US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland of “EuroMaidan” infamy just gave interviews to Indian media outlets NDTV and The Indian Express (the second of which is paywalled but can be read for free here) where she elaborated on her understanding of Russian-Indian relations in the context of Moscow’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. Some common threads run between these two media appearances in that she puts forth the idea that India’s policymaking community is “evolving” its perception of Russia in light of recent events. For this reason, she hopes that it’ll speak out in support of the American position due to what she describes as the “major inflection point in the autocratic-democratic struggle”, which she says is increasingly defining the evolving world order. Nuland also repeated her government’s proposal that it can help India replace Russian defense equipment.

To summarize, she’s of the view that India’s policymaking community is becoming just as ideologically driven as the US-led West’s, ergo her hopes that it’ll side with America against Russia on that basis. Nuland also implies some concern that India’s dependence on Russian military-technical imports might be a factor behind why it hasn’t yet done so, which explains why she repeated her proposal that the US can help its South Asian partner with whom relations have become increasingly complicated since summer 2020 to replace this equipment that she suggests is influencing its foreign policy. It should also be mentioned that the comparisons that she made in her two interviews between Russia and China are designed to scare Indians into regarding Moscow as unreliable and perhaps even as a latent threat. All of this represents an outdated understanding of Russian-Indian ties that led to her unrealistic assessments.

“The Twists & Turns Of Russian-Indian Relations Over The Past Few Years” that began after each started prioritizing relations with the other’s rivals led to some unintended misperceptions about their motives that in turn prompted some unprecedented distrust about their grand strategic aims. These were thankfully resolved over the past year due to their leaders’ shared will and resulted in the most mutually beneficial outcome whereby they’ve come to respect the other’s relations with third parties so long as they aren’t driven by any desire to harm their counterpart’s interests. This pragmatic understanding laid the basis for them to jointly work towards informally assembling a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”) for creating a third pole of influence in the increasingly bi-multipolar world order that’s largely defined by the global competition between the American and Chinese superpowers, below which lie Great Powers and then comparatively smaller countries, all of whom actively interact with each other.

Russia wants to preemptively avert potential disproportionate dependence on China just like India wants to do the same vis-à-vis the US, which explains why they’re so closely working together nowadays in pursuit of their shared grand strategic goals to connect Eurasia with the Indo-Pacific while also creating a third pole of influence for genuinely neutral countries to gravitate towards. On that second-mentioned topic, the majority of the international community practices a policy of principled neutrality by refusing to submit to US-led Western pressure to sanction Russia, with the most prominent among these being China, India, Iran, and Pakistan along with the many African countries that also refused to vote against it at the UNGA. Seeing as how the New Cold War also involves the Eastern Eurasian theater between America and China, many will also practice similar neutrality once those tensions escalate too.

India’s expectedly neutral position towards both New Cold War theaters will make it the largest genuinely neutral country in the world since Russia and China are protagonists in this global confrontation’s Western and Eastern theaters respectively. Be that as it is, Russia doesn’t have the same potential to influence the ongoing global systemic transition as China does, the latter of which is actively reshaping the strategic situation all throughout the Global South through its multidimensional Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) investments and the attendant non-Western complex economic interdependences that they lead to for challenging the hitherto Western-centric economic system that lies at the heart of the US’ worldwide dominance. Many Global South countries would prefer not to be forced to choose between America and China, which is where the joint Indo-Russian Neo-NAM comes in.

This informal network of neutral states does indeed include one of the New Cold War’s protagonists, Russia, but this country’s role in the Neo-NAM serves a strategic purpose for India and this concept as a whole. Up until India began flexing its strategic autonomy by impressively remaining neutral in the New Cold War’s Western Eurasian theater between Russia and the US/NATO, it was largely regarded across the world as leaning more towards the US while Russia leaned closer towards China. Now, however, these US-leaning and Chinese-leaning Great Powers respectively have joined together to unofficially assemble a new Non-Aligned Movement for enhancing their partners’ strategic autonomy in the bi-multipolar world order that’s largely defined by the global competition between the American and Chinese superpowers much more than between the first superpower and the Eurasian Great Power.

“Russia & India Want To Gently Balance Chinese Influence In Central Asia” as proof that the Neo-NAM concept is viable prior to experimenting with its practice in other Global South regions such as Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, all three of which significantly lie along the Indo-Pacific theater in which some of the top trends shaping the “New World Order” are unfolding. This vision of jointly creating a third pole of influence in the bi-multipolar world by partially relying on the truly pragmatic optics of US-leaning and Chinese-leaning Great Powers working together in pursuit of their shared goal of enhancing their partners’ strategic autonomy to “balance” between those two superpowers in the New Cold War is of irreplaceable grand strategic interest for India and far outweighs any influence that its military-technical dependence on Russia might have over its contemporaneous policymaking.

No other country besides Russia can play this role in Indian grand strategy, which explains why New Delhi has firmly remained committed to its policy of principled neutrality with respect to the latest developments in the New Cold War’s Western Eurasian theater between Russia and the US/NATO. Despite very proudly considering itself to be the world’s largest democracy, India’s national model differs from the Western one in terms of its substance even though both go through the motions of electoral democracy. This indisputable fact is actually responsible for the most ideologically driven Western politicians criticizing India in recent years in ways that New Delhi uncomfortably regards as meddling in its internal affairs, something that Russia hasn’t ever done nor will ever do. That’s yet another reason why the trust between those two Great Powers remains rock-solid and unbreakable.

Nuland’s outdated understanding of Russian-Indian ties is due to her refusing to even acknowledge the Neo-NAM concept that’s nowadays exerting powerful influence over the formulation and practice of that South Asian state’s grand strategy in the New Cold War. She also seems unable to countenance that a very proudly self-professed democracy like India isn’t ideologically radicalized like its Western counterparts are to aggressively export this general governing model to others and curtail its ties with those like Russia who don’t have the same political system. To put it another way, Nuland naively assumes that India is already a vassal state-in-waiting that it’ll dutifully comply with the declining unipolar hegemon’s demands to sacrifice its grand strategic interests on so-called “democratic” pretexts in order to advance America’s own such interests or else she wouldn’t have ridiculously suggested this.

The Under Secretary of Political Affairs is one of the highest diplomatic positions in that superpower, which is why it’s so concerning that such an influential and powerful figure like Nuland lacks an updated understanding of Russian-Indian ties and that Great Power’s grand strategy more broadly. This suggests that those below her are similarly misinformed of the factors that shape India’s foreign policy, thus leading to the prediction that the US will continue to counterproductively pressure India to compromise on its interests. No amount of proposed American replacements for India’s military-technical imports from Russia will influence that Great Power to sacrifice on its grand strategic goal of jointly assembling the Neo-NAM with Moscow in order to mutually maximize their strategic autonomy and thus preemptively prevent their potential disproportionate dependence on the US and China respectively.