India sells multi-alignment in her foreign policy as genius, but the Bishkek and New Delhi summits expose drift. Since 2014, personal diplomacy, border humiliation, tariff shocks and neighbourhood losses show a weak state hedging without power.
India needs economic muscle, military depth, principled consistency and real coalitions to turn autonomy from slogan into strategy.
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The summit season that stripped the mask
When a country tells Russia to end its war in public, signs a declaration condemning attacks on Iran a few days later, hosts Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in New Delhi, and still hopes Washington will treat it as a trusted partner, the word for that is not genius. The word is exposure.
The SCO summit in Bishkek (31 August to 1 September 2026) and the BRICS summit in New Delhi (12 and 13 September 2026) was meant to showcase India as the indispensable swing state. The Eurasian affairs commentator Muqtedar Khan reads them differently: as evidence that New Delhi’s balancing act is eroding Russia’s trust while buying little durable trust elsewhere. India endorsed a Bishkek Declaration that condemned the attacks on Iran as violations of international law and mourned the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on 28 February 2026. It did so without naming Washington or Tel Aviv, a phrasing everyone understood, and nobody had to own. Days earlier, Prime Minister Modi had publicly urged Mr. Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Then, at the BRICS summit, the New Delhi Declaration reportedly dropped any reference to the Ukraine war, bending to Russian preferences, even as it avoided naming the US and Israel on Iran.
Mr. Modi told Mr. Putin at Samarkand in 2022 that “this was not an era of war”, a line Delhi then repeated in Western capitals to excuse its discounted Russian oil. Yet the same language has not been aimed at Mr. Netanyahu over Gaza or Mr. Trump over Iran. Moscow can read that as principle. It is more likely to read it as performance, designed to reassure the West at Russia’s expense. New Delhi wants to back Israel while condemning attacks on Iran, buy Russian oil while moving closer to the West on Ukraine, and remain central to BRICS while telling Washington it is no anti-American bloc.
That is not a doctrine. It is a juggling act performed over a widening gap between ambition and capability. And a juggler who drops one ball can recover. A state that drops its credibility cannot.
This article argues 3 things:
First, India’s multialignment has become a slogan that hides the absence of strategy.
Second, the record since 2014, sharpened after 2019 and after 2024, shows a pattern of tactical cleverness and strategic loss.
Third, India can still fix this, but only by building the power and the principles that make autonomy real.
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Theory without jargon: what is India doing?
Strip away the diplomatic vocabulary and international relations theory offers a few simple lenses.
Realism (Waltz, Mearsheimer). States survive by power. Kenneth Waltz said states balance, internally by growing their own strength and externally by joining coalitions. John Mearsheimer added that great powers fear one another and cannot trust promises. The realist test of India’s policy is brutal and simple: is India stronger relative to its main threat today than it was in 2014? China’s economy is roughly four to five times larger than India’s (about 19 trillion dollars against about 4 trillion). China’s declared defence budget in 2025 was around 245 billion dollars, against India’s roughly 78 billion. That gap has widened, not closed.
Balance of threat (Stephen Walt). States do not balance against power alone, they balance against threat: proximity, offensive capability and aggressive intent. China sits on India’s border, holds Indian territory in Ladakh, backs Pakistan with weapons and diplomacy, and dominates Indian supply chains. By Walt’s logic India should be aligning firmly against that threat. Instead, it hedges between the threat’s partners.
Underbalancing (Randall Schweller). Some states fail to balance despite obvious threats, because elites are divided, fear domestic costs or prefer comfort over preparation. This is the sharpest diagnosis of India. The threat is visible. The response is rhetoric, summits and slogans, not sustained investment.
Hedging and strategic autonomy. Hedging means keeping options open with several powers. It works when a state has enough strength to make each patron fear its defection. Without that strength, hedging becomes dependence on everyone and leverage over no one.
Non-alignment, the original. Nehru’s non-alignment (1950s) worked in a bipolar world where both blocs competed for Third World favour, and even then, it failed in 1962, when India faced China alone. Multialignment is non-alignment’s grandchild, but without a bipolar bidding war to exploit.
Kautilya’s mandala. India’s own tradition says your neighbour is a natural enemy and your neighbour’s neighbour a natural friend. The practical meaning: build partnerships around the pressure points of the main rival. India has done this only timidly, with Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan, while sentimentally chasing a seat beside Beijing.
