India’s Post-Independence Strategic Culture: A Case Study of India’s Cooperation With the United States and Russia in Military Modernization

Introduction

Despite some controversy regarding its usefulness, strategic culture has become a widely accepted phrase in the sense of a ‘shaping framework’ for strategic behaviour. Geography, history, national culture, politics, economy, technology and other factors all contribute to a nation’s strategic culture. Due to its relevance in attaining a goal, the strategic has become a multidisciplinary term that can be construed in a variety of ways. However, strategic culture in its traditional sense in ‘International Politics/Relations’ has been predominantly associated with the military/security objectives of a nation. As a result, strategy in this context is defined as the process of identifying, acquiring, allocating and mobilizing diverse components of a comprehensive national power and aligning them to achieve the state’s military objectives.

In the case of India, strategic culture explains why the country has taken a very different approach to national security and foreign policy than other countries in similar situations. According to the book by Paranjpe (2020), the origin of strategic culture in India is a civilizational framework rather than a narrowly national one. Paranjpe continues the historical journey from premodern times to independence, the Cold War and finally the post-Cold War era in his book. The book attempts to reflect on the diplomatic and military aspects of strategic culture during each era as it moves through them. Indian civilizational strategic culture has emphasized defence rather than expansion since the pre-modern era. This strategic perspective is accompanied, to some extent, by voluntary isolation and the goal of self-sufficiency. Furthermore, there is a tendency for conflicts to be resolved primarily through peaceful means (Castren, 2020). Thus, one should understand that the intertwined between India’s strategic culture and the defence policy is predominantly influenced by the ‘defensive’ and ‘non-interventionist’ approach.

After independence, India pushed the idea of ‘non-alignment’ which in different forms still exists in India’s behaviours in international politics. Postcolonial India, unlike China or Pakistan, did not seek alliances with strong countries to strengthen its national security, staying ‘nonaligned’ even after major wars in 1962 (with China) and 1965 (with Pakistan). After the rise of the BJP in the Indian government since 2014, although realpolitik and Hindu nationalism provide alternatives to the Nehruvian legacy that has dominated Indian strategic culture, Nehruvianism continues to dominate the country’s strategic thought. ‘Strategic restraint’, as advocated by Nehruvians, involves exercising care when obtaining and employing military force. They want India to progress socially and economically as modernists, but they are uneasy about globalization and liberalization because they want to minimize dependence and maintain autonomy.

According to a preliminary review of the literature, a comparative analysis between the predominant Russian participation in the Indian defence sector and the increasing cooperation between India and the United States (US) is lacking. Having said that, this paper aims to answer the question of whether India’s military modernization and strategic culture collide with each other vis-e-vis its relationship with the USA and Russia. The preliminary assumption that this paper has is that, based on India’s post-independence strategic culture, the Modi government has focused on strategic autonomy by adopting a ‘multi-alignment’ policy, especially in military modernization. As a result, India continued its ambivalent approach towards the USA and Russia in the process of military modernization. While making such an analysis, this article solely considers strategic culture as the independent variable, whereas socio-economic and political environments are the dependent variables.

The article first largely discusses India’s post-independence strategic culture and presents the case study of India’s relations with Russia and the US in terms of military modernization. In the process of presenting India’s relations with Russia and the US, this document provided a glimpse of how India has changed from ‘non-alignment’ to ‘multi-alignment’ in its military modernization process. This is a qualitative study; therefore, research processes are rooted in primary and secondary data analysis. Press releases, government documents, research articles and speeches are basic sources. Taking historical context into account, this article mainly focuses on India’s defence cooperation with Russia and USA under the Modi government after 2014.

Framing strategic culture in foreign policy

The idea of strategic culture seeks to capture the fundamental attitudes and assumptions of a country about foreign, security and defence policies. The concept, which first appeared in the 1970s, challenged assumptions that states’ external activities are mostly influenced by material forces (Zaman, 2009). Snyder (1977) was the first to bring political culture considerations into the study of foreign policy by establishing a theory of Soviet military strategy. According to his explanation, strategic culture is a perspective that examines how a state behaves in the face of a threat. Internal factors such as a country’s thinking culture, past experience, the uniqueness of the situation and military culture are the determinants of a state’s actions in this case.

