Chaos as opportunity: the United States and world order in India’s grand strategy

Abstract

The world is in flux, both in terms of the changing global distribution of power and the declining commitment of the United States to the international order. This article argues that, unlike many other major powers, India is well positioned to benefit from the contemporary disorder. The U.S. has courted India as a strategic partner since the early 2000s, supporting India's grand strategy of developing hard-power capabilities while addressing regional threats and eventually attaining great-power status. In return, India has supported Washington's overarching goal of securing the Indo-Pacific region. Although significant challenges remain in the management of U.S.-India relations, the Trump presidency has on balance benefited India's grand strategy. New Delhi views the decline of U.S. leadership in the international ordera phenomenon whose origins precede Trumpas an opportunity to play a leading global role. However, India's predisposition toward strategic autonomy may complicate the process.

Assess the Proposition That India Will Become the Next Superpower

“…1), the four QUAD members seek to address their shared concerns about China’s increasingly assertive behaviour in the region, as exemplified by its growing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; Dunford, 2021; Gokhale, 2021). By pivoting towards the United States, albeit cautiously, India has made the current global superpower its main strategic ally at the domestic, regional and global level (Mukherjee, 2020: 433). For this reason, India’s role in the QUAD – with a total US$927.5 billion in military spending versus China’s US$252 billion 8 – could help protect India’s national interests by maintaining a geostrategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific region.…”

Narratives of Global Order and Re-Ordering from the Global South

“…The Russian Federation could not fulfil the strategic role played by its Soviet predecessor; the opening up of the Indian economy and the brief emergence of a unipolar world order furthermore forced a rethinking of relations with the West -and the US in particular (GANGULY, 2014, p. 87).This has led many to suggest that India was forced to discard the ideological baggage of non-alignment and adopt a pragmatic understanding of world order that would enable it to more effectively engage with the international system (GANGULY, 2003;MOHAN, 2004). The end of the "unipolar moment" and rise of a multipolar world order have created opportunities for India to increasingly pursue the polycentricity it called for during the earlier non-alignment period, with it manoeuvring between the international system's (MUKHERJEE, 2020;TELLIS, 2022) by more actively seeking out bilateral and multilateral strategic partnerships.…”

Hegemonic stability in the Indo-Pacific: US-India relations and induced balancing

“…We thus now see an expanding US-India partnership on many fronts. This expansion is facilitated by Washington's willingness to 'bend all manner of [its domestic] rules to accommodate India' 9 and empower its balancing behavior -an approach labeled by Ashley Tellis as 'strategic altruism' 10 -while New Delhi remains faithful to its principle of strategic autonomy. In this paper, we aim to theorize the developing US-Indian partnership by (1) explaining India's tacit acceptance of the functionality and desirability of an Indo-Pacific based on hegemonic stability rather than on a balance of power (understood as an equilibrium of power) and (2) demonstrating how Washington induces New Delhi to balance China and thus help sustain US hegemony in the Indo-Pacific in the face of a systemic challenger.…”

“…71 The nuclear deal was unprecedented as the US had to modify 'both domestic and international law in order to create exceptions for India to be recognised as a de facto nuclear' and essentially 'rewarding India despite its principled and vociferous objection to the NPT since the late 1960s'. 72 Ashley J. Tellis, the then senior adviser to the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and closely involved in negotiating the nuclear agreement, conceded that the deal was 'overly favorable to India. .…”

“…73 Needless to say, the considerable amount of political capital that the US President spent 'to accommodate a country that had a long history of anti-Americanism' was a testimony to the importance of the nuclear agreements for his administration. 74 The agreements marked the moment that India was officially considered by the US as part of the solution of nuclear proliferation, instead of being treated as part of the problem. 75 Washington thus played a key role in 'de-stigmatizing' India as a 'nuclear pariah state' and reimagined it as a 'responsible' nuclear state.…”