Weaponised interdependence (Farrell and Newman). Trade and technology networks become tools of coercion. China controls these chokepoints for India. When Beijing restricted rare earth magnet exports in 2025, Indian automakers felt it within weeks.
Constructivism. States act on identity as much as interest. India’s identity as a leader of the Global South, a civilisation state and a democracy is repeatedly asserted. The test is whether actions match the identity. When they do not, credibility collapses.
Put simply: realism asks whether India is strong, balance of threat asks whether it has picked the right side of the real danger, underbalancing asks why it has not acted, and constructivism asks whether anyone believes what it says. On all four counts, the report card is poor.
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After 2014: the era of personal diplomacy
The Modi government began with theatre and promise. The 2014 swearing-in invited every SAARC leader. “Neighbourhood First” and “Act East” were announced. Mr. Xi was welcomed on a swing in Ahmedabad in September 2014. During that same visit, Chinese troops were camped in Chumar in Ladakh. The lesson should have been immediate: warmth without leverage buys nothing.
What followed was a pattern.
Neighbourhood. The 2015 blockade of Nepal, widely seen there as an Indian squeeze, pushed Kathmandu toward Beijing and produced a transit agreement with China within a year. The Maldives swung into the Chinese orbit and later elected an India Out campaigner. Sri Lanka handed the Hambantota port to China on a 99-year lease in 2017. Each of these was a failure of patient, respectful, resourced engagement.
China. Wuhan (2018) and Mamallapuram (2019) were sold as personal breakthroughs. But the Doklam standoff of 73 days in 2017 had already shown that the Chinese military was pushing on the ground. India treated summitry as substance. Beijing treated it as cover.
Pakistan. The Lahore stopover of December 2015 was followed within days by the Pathankot attack. Uri (2016) produced surgical strikes and loud claims of a new normal. The new normal did not prevent Pulwama.
Economy. Make in India (2014) promised manufacturing at 25 percent of GDP by 2022. It has hovered around 15 percent. A foreign policy cannot outrun a weak industrial base. Meanwhile the trade deficit with China ballooned, from roughly 48 billion dollars in 2014 to nearly 100 billion by 2025.
Iran. In 2019, India stopped importing Iranian oil under American sanctions pressure, sacrificing a long-standing relationship and slowing Chabahar. What did India receive in return? A reputation as a state that complies when pressured.
The verdict on this era: spectacular optics, thin strategic return. India accumulated photographs, not leverage.
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After 2019: confidence turns into overreach
2019 is the pivot. A second mandate, Balakot after Pulwama (40 CRPF personnel killed), the abrogation of Article 370 and the Citizenship Amendment Act reshaped India’s image abroad. Domestic politics now entered foreign policy at full volume.
The costs came quickly. Article 370 and the Kashmir lockdown brought criticism from Western legislatures and media and gave Pakistan and Turkey a platform. The CAA and the surrounding protests strained ties with Bangladesh and put India’s liberal-democratic claim under review. India’s own identity as a democratic leader, the foundation of its soft power, began to look selective.
Howdy Modi (September 2019) and Namaste Trump (February 2020) crossed a line that diplomats avoid: openly aligning with a foreign politician’s electoral fortunes. When American power changed hands in 2021, India had to rebuild trust with the Biden administration.
Galwan (15 June 2020) was the great strategic shock. Twenty Indian soldiers died. Chinese forces occupied pockets in Depsang, Demchok and Pangong, and buffer zones later restricted Indian patrolling rights. India banned 59 Chinese apps, a symbolic act, yet imports from China rose to record levels in the following years. India had walked out of RCEP in 2019 but had no alternative trade architecture ready. The posture was assertive in language, passive in effect.
Ukraine (2022). India abstained on UN votes condemning the invasion more than a dozen times, and Russia’s share of Indian crude imports leapt from about 2 percent before the war to well over a third. The discounts were real and helped inflation. But the political cost was also real: India was now financing, through the market, a war it said it opposed, while its own foreign minister told Europeans they were part of the problem. The Samarkand line of 2022 tried to square this circle. It satisfied no one.
Canada and the US (2023). Allegations about the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and a foiled plot against Gurpatwant Pannun in the United States reinforced a perception of a state that pursues overseas dissidents. Whatever the truth, India’s reaction (anger, denial, visa freezes) damaged trust with two Quad-adjacent partners.