Klein (1988) pioneered the second wave of strategic cultural thinking in his article ‘A Theory of Strategic Culture’. Klein began his explanation by claiming that after Clausewitz, there were no more strategic thinkers who initiated a reliable war strategy to achieve national interests. Klein, like Snyder, believes that each country has its uniqueness that distinguishes it from other countries in terms of strategic culture and that each country’s strategic culture is undoubtedly formed by its internal uniqueness in terms of history, geography, culture, national politics, economics, technology and so on.

Gray (1981: 35) presented the concept that distinctions in national style, which can have ‘deep roots inside a particular stream of historical experience’, constitute a robust account of nations’ long-term external conduct. He proposed that disparities in the strategic cultures of the two countries can be explained by organizational, political, historical and technical factors. Strategic culture, he explained, is ‘the full total of ideas, conditioned emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behaviour that members of a national strategic society have acquired through education or imitation and share with relation to nuclear strategy’. Habitual behaviour is essentially cognitive behaviour in the context of strategy. Although terminology has changed over time, the problem formulation of the strategic culture literature has remained focused on how idiosyncratic factors (history, geography, values and norms) blend with overall strategic calculations in informing and influencing decision-making on peace and war issues.

In addition, Johnston (1995) explained that there are two methods for analysing a state’s strategic culture, namely, cognitive mapping and symbol analysis. Cognitive mapping is intended to capture and describe the structure of a person’s causal assertion in relation to a particular policy domain. To see this cognitive map, the scholar must first view official documents released by the authorities related to policy-making, as well as official speeches from the government in question, and then map the causes and effects of the statements contained in the documents and speeches to the policies implemented.

In general, it is clear that the three generations have different perspectives on strategic culture. The strategic culture is fixated on the nuclear situation in the first generation, where a country’s strategic decisions (in this case, the Soviet Union) are based on a culture of thinking and emotional prejudice. Based on what Klein described, the situation faced by the second generation is military, or what can be called conventional war, in which strategic decisions are based on attitudes and beliefs that develop in military institutions. Whereas, according to Johnston, the third generation bases strategic decisions on the system of symbols that develops in a state. The authors then notice that Johnston views strategic culture as encompassing not only the military realm but also national security, foreign policy, threats and the use of force.

Moreover, based on constructivist ideas, there is a new wave of strategic culture following Snyder’s definition of strategic culture as ‘a set of elite beliefs, attitudes, and behavior patterns socialized into a distinctive mode of thought’. Furthermore, subsequent research has supported Snyder’s contention that multiple subcultures can exist within a strategic culture and that competition among subcultures generates a variety of strategic options (Glenn, 2009). Different subcultures influence strategic culture, and it may be possible to predict changes in a state’s strategic culture by following and understanding the argumentation between different groups (i.e. between or within organizations). It may be possible to describe how strategic culture influences policy change by identifying the content of competing subcultures’ ideas. Authors such as Johnston have criticized the theory’s scrutinized predicting capabilities, claiming that it has been ‘unable to offer a convincing research design for isolating the effects of strategic culture’ (Hudaya and Putri, 2019).

Nevertheless, based on the literary assessment above, the generalization that can be drawn about strategic culture and its interconnectedness with foreign policy:

Having said that, we can agree on the fact that each state has a formed attitude or a political-cultural belief that helps them to make decisions, especially in defence and foreign affairs. India also has its own strategic culture (Jones, 2006).

