Central and South Asia. The fifth section then looks beyond the regional level at global issues in the Sino-Indian rivalry and how the United States relates to them.

The sixth and final section parses the paradoxical consequences of India’s goal of multipolarity since the end of the Cold War. India, which began pursuing a multipolar policy amid fears of a unipolar world dominated by the United States, is now scrambling to cope with the extraordinary rise of Chinese power and ensure a measure of multipolarity in Asia and the Indian Ocean. This essay concludes that the emerging international and regional distribution of power in favor of China will compel India to abandon the policy of multidirectional engagement and make consequential choices about deepening the strategic partnership with the United States. The pace and scope of India’s transition toward the West will indeed depend on how Washington views New Delhi and Beijing. While the short-term temptations of hedging are real in Washington, over the longer term Washington too might have no choice but to invest in stronger security cooperation with India.

(click here for the full essay, in India's Security Challenges at Home and Abroad)