As Modi visits Germany, Ukraine crisis will set tone for discussions

When India and Germany established diplomatic relations as newly founded states 70 years ago, the world fully stood in the grip of the Cold War. For the first German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Indian position of non-alignment in the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States was hard to understand.

Subimal Dutt, the first Indian ambassador to West Germany, wrote in his memoirs, “Our policy of non-alignment and frequent criticism of the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] could hardly be to the liking of the West German government which had set its heart on closer integration with the Atlantic powers.”

The similarities with today’s conversation are striking. The crisis in Ukraine is most likely to set the tone of the May 2 meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz.

The visit follows an intense period of exchange as part of the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, an international conference on geopolitics that has been extensively used by several European countries to woo India amid new confrontations with Russia.

According to Union Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar, the current security challenges are a “wake-up call for Europe to also look at Asia”. But is that really the case? How has India’s diplomatic relationship with Germany evolved and what will the next areas of cooperation be?

Non-alignment, Germany

Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru defined the principle of non-alignment not as the absence of any cooperation with either the West or the Soviet Union, but rather emphasised the importance of doing so without being subjugated to their agendas. “We propose to stand on our own feet and to cooperate with all others who are prepared to cooperate with us,” he told the Lok Sabha in 1950. “We do not intend to be a plaything of others.”

As a consequence of this outlook, India was able to forge economic and technical partnerships with both the Soviet Union and the United States as well as countries aligned with these superpowers during the Cold War.

The early years of the Indo-German diplomatic exchange were particularly shaped by economic collaboration. Western Germany’s strategy of development aid and technology transfer followed two principal goals: the promotion of German exports to enter the highly protected Indian domestic market, and to apply pressure on their Indian partners not to collaborate with Eastern Germany.

For example, the Western German company Krupp opened up a steel plant in Rourkela in Odisha to counter the Soviet heavy industry development project in Bhilai. To facilitate knowledge exchange, the German Academic Exchange Service – Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or DAAD as it is called – opened its first office in India in 1960.

Under the influence of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic tried to establish embassies in India as well but failed to do so until 1971. Unable to mobilise the same financial resources, the relatively poorer eastern part of Germany only managed to get a foot in the door in New Delhi through its support for Bangladesh’s war for independence.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, economic ties between Germany and India have become even stronger. The focus is no longer only on selling German goods in the Indian market: India is now an attractive site of production as well.

There are over 600 bilateral joint ventures and more than 1,600 other business co-operations. For India, Germany is India’s largest trading partner within the European Union with a total investment of 6.5 billion euros.

‘Partners with shared values’?

Last year, the German government labelled India a “partner with shared values” in the context of common interests in the Indo-Pacific region. After the election in Germany in 2021, the new coalition between the Social Democrats, Green Party and the Free Democratic Party is committed to continuing this principle of strengthening the Indo-German partnership. But which values is the German government referring to?

Zeitenwende, a German words that roughly means “a turning point” or “changing times”, is probably the most discussed phrase over the last few weeks in Germany. In his first state of the union speech after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had proclaimed a complete overhaul of German foreign politics with regard to security spending. His package of 100 billion euros for military expenditure puts an end to decades of cutting down on the army’s budget.

Considering its problematic history of a heavily militarised Nazi regime, post-war Germany refrained from building a large security apparatus. The speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party at the United Nations General Assembly campaigning for the resolution against Russian actions in Ukraine marked another turning point.

Baerbock affirmed that she would be ready to critically reflect on Germany’s engagement in international relations and their “double standards” regarding conflicts in various parts of the world. This would also affect the country’s relation to India.

As the Minister of State of Federal Foreign Office Tobias Lindner promised during his visit to Delhi last week, Germany does not want to “preach or teach India” on the Ukraine issue. The new coalition in power wants to make it clear that it would seek to get away from unequal, top-down ways of communication.