Evolution of India’s strategic culture

India’s strategic culture is more unique and cohesive as a whole than that of the majority of modern nation-states, despite being more mosaic-like than monolithic. This is because of its significant continuities with the many millennia—old Hindu or Vedic civilizations and the symbolism of pre-modern Indian state systems. The preceding description of India’s strategic culture concentrates on unique characteristics that have their roots in the country’s long-standing religious and cultural legacy and have emerged since independence. These characteristics could be regarded as the foundation or framework of India’s strategic culture. While India’s strategic culture was likely not fundamentally altered, it was enlivened and given additional texture by East-West competition during the Cold War and problems in the immediate region, including India’s partition and subsequent conflicts with Pakistan and the 1962 military confrontation with China. Though it came before the Korean War and the communist revolution in China, modern India’s independence aligned with the Truman Doctrine and the start of the post-war rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union in Europe and the Near East.

India’s strategic culture has historically prioritized defence over expansion since the pre-modern era. To some extent, this strategic perspective is accompanied by voluntary isolation and the goal of self-sufficiency. Peaceful settlements are often the primary approach to conflict resolution. This has led to an Indian perspective on maintaining peace in international society. Paranjpe (2020) contends that the pre-modern tradition influenced the development of the nonalignment doctrine in Indian foreign policy. According to Kanti Bajpai, India’s strategic culture has long been shaped by the worldview of the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. However, the situation is changing, with Nehruvianism, Neoliberalism and Hyperrealism now competing against one another. Clearly, the three major academic schools and varieties of Western international relations—constructivism, neoliberalism and realism—are transplants into India’s current strategic thinking ecosystem. Bajpai neither proposes an independent framework for strategic cultural analysis nor defines the relationship between India’s strategic culture and its international behaviour, which may be the most significant flaw in Najpai’s research.

While the debate suggests that India’s non-aligned strategic culture has been seeing a shift due to the changing of the international political environment, India’s non-alignment foreign policy philosophy mirrored its unique worldview, sense of status and political vulnerability following partition. India’s leaders deliberately avoided overt alignment with the West or the Soviet bloc, just as the newly established United States was wary of ‘entangling alliances’. They felt that such a move would breed reliance and that international disputes would deepen divisions within Indian society. However, the political and military influence of the West and the Soviet Union had to be shut off, but not before contemporary science and advanced technology could continue to flow freely. Trade-offs were involved here. Given unrestricted access, India’s strategic elite had the right to believe in its inherent ability to assimilate and become proficient in contemporary scientific knowledge and technology.

India’s defence cooperation with Russia

As a continuation of its relationship with the Soviet Union, New Delhi carried forward its relations with the Kremlin since the Cold War. The current Indian Ambassador to the Republic of Poland, Nagma Mohamed Mallick, regarded Russia as the ‘tested, trusted, and reliable partner’ to India. India–Russia commemorated the 50th year of the ‘Indio-Soviet Treaty on Peace’ in 2021 which was signed in 1971. Similarly, both partners also completed the 20th year of their ‘Special and Privilege Strategic Partnership’. Both partners also reached the 21st Annual India-Russia Summit in 2021. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited New Delhi on December 6, 2021, and renewed the 10-year bilateral Military-Technical Cooperation Program. During that meeting, both partners released a 99-point joint statement and the 28 memorandums of understanding focused on spanning defence, energy, trade, culture and education ¹ (Haiqi and Chia, 2021; MEA, 2021: 1). In between the active war between Russia and Ukraine and despite knowing the controversies that it can bring among the Western partners, prime minister Modi visited Moscow in July 2024. These facts defined the deepness and longstanding relations between India and Russia that continue even after New Delhi’s increasing closeness with the US. Before going into a deep discussion on the current military modernization of the Indian army, there is a need to demonstrate an evolution of India and Russia’s relation.

India’s relationship with Russia was established on trust and mutual interests throughout the Cold War. There are two major structural components to India’s closeness to the Soviet Union and presently with the Russian Federation: (1) During the Cold War periods, India’s security stake was almost dependent on the Soviet Union, especially to overrule the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) issue in the security council. (2) The 1962 Indo-China war showed the weakness of India’s security and the Chinese occupation of Indian territories forced them to strengthen the militarization and long-standing defence areas. These were immediate geopolitical strategic needs of India’s ‘scientific and technological achievements in a particular area of space and nuclear energy, which strong support was strongly supported by the Soviet Union’ (Stobdan, 2010: vii). Since the 1962 war, the Soviet Union provided constant support to New Delhi in protecting its geopolitical interests.

