- India’s foreign policy is driven by economic realities rather than ideological ideals, Parag Khanna said
- India maintains an independent stance due to its high commodity import deficit
- Sanctions pressure on India to join against Russia has been largely ineffective
India's foreign policy is being shaped by hard economic realities rather than lofty ideals, says Parag Khanna, founder and CEO of AlphaGeo, an AI-based geospatial analytics firm.
"India is looking after its own interests, and its policy towards Russia is a very fundamental case study in this," said Khanna. "It was even before Trump was elected, the Biden administration that sought to pressure India very heavily to join in the sanctions regime against Russia. But as I told people then, I said, good luck with that."
"This notion of democracy or driven foreign policy is not going to work when you're dealing with a country like India that has a very high current account surplus and trade deficit when it comes to commodities imports," Khanna told NDTV CEO and Editor in Chief Rahul Kanwal at Davos.
Khanna, a top global strategy advisor, pointed to India's economic structure as the driving force behind its independent global stance. "You can actually, this is a bit wonky, but you can just rank countries by the share of their deficit that is attributable to commodities imports. And if it is high, and spoiler alert, India ranks number one, their foreign policy is not going to be dictated by ideals, right? Because it becomes a question of international cheap commodities imports versus domestic subsidies in your budget."
According to Khanna, that trade-off shapes how Indian leaders make decisions. "That is not a sacrifice that any intelligent Indian leader would make," he said.
He added that India is not alone in this approach. "Even Japan, which is truly an American ally, has sought all kinds of ways to circumvent or to take advantage of oil price cap and so forth to still get Russian energy. And even Europe itself, which feels fundamentally attacked, has been accessing Russian oil and gas as well, even after Nord Stream was blown up through alternative refineries that, including others, were processed by India and so forth."
"So the fact is, everyone is practising this multi alignment," Khanna said. "India has to focus on its own neighbourhood. It cannot take instructions and will not from others."
"And I think India has actually been fairly clever in this regard," he added.
