Strategic Autonomy in the Age of Other People’s Wars |
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Barbara Tuchman once wrote that one of the enduring mysteries of history is why governments so often pursue policies that run against their own interests. To admit error and cut losses, she observed, is rare among individuals and almost unknown among states. And writing about the atmosphere before the First World War she noted that there was “an aura about 1914 that caused those who sensed it to shiver for mankind. Tears came even to the most bold and resolute.”
Those lines feel uncomfortably familiar today. Perhaps we have not seen the worst yet. Shakespeare’s lines in King Lear come to mind: “It’s never the worst, when you can say it’s the worst.”
The war now unfolding across West Asia involving Israel, Iran, the United States and a widening circle of regional actors is not simply another regional crisis. It has begun to reshape the strategic environment around India.
For decades India’s foreign policy vocabulary has revolved around one idea. Strategic autonomy. The principle has guided Indian diplomacy since the end of the Cold War and long before. India does not join alliances. It maintains relations with competing powers. It preserves the freedom to take independent decisions.
But doctrines acquire meaning only when they are tested.
The present conflict raises a difficult question. What does strategic autonomy mean when war erupts in one’s own strategic neighbourhood? Because West Asia is not distant from India.
Nearly two thirds of India’s oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Millions of Indians live and work in the Gulf states. Trade routes linking Europe, West Asia and Asia cross waters that are now shadowed by missiles, drones and naval deployments.
The conflict is unfolding within the arteries of India’s economy. Yet India’s public voice during the crisis has been notably subdued and often unheard.
Hormuz and the limits of control
The Strait of Hormuz has become the clearest symbol of India’s dilemma.
The crisis has resulted in a staggering halt to commercial shipping that moves through the Strait. Insurance withdrawals and security fears have disrupted the flow of energy on which much of the world depends.
India appears to have secured limited transit permission........