The ‘Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation’ was adopted on August 9, 1971, which provided a framework for the relations between India and the Soviet Union as a security guarantor. The treaty was described in six words: Desirous, Believing, Determined, Upholding, Convinced and Reaffirming. Vivek Katju, the Ex-Secretary, the Ministry of External Affairs of India (MEA), called it ‘diplomatically and strategically among the most significant documents signed by India after independence’ (Katju, 2021). The treaty empowered India by providing the accessibility to the modern military technologies that the Soviet Union had. It had changed India’s geopolitical environment, but every now and then New Delhi also showed discontent with the Kremlin regarding the Soviet’s attempts to instrumentalize the defence dependency. During Indira Gandhi’s Prime Ministership, New Delhi adopted an assertive approach towards neighbouring countries, particularly shrinking the size of Pakistan in 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh. This was because during the 1962 war, Mrs Gandhi had witnessed the weaker approach that India had taken and she was determined to change India’s defence sector when it was her time. So the defence modernization and the Soviet arms transfer were one of the first decisions that Mrs Gandhi took when she became the prime minister (Mastny, 2010).

Even in the final years of the Soviet Union, South Asia has been a central entity in Soviet diplomacy. Border conflicts between India, China and Pakistan were one of the major factors that gave an opportunity to Moscow to develop close ties with New Delhi. Based on the 1971 Treaty, India tried to gain as much as it could gain until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just between 1960 and 1990, the Soviet Union supplied military equipment to India worth the US $35 billion. MiG23s and Mi25 were an important part of the defence deal. Although the Soviet Union collapsed, New Delhi had a debt to the USSR between US $12 and 18 billion (Bakshi, 1999: 207–218; Kundu, 2008: 75). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation renewed the peace and friendship treaty. The ‘Declaration on Strategic Partnership Between the Republic of India and the Russian Federation’ mentioned the continuation of the bilateral ‘Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation of 9 August 1971’. India and Russia signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation on January 28, 1993, during the visit of President Boris Yeltsin to India (MEA, 2022). However, most of the vital security clauses were missing in the 1993 treaty. Mohanty (2010) argued that the foreign policy of Yeltsinian Russia was Western-centric, and they had not found much reliable partners and lost their influence on the world stage. Meanwhile, Russia tried to cooperate with Pakistan and sell defence equipment where the US had more influence. In 1995, Russia ended the neoliberal idea and replaced pro-US foreign minister Kozyrev Primakov. The U-turn came to Russian foreign policy that redirected the Russian focus towards East Asia. In Russia’s ‘Look East Policy’, India was the vital partner (Mohanty, 2010: 70–71). One can make an argument that the emergence of the ‘Look East Policy’ in Indian foreign policy was influenced by Russia’s re-orientation of foreign policy.

In the first half of the 1990s, arms imports to India dropped due to two major reasons: (1) the economic crisis in India and (2) the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and Russian supplies were also disrupted. Despite that, India was still the third conventional arms importer from Russia until 1996. It was called a temporary hiccup in relations with Indo-Russian defence cooperation. At the end of 1996, the further development of relations was shaped when India and Russia signed a US $1.8 billion purchase of 40 Sukhoi SU-30 MKI (Russian aircraft manufacturer) and multicable aircraft with a mid-air refuelling system. However, the so-called new beginning of the relationship between New Delhi and the Kremlin was formalized at the end of December 1998 when Russian Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov visited India for the 2-day summit. Prime Minister Primakov held a series of talks with his Indian counterpart Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with other opposition leaders. At that time, Moscow approved selling another 10 SU-30K to New Delhi. During 1996–2001, the Indian defence force spent almost US $5 billion on defence acquisition programmes and total expenditure reached an estimated US $22.22 billion by the end of 2007 (Shah, 2001: 54–56). Meanwhile, India gained nuclear power in 1998 when they tested the Pokhran-II nuclear test to test five nuclear bombs. Explosions took place under the leadership of Prime Minister Vajpayee. The roadmap of the nuclear test was designed under the prime ministership of Mrs Gandhi in the 1970s.

