Indian Defence Review

This month marks the twenty-five years since the end of cold war way back in 1991 when   USSR, one of the two superpowers in the international system, dissolved into fifteen new independent republics. This is considered as a landmark point in world history as US became the sole superpower in the international system, a ‘hegemon’ as argued by many scholars. Meanwhile, the erstwhile USSR was succeeded by a weaker Russian federation which was smaller in size, weaker in strength and fragile economically.

This changed the equation of alliances in the world system as countries which were earlier dependent on USSR as an ally could no longer do so as Russia lacked the capability of providing that support system which USSR used to provide. India as a long-time ally of USSR faced the same situation during this period as the other allies of USSR were facing. Since independence, if there was one country which India looked up to at the times of need, it was USSR which many referred as India’s 24×7 friend. Now, India found itself on its own in the fast changing dynamics internationally.

After 1991, India and Russia moved away in different directions in terms of their economic growth. While Russia was facing extreme economic turmoil under the newly elected Yeltsin regime, India for the first time since independence was witnessing a rapid economic boom as India had opened its doors to the world market, or as critiques argue, India was forced to open its doors for the world market by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) in the wake of its balance of payments crisis.

As a result, India saw the big-bang LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation) reforms in 1991. One should remember that it was the same year when the cold war ended and USSR dissolved.  So, two parallel phenomenon were taking place simultaneously in the context of Indo-Russia relations. India not only moved from the old ‘socialist structures’ and ‘License Permit Quota Raj’ to the embrace of ‘liberal-capitalist’ structures, but this move was also seen in India’s shift from Russia and its drift towards US, which consisted of both economic and strategic ties.

India relations with Russia continued to slump year after year, though there was no dearth of defence and strategic engagements between the two countries at the level of governments. The dearth was in the people to people contacts which India used to share with the Soviet Union once. Now, the entire emphasis shifted to rebuild and redefine India’s relations with Russia and also the fifteen new republics that came out of USSR.

This is because the nature and character of Russian state was significantly different from its predecessor USSR which was visible in the economic turmoil of Russia just after independence. As a result, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin, for the first time visited India in 1993, the two countries signed agreements that signalled a new emphasis on economic cooperation in bilateral relations. As per India’s former Diplomat Muchkund Dubey, “This visit was partly intended to restore the balance in the Russian foreign policy, which had drifted too far away from Asia towards Europe and it laid the foundation for a new relationship with India. During the visit, the problem of ensuring uninterrupted and assured supply of spare parts and equipment for the Armed Forces of India was seriously addressed and the commitment to keep up the flow of supplies was reiterated”.

Indian PM Narismha Rao reciprocated Yeltsin’s visit in 1994 and the focus of the visit was on bilateral goodwill and continuation of Russian arms and military equipment exports to India. The entire decade of 1990s saw the Indian economy booming with an unprecedented GDP growth while Russia’s financial crisis continued till 1998 when the country was hit by Rouble crisis leading to its devaluation.

1998 was the same year when India conducted the nuclear test at Pokharan and declared itself as a nuclear power. US and its allies like Japan and Canada put economic sanctions on India but Russia made it clear from the very outset, in contrast to the US policy that it was opposed to imposing sanctions against India. Though, in its official response to India’s nuclear tests, issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed “alarm and concern” and “very deep regret in Russia” over the Indian action. The statement urged India to reverse its nuclear policy and sign the NPT and CTBT.

The year 1998 can also be seen as the start of another phase of Indo-Russia relations as this was the year when India saw a non-congress party, BJP, forming a majority government at the centre. Though, the foreign policy of a country doesn’t change drastically with the change of political parties at the helm of affairs at the domestic level but still domestic constituencies play a very important role in diplomatic engagements as explained by international relations scholar Robert D Putnam in his two level game theory.

Around the same time, Russia saw the rise of Vladimir Putin whose stature since then has risen to a cult status. When Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned from Presidency in 1999, Putin took over as the acting president first and later in 2000 got his first presidential term. It was then when Putin first visited India in October 2000. It was the first visit by a Russian president in nearly eight years which resulted in a series of 17 agreements on economic, nuclear energy, defence and strategic arrangements and the signing of Strategic Partnership Pact

Putin in his official statement supported India’s contention on Kashmir as he said that India was as much a victim of terrorism in Kashmir as Russia was in Chechnya. Both Putin and Vajpayee who was the then Indian Prime Minister shared a strong position on Islamic Fundamentalism. This was before the time when terrorism was seen a global threat as 9/11 was yet to happen. When Vajpayee visited Moscow in November 2001, he reiterated the point that there are ‘no good or bad terrorists’ and signed the Moscow Declaration. The opening paragraph of the declaration said that “India and the Russian Federation affirm that international terrorism is a threat to peace and security, a grave violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. The struggle against international terrorism has become one of the priority tasks of the world community. This evil can be vanquished only by combining the efforts of all States”.

This mutual trust and bonhomie between India and Russia continued till the end of Vajpayee’s regime in 2004. Russia overtly and covertly supported India many a times on the issues of Kashmir and cross border terrorism from Pakistan. After 2004, things started to take another turn in the context of Indo-Russia relations when a new government came into power in India under Dr. Manmohan Singh replacing the Vajpayee regime.

