The immediate aftermath of the Korean War was the bi-polarization of the global order with each of the two rival ‘blocs’ i.e., Soviet Union and United States of America, pulling countries into their orbits.
The bulk of newly independent and predominantly ‘third world’ countries had foundational leadership that was naturally fired by idealism, morality and even a sense of ‘independence’ that disdained subservience to a foreign power.
Under the collective initiative of India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesian President Sukarno, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was born.
The predominant impulse for this leadership was aspired ‘peace’ that was predicated on maintaining distance from intrinsic implications of colonization, imperialism or fighting someone else’s war.
Given the lack of global integration then, the sense of losing out in terms of preferential treatment meted to an ‘ally’ was also negligible.
As it is, these ‘bloc’ formations were more security-driven and militaristic in their construct e.g., North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or those under the Warsaw Pact ~ there were minimal economic-trade imperatives at stake.
But with nearly one-third of all countries (120 countries) under NAM auspices, it was a motley crew of questionably ‘nonaligned’ countries like Cuba (clearly in the Soviet ‘bloc’ for all purposes) and even warring countries such as China and India (which signed up its own bilateral and strategic agreements with the Soviet Union, later) ~ a plonky, often contradictory and posturing movement that was loosely associated and seldom helped out each other when it really mattered.
The post-cold war era, the end of a bipolar world order, the emergence of the Chinese footprint and of an integrative ‘global highway’ all accelerated the already depleting relevance of NAM.
The world has shifted from ‘Multipolar’ to ‘Bipolar’, to ‘Unipolar’, to even portents of ‘Tripolar’ now, with the Sinosphere emerging as an alternative. Today, the imagined sovereign threats are no longer about colonialism, racism, imperialism etc., as were applicable during the NAM days.
Besides the issue of territorial integrity, they entail the increasingly asymmetric angularities like economics, trade, diplomacy, culture, infrastructure, investments etc., all of which require elements of transactional exchange or realpolitik. Practicality, rather than the lofty idealism of morality or adherence to ideology, matters more.
The emergence of Sinosphere is an example of ‘unnatural’ alliances between a ‘Communist’ regime in China with avowedly ‘Islamised’ nations like Pakistan, Iran and Turkey (which is ironically a NATO power too) etc., or with ‘pariahised’ nations like North Korea or the junta-led Myanmar.
Delhi too has shed some of its ideological intransigence of the past to seek ‘balance’. A process of rapprochement was started in earnest with the economic liberalisation, steadied dexterously in the post-Pokhran tests and carefully navigated ever since, albeit stumbling occasionally and facing tensions from old and new strategic allies.
The shift in the imagined primary source of ‘enemy’ in Islamabad to that in Beijing shaped the Indian narrative. It wasn’t seamless, and India faced pressures, for example unhappily reneging on sourcing oil from Iran under pressure from Washington owing to the American sanctions thereon, or when India sourced the advanced long-range surface-to-air missile batteries i.e., S-400, from Russia.
However, topical necessities such as Washington finally recognising ‘important geostrategic considerations’ (read Chinese threat) to afford a rare Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) waiver, was a sign of the time.
Today, even though the Americans and Russians are again deeply pitted against each other in the Ukraine war ~ India can maintain strategic relations with both Moscow and Washington simultaneously, as also secure cutting-edge military hardware from both.
India’s complex and dynamic position on Ukraine has been attributed to its ‘strategic independence’ when it comes to security, economic and foreign policy, which often leaves both Moscow and Washington less than satisfied, but does ensure that India manages its own bilateral relations with both Russia and America, without cutting ties with either.
A Danish policy paper noted, “Approaching 2035, India will become one of the world’s most influential countries, driven partly by its size and technological development power, partly by its own global ambitions.
It will greatly impact the new world order. India will balance its need to orientate itself towards the West in order to meet the challenge from China against its desire for strategic independence and a role as a mouthpiece for the many countries that do not want to choose sides between China and the United States”.
It sounds eerily like a redux of a Non-Aligned Movement, though the triggers and objectives are not the same. What is certain is that while India will seek ‘strategic independence’ it will simultaneously seek connection and engagement with all and sundry, cutting across varied and competing ‘blocs’.
China as the master of realpolitik has demonstrated the real value in keeping its own gunpowder dry and in quietly increasing its own stockpile when its rivals (both US and Russia) were busy burning their own resources to no good use in the battlefields of the Middle East, Afghanistan or even Ukraine.
In an increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world there will be a lot of cross-tensions that could mandate or urge India’s participation or posturing ~ but Delhi will have to cherry-pick the issues that matter and nuance its own response in the interest of its own considerations, as opposed to those of ‘blocs’ or even ‘allies’, beyond a point. So, does ‘strategic independence’ tantamount to non-alignment of yore?
It does and doesn’t in equal measure ~ while both are about not committing to fixed ‘blocs’, ‘strategic independence’ is not necessarily about equidistance (as aspired by NAM), as much as it is about topical priorities and convenience.
This transactional approach does not have to be as amoral as could be assumed, as there will always be limits, red-lines and subliminal considerations that beset any practical approach.
NAM has outlived its conceptual urgency and a more flexible and fleet footed idea of ‘strategic independence’ is more suited to the challenges of the twenty first century, where asymmetric and VUCA environment is the definitive norm.
(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)