Russia and India’s relations strongly renewed when President Putin visited New Delhi and signed the ‘Declaration on the India-Russia Strategic Partnership’ with Prime Minister Vajpayee in October 2000. Especially the strategic partnership between India and Russia enhanced the security and defence sectors. Mohanty (2011) called it the ‘reflection of some spirit and essence of the historic Indo-Soviet Treaty of 1971’. It was once again the legal foundation for the robust strategic partnership (Mohanty, 2011). Meanwhile, both countries also signed a defence agreement that created an Indo-Russian Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation in 2000. It was the first institutionalized structure to tackle ‘oversee the complete range of issues of military-technical cooperation’. It means that the Defence Ministers of both countries annually meet for a discussion to review the status of ongoing projects and other issues associated with military-technical cooperation (Embassy of India in Moscow, 2022). Putin reoriented Indo-Russian relations with a strong foundation majorly in cooperation in the political, defence, economic and trade, scientific and technological, and cultural areas.

According to the 2000 agreement, Russia assured to deliver military equipment worth US $3 billion including 320 T-90 Tanks, SU-30 aircraft, the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier (as a gift) and MiG-29 fighter aircraft. The agreement also featured details of the indigenous manufacture of T-90 tanks under a Russian license. India’s military capacity has been heavily dependent on Russian military hardware in the last five decades (Jain, 2003: 384). In 2001, India’s defence minister Jaswant Singh addressed India’s defence policy with upgraded defence systems to strengthen defence cooperation with the Kremlin in the wake of the post-nuclear weapon test environment. At that time, Mr. Singh signed a US $10 billion defence cooperation protocol with Russia. On June 12, 2001, ‘India and Russia jointly tested a supersonic cruise missile developed at the Chandipur test site’ (Ibid.). Over the period, India and Russia’s defence cooperation has been shaped due to India’s strategic culture which falls somewhere between non-alignment and strategic autonomy. Even after a change in the government on both sides, the leader will have to carry this legacy. There is no instantly possible U-turn in this fond relationship between the two countries.

But in the post-Cold War setup, Prime Minister Putin’s visit to India in 2010 has much more significance in many ways: (1) changing world order, (2) western-allied disintegration from Afghanistan, (3) Russia’s aggression towards Georgia, (4) India as an important player in the Indo-pacific region and (5) changing geopolitical landscape in South Asia. Sachdeva (2011) cited that these moves were carefully watched by Western allies as they might implicate their regional strategies due to India’s strategic tilt. On the other hand, this became much more important as India and the USA signed the nuclear deal in 2008 (Sachdeva, 2011). Then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defined Indo-Russian relations as:

Relations with Russia are a key pillar of our foreign policy, and we regard Russia as a trusted and reliable strategic partner. Ours is a relationship that not only stands independent of any other, but whose significance has grown over time. Our partnership covers areas such as defence, civil nuclear energy, space, science and technology, hydrocarbons, and trade and investment. ²

In 2010, the Indo-Russia strategic partnership completed 10 years and both partners appraised this relationship by signing the ‘Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership’. ³ It is not the first time that the terminology ‘privileged partner’ was used. Putin commented during his visit to New Delhi in 2004 and mentioned that ‘India is our strategic privileged partner’. Both countries shared an evaluation report for the ‘Agreement on a Long-Term Program for Military and Technical Cooperation for the period 2011–2020’ that was signed in December 2009. This programme is mainly centred around the Su-30 MKI fighter plane and the T-90 tank production in India as well as 31 other defence projects: fifth-generation fighter aircraft, multirole transport aircraft and a new multi-role helicopter. This time, both emphasized joint research and development, manufacturing and marketing activities (MEA, 2010; Sachdeva, 2011: 214–2017).