Gaza (2023). After abstaining on the first UN General Assembly ceasefire resolution in October 2023, India shifted to support later ones. It declared solidarity with Israel after 7 October, then drifted toward calls for a two-state solution. Position followed pressure, not principle.
Across this period, the central failure was this: India confused hedging with strategy. It leaned on China’s border patience, Russia’s oil, America’s technology and the Gulf’s remittances (about 40 percent of India’s 125 billion dollars in annual remittances) all at once, without the capacity to withstand any one of them turning hostile.
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After 2024: the year the hedge broke
The 2024 election returned Mr. Modi to office with 240 seats for the BJP, a coalition government and a diminished mandate. Foreign policy took on a more reactive tone, and events overran it.
Moscow and Kyiv (2024). Mr. Modi embraced Mr. Putin in Moscow in July 2024, on a day Russian missiles struck a children’s hospital in Kyiv. Weeks later he visited Kyiv. Photographs substituted for a policy. Neither capital felt it had India’s genuine alignment.
Bangladesh (August 2024). Sheikh Hasina fled after a mass uprising. India had invested in one leader and one party for fifteen years and was left with a hostile successor government. A 4,096 km border and a Chinese opening later, India had no plan B. Nepal and Sri Lanka saw further turbulence in the following year. The neighbourhood is now more contested than at any time since 1971.
The LAC deal (October 2024). A patrolling agreement before the Kazan BRICS meeting was presented as progress. But the status quo ante of April 2020 was not fully restored, and the 50,000 to 60,000 troops each side holds in Ladakh remain deployed. The two sides have returned to talks, not to trust.
Trump 2.0 (2025). Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on India that reached 50 percent by August 2025, a 25 percent reciprocal tariff plus 25 percent as a penalty over Russian oil. He added a 100,000-dollar fee on H-1B visas, targeting a workforce that is largely Indian. Indians were deported in shackles in February 2025 and Delhi barely protested. Mr. Trump then claimed, repeatedly, that he personally brokered the India-Pakistan ceasefire after Operation Sindoor, and hosted Pakistan’s army chief for lunch. India’s denials did little. A Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan followed in September 2025.
Operation Sindoor (May 2025). After the Pahalgam massacre (22 April 2025, 26 civilians killed), India struck Pakistan with force. Militarily it showed resolve. Diplomatically it showed isolation. Few countries condemned Pakistan by name, and China’s support to Pakistan in intelligence and equipment became visible. India has faced a growing sense of diplomatic marginalisation since, while Pakistan has gained new prominence, including Washington’s choice of Islamabad as a mediator with Iran.
SCO Tianjin and BRICS Delhi (2025 and 2026). Mr. Modi travelled to China for the first time in seven years and stood beside Xi and Putin, a signal to Washington. The hedge was now openly directional, and then the Bishkek and Delhi summits in 2026 demonstrated its limits. India won a consensus declaration in Delhi, which is real diplomatic craft, bridging the Iran and UAE positions. But a consensus text that avoids Ukraine, avoids naming the aggressor in the Gulf and offends nobody is the diplomacy of absence.
The pattern since 2024 is clear. India has been hit by the US, shut out of regional diplomacy, matched by China and outmanoeuvred by Pakistan, while telling itself that all of this proves its autonomy.
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Why India lacks spine: the real causes
Call it spine, call it strategic nerve. The causes are structural, not personal.
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A weak material base. India’s manufacturing share is stagnant, its R&D spending is about 0.65 percent of GDP (China spends about 2.4 percent), and about 70 percent of its pharmaceutical ingredients and most solar and electronics components come from China. A state that cannot make its own inputs cannot say no to the supplier.
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Underinvestment in defence. India spends under 2% of GDP on defence, and a large share goes to pensions and salaries. It remained the world’s largest arms importer in the 2019 to 2023 SIPRI period, with about 9.8% of global arms imports. Russia’s share of Indian arms imports has fallen from 76 percent (2009 to 2013) to 36 percent, but the replacement has been imports from France, Israel and the US, not indigenous capacity. Dependence has changed addresses, not disappeared.
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Personalised, centralised decision making. Foreign policy is run through a few offices, with an emphasis on leader-level optics. The foreign service has thinned: India’s diplomatic corps of about 900 officers is smaller than Singapore’s per capita and a fraction of the US, China or even Brazil’s. Strategy needs institutions, not just charisma.
