India in NATO
WILL India join NATO? Expanding geographic ambit of NATO may lure India to be a member or at least a partner of the military alliance. Even if India continues to pursue its traditional policy of “strategic autonomy” in order to maintain cordial relations with Russia and to keep distance from bloc politics, deepening security collaboration with America and shifting regional geopolitics will bring New Delhi on the threshold of formal alliance with Washington. The more India extends defence cooperation with the US to contain China, the greater chances of realignment of forces that will eventually permit India to be a possible candidate for global NATO.
With the aim of boosting relations, India held its first political dialogue with NATO in Brussels on 12 Dec 2019. The dialogue, however, was political in nature, which primarily pivoted around China, Afghanistan and terrorism. Similarly, in March 2023, India held a limited strategic meeting with senior officials from alliance. The dialogue focused on a range of themes, including expanding cooperation, forging stronger partnership and dealing with regional security issues which have global ramifications. In fact, expanding India-NATO relations will be centred on China and Indo-Pacific region.
Recently, Julianne Smith, America’s envoy to NATO, made an overture to India for greater engagement with the security alliance. “NATO’s door is open in terms of engagement should India be interested,” she remarked. However, it was also maintained that the objective was not to expand the alliance beyond the transatlantic region, yet Indo-US sense of shared security challenges would pave the way for the alliance’s geographic extension in the foreseeable future. Thus, it will end India’s “aversion to entanglement” in rival geopolitical alliance.
Under Narendra Modi, the character of Indian State is fast changing from secular to fascist Hindutva-driven ideology of BJP-RSS cohort, from strategic autonomy to tilt towards the US with growing defence partnership against China, and from proactive to reactive foreign policy towards neighbours, especially Pakistan and China. It is evident that Modi Government is immensely inclined to divorce India from the policy of strategic autonomy and it is bent on embracing strategic realignment with extending security cooperation to NATO, in general, and the US, in particular.
While Russia factor may repel India from increased engagement with NATO as both countries have enjoyed amicable relations for the better part of their diplomatic relations, growing America’s leverage in the region against China may provide India a common ground to align with the former against the latter. As Kremlin is fighting a war because of the alliance’s move to incorporate Ukraine to make it a “springboard” against Russia, greater cooperation with NATO will deteriorate Indo-Russian relations which have a history of amity and mutual cooperation. Therefore, India will be reluctant to expand its engagement with NATO unless Ukraine crisis is resolved.
Yet, China’s increasing geopolitical and geo-economic footprints in the region can push India into the orbit of the US. Swelling soft power of China will rock America’s influence in the region, so the US will attempt to gravitate India towards NATO with the view to creating impediments for China in the Indo-Pacific region. India has already been in QUAD alliance, and NATO’s engagement in the Asia-Pacific will provide impetus to New Delhi to expand its collaboration with the alliance. Moreover, recent Xi Jinping’s proactive diplomacy to rejig regional order with brokering Saudi-Iran peace deal and putting forth a peace plan for Ukraine war has amplified America’s apprehensions. Xi’s visit to Moscow is heralded as strategic alignment of China and Russia, so India will drift towards the US in event of Russia-China alliance. Moscow-Beijing axis will shift geopolitical tectonic plates in region; consequently, India will expand its engagement with US-led NATO alliance.
In changing global geopolitics, coupled with intensifying great power rivalry and unfolding multipolar world order, policymakers in India tend to figure in New Delhi’s position as a swing state. If global power equation is relatively distributed between the US and China, India will play a role of swing state to tilt balance of power by siding with either of the two world powers. As India and China have been at odds due to territorial disputes and strategic animosity, New Delhi is profoundly bent on forging alliance with Washington against Beijing. As a result, India will extend cooperation with NATO perhaps if the security alliance assumes an assertive posture against China in the Asia-Pacific region.
Given the possibility of India’s partnership with NATO, if not membership for at least now, Pakistan will face intense security competition in the region. Despite Pakistan’s nuclear capability and conventional strength to deter India from any misadventure, India’s greater defence cooperation with the US as well as political and/or security engagement with NATO will compound Pakistan’s security challenges. Therefore, Pakistan must preemptively explore options to thwart India’s bid to be a springboard of NATO to make regional strategic environment more volatile.
On Pakistan’s part, it needs to diplomatically engage with the US and communicate clearly about its “threat perception” due to India’s military posture against the country. Besides this, seeking the support of great powers to persuade India for dialogue may help in resolving all bilateral issues to alleviate security tension in the region. Even if NATO member States agree to forge a global alliance, Pakistan must seek the help of Türkiye to veto India’s membership in the security pact as ratification is mandatory from all 31-member for the admission of a new state. But in compulsive situation, Pakistan must forge formal security alliance with China and Russia in order to counterweight India-NATO strategic alliance.
—The writer is a strategic affairs and foreign policy analyst.
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