India’s defence cooperation with the USA

India’s cooperation with the US did not deepen until 2005 when they signed the ‘New Framework for India-US Defense Relations’. This is how the Indo-US defence strategic partnership started with the signing of this new framework in 2005 which was renewed for another 10 years in June 2015 (MEA, 2017). It was a foundation step for Indo-US security and defence cooperation. After the signing of the strategic partnership, the Indo-US military exercise started, and also cumulative defence sales also increased from zero to more than US $8 billion in 2018. Both countries marked the establishment of the US–India Homeland Security Dialogue. There are three main areas of cooperation to deepen bilateral defence and security sectors: (1) bilateral defence trade cooperation, (2) military-to-military cooperation and (3) homeland security cooperation (CSIS, 2022). During the Cold War, India’s relations with the US were limited because of its domestic politics and national interests considering the US closeness with China and Pakistan. Another reason was the problem with economic liberalization. As USA was the free market country and India on the other hand was the closed semi-socialist economic structure during the Cold War. Additionally, the US has opposed India’s pursuit of nuclear capability but has supported Pakistan’s pursuit, so the USA had the antagonist imagery in India’s strategic discourse. The relational chaos related to the defence cooperation ended with the signing of an agreement between the defence ministries of both countries on June 28, 2005. Koithara (2005) argued, ‘the US wants more than the limited partnership India once had with the Soviet Union, but India’s national interests and domestic politics are unlikely to permit that’. Next, he added that the US accepted new realities aside from the sore relations of the past. Now, the geopolitical change in Asia especially in the Indo-Pacific is more important for the security establishment between India and the US, where both needed badly each other due to China’s growing power and confidence that challenges both the USA and India’s position in the region. On the other hand, both countries have similar interests such as economic relations, democracy promotion, energy, terrorism, non-proliferation, regional security and Asian power balance (Koithara, 2005).

Defence cooperation is a key element in India–USA relations, where they share strategic and economic interests based on liberal international order. The KPMG Assurance and Consulting Services India report highlighted the evolving Indo-US defence relationship and the supply of defence equipment has reached more than US $18 billion in the last decade. The report also mentioned that India is planning for the largest equipment procurement cycles in the next 5–7 years, with an estimated budget of around $ 130 billion. There is a great possibility of the US defence manufacturer outsourcing to India. The pre-2005 scenarios have changed as India already imported 14% of its military equipment from the USA between 2015 and 2019. This included five major purchases: (1) M777 155 mm light-weight towed howitzers, (2) Apache Attack Helicopter, (3) Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, (4) MH-60R Multi-Mission Helicopter and (5) C-130J Hercules aircraft (KPMG India, 2021). India’s defence expenditure aimed to boost the geopolitical ties in the Indo-Pacific region with the US. The US has already started to provide high-tech defence systems, modern surveillance equipment and training to India. This strengthens India’s geostrategic position which at this moment also serves the USA’s interest and it also safeguards the national interest of both countries to promote the rule-based maritime governance in the Indo-Pacific region.

In addition, it has been more than a decade since the US set up the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) with India. Washington also conferred the strategic trade authorization-1 status to India in 2018. This status eases the regulations to the licencing as well as hassle-free export–import mechanism between USA and India. Unjhawala (2022) argued that to counter-balance the strong position that Russia still has in India’s defence sector, the US aims to move ahead in three possible ways: (1) transfer of high-end US defence technologies to India, (2) joint R&D and the production of defence artilleries and (3) assistance with the replacement of Russian technologies that Indian defence is dependent on (Unjhawala, 2022). The US already designated India as a Major Defense Partner in 2016. The US also expanded the US-India defence trade cooperation with the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, Communications, Compatibility and Security Agreement and the Industrial Security Agreement, as well as the facilitation of Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales processes (U.S. Department of State, 2021).

Likewise, the 2 + 2 Dialogue took place between these two countries in April 2022, which was the fourth Ministerial Dialogue between them. During the dialogue, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said, ‘Today, we reaffirmed our commitment to promote regional stability, the rule of law, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and to expand our strategic partnership with [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations]’. Inclining with the viewpoint of Secretary Blinken, the Secretary of Defence Lloyd J. Austin III stressed that ‘We are doing all this because the United States supports India as a defence industry leader in the Indo-Pacific, and a net provider of security in the region’ (Garamone, 2022).