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Domestic politics exported. Majoritarian politics at home reduces India’s moral authority abroad and gives rivals openings in Muslim-majority states and Western parliaments. A foreign policy cannot claim to defend a rules-based order while ignoring one’s own commitments.
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Fear of commitment. Doctrines of strategic autonomy are comfortable because they never require paying a price. But a state that avoids every entanglement also avoids every guarantee. When Galwan happened, no ally came. That is the price of having none.
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How India should develop her foreign policy, in five parts:
First, build power before posture (internal balancing). Raise defence spending toward 2.5 to 3 percent of GDP over the next decade, with a funded plan for theatre commands, submarines, air defence, long-range fires and drones. Make capital expenditure, not pensions, the growth line. Lift R&D toward 1.5% of GDP, using Israel, South Korea and Taiwan as models. Treat semiconductors, rare earths, pharma ingredients and batteries as national security sectors, with time-bound targets: reduce dependence on any single country below 40 percent by 2032. Pursue manufacturing at 25 percent of GDP, not as a slogan, but as the measure of seriousness.
Second, treat China as the central problem, not one of several. Realism demands it. India should stop splitting the difference between confrontation and summitry. It should keep talking but align deliberately: deepen the Quad’s maritime and technology agenda, build the Indo-Pacific arc with Japan, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, and deliver more than BrahMos missiles and communiqués. It should also be ready to restrict Chinese investment in strategic sectors, rather than letting trade deficits widen to 100 billion dollars a year.
Third, adopt principle as policy. If a war of aggression is wrong in Ukraine, it is wrong in Gaza and Iran. If sovereignty matters in Kashmir, it matters in Tibet and Taiwan’s waters. India should choose a standard, state it plainly, and apply it to friends and foes. Consistency is the cheapest form of credibility. A state whose voting record can be predicted by who is pressuring it will never be a leader of the Global South.
Fourth, repair the neighbourhood with money, patience and humility. The Neighbourhood First budget should be multiplied. India should offer faster credit lines, electricity and rail connectivity, visa openness and trade access, and refrain from backing a single leader or party. Every neighbour that leans to Beijing is a failure of Delhi’s offer, not of Beijing’s cleverness.
Fifth, build real coalitions, not just forums. BRICS and the SCO are useful tables but poor alliances: Russia is dependent on China, Iran and the UAE are at odds, and China shapes the rules. India should invest in minilateral groups that carry real obligations: supply chain pacts, joint production of defence systems, intelligence sharing and a standing crisis mechanism with democracies and middle powers. Diversify energy (nuclear, renewables, Gulf, US, African supply) so that no single supplier, whether Russia or anyone else, dictates India’s diplomacy.
In addition, India should professionalise its foreign service. Triple the size of the Indian Foreign Service over a decade, create a National Security Council with real analytical depth and open the policy process to scholars, diplomats and business leaders. Great-power strategy is a team sport.
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The strongest case for the defence
An honest critique must face the best counterarguments. Defenders of India’s approach argue that multialignment is the only sane choice for a poor, populous, nuclear-armed country with hostile neighbours. They point out that discounted Russian oil saved India several billion dollars and helped contain inflation, that India’s BRICS chairmanship produced a consensus text between Iran and the UAE, and that no major power gave India a better offer for exclusive alignment. They cite Mearsheimer’s own logic: great powers rarely offer guarantees that survive their own interests, and small commitments become big liabilities. They note that Kautilya himself favoured flexible alliances, and that India’s choices are made under real constraints of capacity and time, which is why gradualism is rational.
Those points have weight. But they prove too little. Discounts are tactical wins inside a strategic loss. A consensus text is a procedural achievement, not a power gain. And flexibility is a virtue only when a state has something to be flexible with. The question is not whether India should keep options (it should) but whether it has built the strength that makes those options worth having. On the evidence of Galwan, Dhaka, Washington’s tariffs and Bishkek, not yet.
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Conclusion: autonomy is earned
Dr. Jaimine Vaishnav is a faculty of geopolitics and world economy and other liberal arts subjects, a researcher with publications in SCI and ABDC journals, and an author of 6 books specializing in informal economies, mass media, and street entrepreneurship. With over a decade of experience as an academic and options trader, he is keen on bridging the grassroots business practices with global economic thought. His work emphasizes resilience, innovation, and human action in everyday human life. He can be contacted on jaiminism@hotmail.co.in for further communication.