India took an equivocal position
on Russia’s invasion. This is surprising at first glance because India has been
so concerned to protect its sovereign territory from baleful encroachments from
China. What explains India looking the other way as Russia unilaterally invaded
a sovereign state? I contend that the explanation supports the assertion that the
world could no longer afford its system based on national sovereignty if
political realism is in the driver’s seat at the national level.
According to Sumit Ganguly of
Indiana University, one of my alma maters, the USSR was a vital partner of
India during the Cold War. The Soviet Union was willing to sell weapons to
India for cheap in order to keep China from expanding. For spare parts, India still
has to go to Russia and is thus dependent on that country and the good will of
its government. No country could ween itself away from a provider of military
hardware quickly.
Furthermore, Ganguly noted in a
talk in 2024 that India had a history of buying oil from Russia, and this
continued during Russia’s invasion in spite of the Western embargos of Russian
oil. The U.S. is in part to blame because it would sanction India were it to buy
oil from Iran or Venezuela. At the time of the Russian War, India was still a
poor country even as its high tech industry was expanding. Russian oil was relatively
cheap. Also, India could point to the American hypocrisy in having relations
with some sordid, autocratic regimes. This can explain why the government of
India was well-aware during Russia’s war in Ukraine that by buying Russian oil
and selling it to the EU and US, India was undermining the embargoes. Saudi
Arabia was doing likewise, and yet the Biden administration held that both
countries were allies of the United States. Everyone was looking primarily or
even solely at their own interests.
Ganguly has also pointed out that
in Indian culture, there is an obsession for multipolarity: there should be
several global powers rather than just one biggie. Therefore, there is a
willingness to work with Russia, which could serve as a check on hegemonic American
power. This is not to say that Indian culture had any affinity whatsoever, Ganguly
insists, with internal Russian politics. Nevertheless, India has had China as
its principal long-term threat, and India’s government has recognized for a
long time that Russia could act as a check on China.
All of this goes to say, political realism was alive and well as the world adjusted to Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine. In realism, each government orients its foreign (and industrial) policy tightly to the national interest rather than also to cooperate with other governments in the interests of a global order in which international law can be more effectively enforced. The international system is just the aggregate of the self-interests of governments; aggregated parts make up the whole. With human rights suffering from a want of international enforcement in Ukraine as well as in Gaza, the want of international attention in a system of sovereign countries on tightening that system to enhance the enforcement of international law suggests that political realism has become insufficient. Climate change and the risk of nuclear war, which Russia has threatened in the context of Ukraine, only add to the argument that the world could no longer afford an international order that rests on national sovereignty to which political realism is the dominant operating system in governments.
