Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign trips are always timed, strategized and planned to send messages to the international community and bolster India’s role in world affairs. The same is true when Prime Minister Modi recently landed in Moscow to hold the annual bilateral summit with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

This visit by Prime Minister Modi took place not long after President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met a couple of times in the last two months, even as Vietnam and North Korea hosted President Putin during his state visits. Modi's visit also coincided with the commemoration of the 75th year of the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Washington, D.C.

President Putin has successfully engaged China, India, Vietnam, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil and several other countries of the Global South in the face of American attempts to isolate him in the international community. There is little doubt that Modi’s summit meeting with Putin stands out because India is not only a rare member of the Global South that has successfully stayed engaged in strategic partnerships with both the US and Russia but also a country that is determined to display its strategic autonomy in world affairs.

Modi-Putin summit at a crucial time in the New Cold War in Eurasia must have pleased Putin who was certainly unhappy with the time-tested strategic partnership between India and the United States evolving since the early years of the 21st century. More unsettling for Moscow has been shrinking Russian arms exports to India and expanding purchases of US arms and aircraft by India.

The Indo-Russian summit meeting in Moscow, the conclusion of several cooperative agreements and the vow to upgrade bilateral trade up to about 100 billion dollars by 2036 have sent messages to Russia, the US and China at the same time.

Russia feels gratified by India’s decision to stick to the strategic partnership with Russia in the face of persistent Western pressure to reduce interactions with Moscow in response to the Ukraine War. China has got the message that Russo-Chinese strategic cooperation keeps India out of its target.

The United States, on the other hand, was alerted that its strategic partnership with India is not an alliance relationship and that India would continue to uphold its strategic ties with Russia while consistently working towards strengthening the Indo-US strategic partnership.

Significantly, Modi’s foreign policy also keeps in mind the domestic constituency where some critics say that by building strategic ties with the United States has abandoned its strategic autonomy.   

Blowback from Washington

The biggest blow to India’s assertion, at the moment, appears to have been to the Biden Administration. But the White House staff and the State Department did not make much of a fuss in public statements and a measured response was displayed in the remarks of the State Department spokesman: “We continue to urge India to support efforts to realize an enduring and just peace in Ukraine.”

The American envoy to India, Eric Garcetti, was, however, more scathing in his remarks, cautioning New Delhi that the relationship with the US is not deep enough to be "taken for granted" and that strategic autonomy cannot apply in "times of conflict." 

The media reports in the US, on the other hand, painted a negative picture by highlighting how Modi gave a bear hug to Putin who, according to the Western perception, is responsible for brutal killings of Ukrainians, including children and violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The media reports that the Indian government did not reschedule the Modi-Putin summit in view of the celebration of NATO’s formation, despite US requests, also fueled anti-Indian views in the US.

America watchers are aware of the scant space given to India, including to Modi’s US visits, by the mainstream American media. But the media coverage given to Modi’s visit to Moscow in the United States is perhaps unprecedented. The reports highlighted how Modi’s Moscow visit “showcased a less isolated Putin,” how it angered Ukraine and underlined the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski’s caustic remarks in “X” saying, “It is a huge disappointment and devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow….”

But then, the presumptive US presidential candidate also does not support the Ukraine War, has expressed his desire to end it in one day, and has said he would allow Russians to do anything they want against NATO members who have not financially contributed to NATO. Zelenski as well as the American media know that Biden’s Ukraine policy has severe critics within the US polity.

Furthermore, there are NATO members who do not fully endorse the Biden Administration’s approach to Ukraine.

On the contrary, Prime Minister Modi has not condemned the Russian military action in Ukraine, but has openly told Putin earlier that it is “not the era of war” and, during this visit, emphasized that battlefields “cannot bring solutions.” India also does not oppose the biting US sanctions against Russia. India has been accused of buying Russian oil, but so have European countries.

US media reported Zelenski’s statement that Modi’s visit to Moscow was a huge blow to “peace efforts,” but Ukraine's peace efforts recently did not include Russian participation.

In any case, the policymaking community and foreign policy analysis community in the United States are very much aware of the double standard adopted by the Biden Administration in responding to war in Europe and the war in the Middle East. There are members within the policymaking community in Washington who do not support Biden’s handling of Israel’s war against HAMAS (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya).

Competing pursuit of national interests

If the Biden Administration follows a foreign policy that serves US interests, should not the Modi government adopt foreign policy approaches that would serve Indian interests?

It is important to note that India continues to abide by all the agreements it has signed with the US to strengthen defence and security cooperation. There is considerable convergence of strategic outlooks of both the countries on the Indo-Pacific affairs.

India and the US are close partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (also known as the Quad). Both remain partners in the US-proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The reports about American naval ships availing repair facilities after the Modi-Putin summit are an indication that the Indo-US strategic partnership is strong and will remain so.

The strategic partnership between India and the US has an upward trajectory, but there have been periodic bumps on the road, like, for example, the Devjani Khobragade episode during the Obama Administration.

India is used to tolerating successive US administrations' policies towards Pakistan; offensive descriptions of religious freedom issues in India by US Religious Freedom Reports; the US administration’s treatment of issues related to individuals who have been declared as terrorists by the Indian government, anti-India separatist groups operating from the US soil or that of the US allies and several other issues.

The US officials have been frequently informed about the rationale behind Indian oil imports from Russia, about Indian acquisitions of Russian military equipment and even about India’s stated policy of maintaining “strategic autonomy” in foreign relations.

While the US frustration over Modi’s visit to Moscow is understandable, the US policy community should also factor in India’s frustrations over US policies, some of which are mentioned above.

Thus, there is no valid reason to believe the speculations or fears that the Putin-Modi summit may derail the Indo-US strategic partnership. As far as the bear hug is concerned, the world knows that Prime Minister Modi has hugged successive American Presidents as well. It is a way of conveying warmth and friendship to foreign leaders from friendly countries and is not indicative of substantive policy matters.

After all, while in Moscow, Prime Minister Modi raised the issue of the Russian Army enrolling Indian citizens to fight in Ukraine through fraudulent means with President Putin. It was an embarrassing moment after the symbolic bear hug.

Strategic autonomy is in India’s DNA

India’s strategic partnership with the United States, in fact, can be more durable and stronger, if only the policy community in the United States realises that strategic autonomy is in India’s DNA. The non-aligned foreign policy stand of India during the Cold War decades was nothing but a strategy to underline autonomy in foreign policy decision-making.

The end of the Cold War with Soviet disintegration made the non-aligned movement irrelevant, but the philosophy behind non-alignment has continued to be relevant even in the new strategic landscape of the post-Cold War era.

India is a big country in size, population, economic strength and military prowess. Its civilizational roots, historical experiences, and missionary zeal to promote peace, disarmament and a non-discriminatory global order have remained constant for long.

It offered a blueprint for a non-discriminatory non-proliferation treaty in the 1960s and when the nuclear developments compelled it to go nuclear, it announced its desire to work for a nuclear-free world soon after conducting nuclear tests in 1998. It championed decolonization and opposed neo-imperialism during the Cold War and now acts as the voice of the Global South.

A country like India cannot be a junior alliance partner of any country. And alliances are not formed between equal powers!

India’s determination to build constructive ties with both the US and Russia is nothing but an example of its policy of strategic autonomy. Even if the US chooses to distance itself from India given its policy towards Russia, it would be a transitory phenomenon: just another bump on the road.

The fundamentals of the Indo-US strategic partnership are too robust to break down due to a bump.

(The views expressed in this article are the author's own.)