India’s pragmatic diplomacy with major powers: a comparative study of the strategic partnership with the US, China, and Russia

Abstract

Since the advent of the twenty-first century, more and more practitioners as well as scholars have firmly stressed the importance of India in contemporary international relations. India itself has harbored ambitions to be a global power and has gained great self-respect as a regional power since its independence in 1947. On the one hand the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who inherited Mahatma Gandhi’s great legacy of non-violence, led the global non-alignment movement, which was a grand vision of world peace and independence from colonialism in the midst of the Cold War. On the other hand, however, India’s actual sphere of influence was confined to the subcontinent of South Asia, a marginal area far from the West. There was a wide gap between the ideal and the real in India. The situation, however, has changed completely since the end of the ColdWar. India’s burgeoning economic development after the liberalization in 1991 and its nuclear tests and nuclearization in 1998 have elevated its hard power to a global level. The fact that most Western major powers have wooed ‘the largest democracy in the world’ is encouraging its political and diplomatic elites. In fact, India has been recognized as a regional power with the potential to be a ‘global power’ since the US president Bill Clinton’s visit to New Delhi in 2000. India is now sensing the opportunity to realize its great ambitions. RecentIndian diplomacy has set itself the goal of securing a ‘regional power’ position in Asia and Eurasia and ultimately becoming a ‘global power’ beyond the subcontinent. First of all, further economic growth is essential for this end, considering that its neighbor, China, has obtained a much larger scale of economy. It is quite logical that India has strengthened its economic diplomacy to draw more investment from the West, and to stimulate trade by concluding free trade agreements with major and emerging powers. India has also raised an objection to the suggestion of setting legally binding targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, which might hamper economic growth. Neither has its government any intention of doing away with its policy on nuclear energy – even after the Fukushima accidents – making a series of agreements on nuclear power in order to cater for greater energy demand.