Indo-Pacific security is not the only issue that led to the US’s increased strategic ties with India. The US updated and changed its South Asia strategy just after the 9/11 attack. Fani (2009) stressed that the US reshaped its policy to achieve a political, economic, military and strategic partnership with India. He pointed out several reasons for this sudden change in the USA’s viewpoint towards India: (1) the US was concerned about the rise of ‘Muslim Radicalization’ in South Asia, (2) the US President George W Bush changed his China policy and called them a ‘strategic competitor’ in 2001, (3) the rise of India as ‘the major world power in the 21st century’ and (4) China’s growing economic and strategic power in South Asia. Therefore, the US conceived that India was the only country that could contain China in the region.

The initial strategic position of President Bush and Barack Obama increased the cooperation with India. Mishra (2018) shed light on the two presidents’ changed viewpoints towards India in the development of the new relationship. The Obama administration inaugurated the US–India Strategic Dialogue in June 2010. He stressed: that ‘India has emerged as an economically and militarily strong Asian partner for the US, with growing defence trade between the two countries forming an important subset of overall bilateral economic and strategic cooperation’ (Mishra, 2018).

Strategic autonomy as India’s strategic culture vis-e-vis cooperation with Russia and USA

New Delhi has developed a non-alignment or strategic autonomy as the strategic culture since the beginning of India’s foreign policy, which was initiated under the Nehru leadership. While the world was heavily engaged in bipolar power politics, India among many like-minded newly decolonized countries decided to serve their interest through non-alignment or strategic autonomy. Initially, India’s so-called strategic autonomy was substantiated with the support of the Soviet Union/Russia. But later, when PM Modi came to power in 2014 especially New Delhi started to develop close strategic ties with the USA under the Trump presidency. This is the first time in India that an Indian Prime Minister has maintained close ties with Russia and the US to strengthen India’s defence capacity and modernize Indian armies. Thus, one can argue that despite the political narrative of non-alignment during the Cold War, India was visibly tilted towards the Soviet Union for its strategic purpose. So, Post-2014 is the time that India really started to pursue strategic autonomy as its primary departure point of foreign policy. Four important factors are responsible for the formation of India’s contemporary strategic culture: (1) Post-1962 China factors and frequent aggression on Indian border region, (2) challenges posed by Pakistan such as Kashmir disputes, occupation and terrorism, (3) India’s geo-strategic positionality in the Indo-Pacific affairs and (4) shifting polarity and the distribution of power of the world politics (Kapoor, 2019; Shah, 2021). Shah (2021) made important remarks on India’s strategic autonomy referring to the Modi–Putin Summit of 2020:

The net result of Putin-Modi’s summit was to reassert India’s strategic autonomy by signing a string of trade and arms deals with Russia with a clear signal to Russia that India values the ‘time tested’ relationship with Russia and will not sacrifice its strategic autonomy regardless of how the ‘body of oceans’ are collectively defined or grouped as ‘India-pacific’ or ‘Asia-Pacific’. India will continue to strengthen maritime security with the help of the United States or any power that can assist, but never at the expense of Russia. Russian participation is also welcome. To show goodwill, one Russian ship carrying liquid gas arrived in Chennai from Russia’s deep arctic source. (Shah, 2021)

The SIPRI factsheet highlighted that Russia supplied 58% of India’s imports account between 2014 and 2018. Modi’s government diversifies India’s defence dependency to the next level with a more strategic partnership for defence cooperation with other than Russia. This has resulted in Russian arms exports to India notably decreasing if compared with earlier in 2010 which was more than 70%. Meanwhile, India developed strategic bilateralism with the US, France and Israel which resulted in arms exports to India increasing by the Western partners during 2014–2018 (Wezeman et al., 2019). The SIPRI Fact Sheet 2021 shows that India exported its arms from countries like Russia (28%/), France (29%) and Israel (37%) between 2017 and 2021. Meanwhile, France’s increased interests in the Indo-Pacific region brought India and France’s defence cooperation closer. Bharti (2022) mentioned that ‘the Rafale fighter jet agreement had vested a stronger security and defence partner after Russia’. The SIPRI report also indicated that India’s imports have increased from other countries compared to Russia and it saw a sharp decline between 2017 and 2021.

