In a recent op-ed in February, India's External Affairs Minister assessed, "The world has entered a volatile and uncertain era, possibly the most turbulent in living memory". In a subsequent public comment on April 4, he went on to say that "everything today is being leveraged, if not actually weaponised", and that "arriving at an optimal mix of equities, exposure and risks is a far more complex calculus".
The Challenge With Staying Neutral
India's striving for and assertion of the strategic autonomy of its decision-making has thus become even more an imperative, and also challenging at the same time. Since 2000, India has built a deepening economic, technological, political and defence partnership with the US, with the latter declaring India as a Major Defence partner and describing the relationship as a defining feature for the 21st century. US leaders also repeatedly said that they saw the rise of India to be in the US's interest. Contrast this with President Trump's comment in July 2025 that he did not want US companies to hire in India, and that of US Deputy Secretary of State Landau at the Raisina dialogue in March this year, that the US would not make the same mistake with India that it did with China. The Quad also does not appear to be getting the same summit-level traction in Trump 2.0 as it did in the preceding Biden administration. Trump's 50% tariffs on Indian products levied last year were seen as a vindictive measure driven by his personal pique at India not crediting him with a role in the ceasefire following Operation Sindoor in May 2025.
Before US-Israel, There Was Russia
Yet, India avoided direct criticism of the US and Israel for initiating the conflict with Iran, while asserting in its February 28 statement that "sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states must be respected", and expressing only deep "concern at the recent developments". By contrast, in a conversation with the President of the UAE on March 1, the Indian Prime Minister "strongly condemned the attacks on the UAE" and "expressed that he stands in solidarity with the UAE in these difficult times". The Indian Prime Minister's visit to Israel, just two days before the start of the US and Israeli actions, has also raised questions about the appropriateness of the timing and appearance of partisanship, when the outbreak of conflict was expected.
Similarly, India had refrained from direct criticism of Russia when it violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in February 2022, with the Indian Prime Minister diplomatically telling Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2022 at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand, that this was "not an era of war". Russia's deep and longstanding defence cooperation partnership with India, and political support over decades in international fora, no doubt influenced the nuance of India's position.
What Strategic Autonomy Really Means - In The Real World
All these legitimately raise questions about what strategic autonomy entails. Clearly, it cannot imply that India mechanistically base its positions and articulations on certain widely articulated, heretofore, positions of preferred international norms, unmindful of its own direct economic, technological, defence and political interests. No major power does that. China had in 2016 rejected the ruling of an international arbitration tribunal on the South China Sea, calling it "not worth the paper it was written on", and proceeded to militarise several islands and features in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The 2026 US National Defence Strategy asserts that the US would no longer support "cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order".
In the immediate aftermath of independence, India had adopted non-alignment as a strategy to avoid subservience to decisions made elsewhere in the two competing superpower-led military alliances. In the post-1990 unipolar phase in global affairs, the assertion of its strategic autonomy enabled India to ward off US-led attempts to universalise norms based on American preferences. These had included the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 and attempts to bring into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.
'Hedging', Not Isolation
In the current context of India striving for productive relations with different poles in the international system, along with the growing weaponisation of dependencies by all major players, strategic autonomy can be sustained only if India builds up further its own economic, technological and military strengths. Given the competitive advantages that can be derived from cooperation and partnerships, isolation is not a viable strategy. But hedging certainly is. Each of our partners needs to be aware that India has other options, too.
In the current situation, the effective multiplicity of options is under strain. Russia has been preoccupied with the Ukraine conflict for more than four years, straining its ability to provide supplies in time or be impactful in other international contexts. Russia was not able to do much to deter a US-driven "regime change" action in Venezuela, or the enhanced embargoes in Cuba. Europe and Japan caved in to maximalist US trade demands in 2025 because they continue to be security-dependent on it, through NATO or through bilateral alliances in the Indo-Pacific. There are security-related limits to India's options for exploring the economic and technological options with China, despite its now-established strengths in manufacturing and many frontier technologies.
However, the US's re-assertion of "America first" in Trump 2.0 and its denigration of allies and partners has prompted a search in Europe, Japan and elsewhere for independent capabilities. If this endures, it will certainly enhance options for India.
The concern and hand-wringing in some public commentary in India over Pakistan's role as a facilitator in the recent US-Iran discussions can only be attributed to the unease about the current geopolitical flux. Established utility in a specific context can only be transitory, as Pakistan has found in its perennial waxing and waning relationship with the US. However, the enduring influence of a country will depend on its own economic, technological and military strengths. India's actions and words should derive from that, and in the consolidation of its strategic autonomy.
(The author is a former Indian ambassador to the US, France and Israel)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