India, on the other hand, has made it clear that it does not want to be bullied into alliances with any European country. Former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that natural alliances between India and Western countries solely based on values of democracy would be an illusory “fantasy of the free world”. It would be wrong to blame India for not giving up its strong military ties and energy deals with Russia.

Indeed, the amount of oil and gas from Russia delivered to Germany is still nine times higher than India’s share. As the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, European countries still buy 70% of all Russian natural resources. Particularly within multilateral organisations, Germany and India do not always find themselves on the same side of the vote – not just in the United Nations General Assembly but also within the World Trade Organization.

Even though there is a partial deal between the United States, the European Union, South Africa and India to waive the patents of Covid-19 vaccines, Germany still slows down the process of elaborating a full agreement. Based on these hard facts it is indeed questionable whether the promises for an Indo-German cooperation at eye level will be met by both sides.

The way forward

Of course, Modi is not Jawaharlal Nehru, and has never wanted to be. Yet, the Indian government is right in pointing out that the war in Ukraine has to be put into its relative, European perspective. Germany needs to understand the importance of historical values, such as non-alignment, in the context of postcolonial foreign relations. In a world of growing nationalisms, strong bilateral connections are more important than ever.

When Modi will continue his journey from Berlin to Copenhagen and Paris, he will travel through a Europe which only momentarily escaped further waves of xenophobism and further influence of far-right movements. The German urge to increase military spending may be understandable in the context of sending a message against Russian war crimes and atrocities committed in Ukraine, but the country may reach a thin line between defence and growing militaristic sentiment.

Like in the past, Germany applies a strategy of offering India economic incentives the country cannot refuse. By deepening trade cooperation with India to create mutual interconnected dependencies, the idea is to bind the two countries closer together politically. The question to what extent that will be successful depends on the amount to which both countries are willing to work together rather than walking alone.

There are three areas of long-term cooperation which have come up in the preparation of the meeting between Modi and Scholz during the last few days. First, both countries have an interest in prioritising green energy to overcome dependencies on Russian oil and gas resources. To get away from fossil fuels like coal, there is scope for partnerships in technology transfers towards greater promotion of solar energy and better network infrastructure delivering energy more efficiently.

During his visit to Delhi on April 21, State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth made clear that this was the main agenda of bilateral economic cooperation. As the Observer Research Foundation, has pointed out, it is important that responsibilities to saving and using energy more efficiently will be shared equally and not simply put on India’s shoulders only because its economy is growing faster than the European ones.

Second, the main geostrategic reason for cooperation lies in the perceived common threat from China. Indeed, there seems to be large agreements among experts that China is the much more important issue for both countries. Indeed, Germany is keen on getting more involved in India’s strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Last year, it sent a frigate into the Indian Ocean.

However, other European countries, such as France, have known of India’s security interests for longer and delivered 36 Rafale fighter jets to India. Germany is still hesitating to increase its military exports. The crucial question in (re-)defining shared bilateral values will probably be whether and to what extent militarisation protects or provides a threat to democracies by leading to rearmament spirals.

Third, geopolitics is also forged by changing economic landscapes. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has underlined the European Union’s (including Germany’s) eagerness to re-open negotiations on a free trade agreement with India. Since 2013, such discussions had been stalled mainly due to different approaches to agricultural policies as well as standards and patents.

As part of her visit to India, von der Leyen initiated the European Union-India Trade and Technology Council with Modi to revive the negotiation process. Whether that forum will indeed smoothen an exchange of technology and talent continues to be seen. Further, with the growing entanglements of global supply chains, the question remains over who will bear the main responsibility for ensuring social and environmental standards of production.

What all these issues have in common is that they require a much deeper understanding between India and Germany. Amrita Narlikar, president of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, proposes that this would be the absolute prerequisite for better cooperation. Only then would a third way be possible – a way where neither European countries nor India would have to pick a side but would instead “script the future together”.

Catharina Hänsel is a PhD student at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies in Göttingen, Germany, and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy. Her work as a freelance journalist has appeared in Jungle World, Die Welt, Internazionale and Dinamo Press in German and Italian.