Despite the stiff growth of India’s engagement with its Western partners (most importantly with the USA, in December 2021, President Putin visited New Delhi for a short summit meeting with his Indian counterpart and India brought up the issue of about US’s exit from Afghanistan and the future of geostrategic ambition both have in Asia. Both countries agreed to strengthen their multidecade ties and build a substantive defence agreement. In this regard, Russia reaffirmed a 10-year military-technical plan which also included technology transfer to India. The agreement also included producing more than 600,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. Despite resistance from Washington, ‘New Delhi initiated the purchase of the S-400 missile defence system from Moscow’ (The Hindu, 2021). On the same missile defence system, Washington imposed sanctions on Turkey in 2020. The sanction is described by the US under CAATSA (Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act). But there are still challenges to the Modi–Putin friendship, especially in the concern of maintaining momentum in the middle of the Russian war against Ukraine with regard to multidimensional bilateral exchanges. India has always put its sole mantra of ‘strategic autonomy’ in the so-called multipolar world. There is no easy way to maintain this autonomy where there is a debate in the world about a ‘democratic west’ (who are with Ukrainian solidarity means they are democratic) versus an ‘autocratic rest’ (if someone supports Russia or neutral stand means they are autocratic), in particular, effort needs to manage the tightrope act between Moscow and Washington (Ibid.).

Richard Rossow ⁴ translated December 2021 summit in New Delhi as India keeps its option: ‘While I think they have most of their eggs in the US basket, if you look all around—but on defence at least, where they need strategic technology—they want to make sure they keep options open’. He mentioned that ‘India is concerned about the reliability of the United States as a partner, not just in defence space, but we have been raising concerns about religious tolerance and things in India. So, I think both have an overriding strategic interest, regardless of the relationship with the United States and others’ (Choudhury, 2021). Rossow’s views are different from Indo-Russia relations, which claimed a ‘time-tested’ partnership. He stresses that there are several areas where defence cooperation is lacking and limited. However, despite Russia’s tension, the US and India met for a 2 + 2 dialogue in April 2022 to deepen defence ties.

Conclusion

After the above assessment, we can conclude two parts. First, the contributing factors to India’s contemporary strategic culture. The main factor that contributed to India’s strategic culture is its historical and cultural roots where Hinduism and Buddhism have played an important role. Instead of functioning as most of the state nature (expansionist and materialistically hungry), India has always been a defensive conscious state. Thus, not being part of any bloc politics and trying to maintain and resolve a relationship through reciprocity and dialogue are the main attributes of India’s defence and foreign policy. On the other hand, India’s defence and foreign policy have been primarily anchored by external actors. For example, the rise of China, the heated relationship with Pakistan and the improvement of the relationship with the US are among those external factors that anchor India’s policy. As a result, India is looking to be more and more strategically autonomous. To do so, India first needs to have a self-reliable or diversified defence sector.

That brings us to the second part where, due to India’s strategic culture, India’s relations with USA and Russia in the defence sector have greatly benefited India. As presented above, India’s dependence on defence in relation to Russia is decreasing and, at the same time, partnering with many other actors, India’s defence industry is also on the path of self-reliance. On top of that, being a torch bearer of non-alignment movement or strategic autonomy, India can play safely during times of international crisis. The recent Ukraine crisis and India’s position are the latest example of that. India has good relations with both Russia and the US, and siding with one could cost India its relationship with the other. However, this has not been the case so far, as India appears to have taken a neutral stance. India has repeatedly stated that it views its relations with Russia and the US as distinct and will not allow either to dictate its foreign policy.