The next few years were marked by India itching to sign the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. In July 2005, the deal was signed under which India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and to place all its civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and, in exchange, the United States agreed to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation with India.

International relations observers and scholars saw this deal as India’s tilt towards US which had implications on the equation between India and Russia. As per Ashok Sajjanhar, who was India’s Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Sweden and Latvia, “Some major issues of dissonance appeared between the two countries. The first concerned the rapidly expanding ties between India and USA, which started with the U.S congress giving final approval to the India-US nuclear deal in October, 2008. The second concerned the growing defence relationship between India and USA. India has so far been heavily dependent on Russian armaments with more than 70 per cent of its weapons being sourced from Russia. Although in absolute terms Russia is still the largest supplier of defence equipment to India, its share in overall imports has progressively declined”.

In the meanwhile, bilateral talks and defence ties continued to prosper between India and Russia. After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, President Medvedev was the first foreign Head of State to visit India after the Mumbai terrorist attacks. India and Russia strengthened their ties further by inking 10 agreements, including a pact on civil nuclear cooperation and decided to intensify their cooperation in combating terrorism.

The next ‘big moment’ in the relations between the two old time allies came when the two countries signed the civil-nuclear agreement in 2009. Under the agreement Russia was to set up more nuclear reactors in India, transfer the full range of nuclear energy technologies and ensure uninterrupted supply of fuel. It was clear that India was manoeuvring between US and Russia and trying to get the best deal out of the civil-nuclear agreements from both the countries.

The next year i.e. in 2010, Vladimir Putin again visited India, this time as Russia’s Prime Minister. The visit was hailed as the ‘re-setting of the Indo-Russian Partnership’ because the time at which the visit happened was marked by changing geopolitical and geo-economic realities in the international system. The then global order was characterised by the rapidly rising China; the global financial crisis and its impact on the American supremacy; resurgent Russia with its new assertive foreign policy under President Dmitry Medvedev; increasing Sino-Russian partnership; and the emergence of a new strategic partnership between India and the US.

The two countries signed an agreement on cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and establishing a joint venture to manufacture ground-based navigation equipment that will interface with the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System GLONASS. The then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his official statement re-emphasized the importance India gives to Russia when he said “Our relations are not dependent on any other relations, and they grow in importance with every passing day”. The other relation mentioned was India’s growing bonhomie with the US.

Vladimir Putin reciprocated in the same tone in his yet another visit to India in 2012, when writing for one of the India’s most influential newspaper THE HINDU, he said “I would like to stress that deepening of friendship and cooperation with India is among the top priorities of our foreign policy.” Many important bilateral agreements were signed including the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish an Indo-Russia Joint Investment Fund, worth US$ 2 billion.

In the last four years, the engagements between the two countries have increased as the heads of these two states continue to meet each other both at bilateral and multilateral forums. Though, reports of Russia getting closer to Pakistan have been increasing lately. The joint Russia-Pakistan military drills, Russia’s stakes at Gwadar port and Russia’s subtle diplomacy of supporting China-Pakistan economic corridor have increased tension for Indian policy makers. They are unable to assess what Russia today really thinks of India. Russia’s re-emergence as a brute ‘hard power’ in the international system and rising stature of Vladimir Putin as a shrewd realist have been giving India more reasons to worry.

This is because as India used to maneuverer between US and Russia in the last decade, Russia has started using the same tactics by manoeuvring between India and Pakistan recently and with much more affectivity. The reason being that after Osama bin Laden got caught in Pakistan by US, the good old ‘mutual trust’ between these two allies seemed to have gone down drastically. As a result, Pakistan started naturally aligning with Russia to balance US. Though, Russia has shrewdly maintained that it values its relationship with India much more than with Pakistan.

In October 2016, India hosted the BRICS Summit at Goa where the leaders of BIMSTEC member countries were invited by India. This joint summit was held in the backdrop of India trying to isolate Pakistan after the Modi government conducted ‘Surgical Strike’ against Pakistan in reply to the Uri terror attack in India. Both Narendra Modi and Putin are staunch critiques of Islamic fundamentalism and therefore it is expected that Modi-Putin relationship will based on a strong and united opposition to all those states who export terrorism to other countries.

Last month, Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections came quite as a shock to many. This will have a major impact on Indo-Russia relations as well because Trump and Putin share this unusual chemistry between them. Maybe, India’s alignment to either US or Russia now will not irk the other party as both parties appear to be on the same boat, though Trump might not prove as absolutist when he actually takes over as president due to checks and balances in US democratic setup. In this context, it would be interesting to see how things unfold in future, how the power equations will change, how close India and Russia will get to each other in the wake of these events.

To conclude, Indo-Russia relations have seen a roller coaster ride in the past twenty five years post Soviet Union. India wants to share the same relationship with Russia as it had with USSR and in fact in areas of military and defense cooperation, India do shares that relationship but now India is trying to be an equal partner in the relationship rather than being the subservient. Russia, on the other hand realizes India’s growing economic and soft power and wants to utilize that in its own favour by continuing the old time friendship with India.