India seeks to build ‘rules-based’ world order with West but its approach is incoherent

“International order” is a useful concept to understand the foreign policy of major powers that seek to shape the macro architecture of international politics to their advantage. In recent years, New Delhi has used the concept of “rules-based international order” to describe the international arrangement of its preference. Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared India’s commitment to rules-based international order at an important speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in 2018. India’s foreign and security policy leadership has since periodically used the term, especially during meetings with their American counterparts. What does New Delhi mean by the term? And what has it been doing to bring the rules-based international order about?

In a foreign policy discourse populated by lofty, imprecise concepts like “vishwaguru” (teacher to the world), “vishwabandhu” (partner to the world), and “vasudhaiva kutumbakam” (the world is one family), the rules-based international order sounds agreeably mundane and holds out a promise of precision.

New Delhi uses the concept in two registers. There is a global register in which the rules-based international order appears similar to the international order established after the Second World War. Consider Modi’s Shangri-La speech in which he articulated New Delhi’s belief that the rules-based international order must embody states’ faith in sovereignty, territorial integrity and equality of all nations; it must also feature rules and norms that are “based on the consent of all, not on the power of the few.” He added that the rules-based international order must show “faith in dialogue, and not dependence on force” and also embody respect for international commitments made by nations.

The India Way, a book by India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, discusses these elements of the rules-based international order in some detail. New Delhi seeks to reform this global order under the rubric of inclusive multilateralism, peaceful resolution of geopolitical contestations, and the global push for sustainability transition, which it hopes to drive.

Not only are there parallels between the 1945 order and the features of India’s rules-based international order, the latter also form a continuity in thought and diplomacy with the Nehruvian period and find one expression in the Panchsheel principles of interstate conduct, established in an Indo-Chinese bilateral agreement in 1954. China has, of late, championed Panchsheel, likely to strike a contrast with the West’s approach to international affairs, which it considers aggressive and interventionist. Ironically, China’s actions on the frontier with India have violated those principles, namely mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as mutual non-aggression.

There is also a regional register, comprising a relatively new element in India’s thinking: the Indo-Pacific. Because of its importance for the global commons, sustainability, geopolitics, and economy, the Indo-Pacific is singular amongst the world’s strategic geographies. But its governance architecture is still in its early days. India has sensed opportunity and taken on responsibility; in the Shangri-La speech, Modi called for an Indo-Pacific order based on open oceans, secure seas, connectivity, rule of law, regional stability, and prosperity. New Delhi seeks to partner with like-minded states to build a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.

Thus, for New Delhi to be a leading power is to both reform the global order and co-build a regional order. In a paper that analysed India’s official thinking on international order in recent decades, I found no change in New Delhi’s thinking on the issue since Modi’s speech. Over the year that India held the G20 presidency, the “Global South” dominated the discourse while rules-based international order was used less frequently. But the latter has made a comeback.

India and the West

The Indian leadership’s use of this term in meetings with their western counterparts is no accident. There is considerable overlap between Indian and Western thinking on order. As illustrated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s speech at George Washington University in 2022, the West also characterises the contemporary international order as rules-based and traces its origins to 1945.

The Western discourse identifies geopolitical revisionism of non-western powers – particularly Russia and China – as the key threat to the foundational norm of the 1945 order, namely mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. Western countries cite actions such as alleged election interference, attempted and executed assassinations, the invasion of Ukraine, and the coercion of Taiwan and other western allies in Asia as seriously endangering this norm and, therefore, the rules-based international order.

Policy puzzles

This overlap in thought suggests the West is India’s natural partner in securing and building the rules-based international order. Indeed, many western countries are India’s strategic partners with global and Indo-Pacific ambitions. However, New Delhi’s approach and actions toward building that order are puzzling, and they mar its ambition. Three examples illustrate this fact.

First, China is a huge impediment to India’s efforts to shape international order. At the global level, even if other hurdles are cleared, Beijing’s veto will thwart India’s bid for permanent membership of the Security Council. Evidence from its opposition to India’s membership bid to the Nuclear Suppliers Group as well as attempts to lessen India’s influence in the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – collective and undermine India’s anti-terrorism effort points in that direction. And because China seems willing to risk military confrontation to upturn the postwar order in its expansive neighborhood, and is also unhappy with the Indo-Pacific construct, which it sees as a strategy to limit its influence, its opposition to order-building in the region constrains Indian ambitions.

Not only does China impede India’s global ambition, it also undermines the bilateral rules-based arrangement. Beijing’s actions over the past decade have undone the framework – or “rules” – of managing the contested frontier bilaterally agreed upon since the late-1980s. Despite India’s formidable capabilities – a fact often underplayed in India-China comparisons – its relative capabilities gap with China is too large for New Delhi to be able to individually arrest Chinese revisionism, as four years of diplomacy since the Galwan skirmishes have shown.

The power gap generates an imperative for New Delhi to balance Chinese power, which explains the growth of strategic relations with the US and New Delhi’s strivings with the Quad. And some balancing is taking place, but New Delhi has been overly cautious, reluctant to do more in military-strategic coordination with the West.

An external reason for India’s risk-averse behavior is the fear of getting entangled in the large Sino-American powerplay across the Indo-Pacific, where great power relations have strained over Taiwan and East and Southeast Asia. But India’s reluctance to play the balancing game with greater sharpness may have a deeper domestic explanation: the leadership’s collective assessment that minor incursions and minimal territorial loss are acceptable to fronting force and risking a major war and extensive territorial loss.

Comparison with Japan and Australia – Quad members equally wary of China – is revealing. Japan enjoys an American security guarantee and Australia, a distributed security cover through the Australia, New Zealand and United States (ANZUS) and Australia, United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) arrangements as well as its relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, all backed up by American power. Uncertainty over American commitment to its security along with intensifying geopolitics are nudging Japan to revise its security posture, but it has the American security umbrella to make the transition. India’s China challenge is more proximate while its security burden is almost entirely self-borne. Militarily engaged on the frontiers and faced with a serious power gap, India relies on the Quad to ease the pressure from Beijing. But China relents little and, yet, India draws a line to limit strategic cooperation with its Western partners.

Second, the West considers both Chinese and Russian geopolitical revisionism as a threat to the rules-based international and would have liked New Delhi to be sensitive to its claim that Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine is a violation of that order. However, New Delhi’s response has been marked by an overhang of the Cold War era and an inconsistency with the logic generated by contemporary geopolitics.

New Delhi has emphasised the core pillars of the 1945 order undermined by Russia’s actions: peaceful resolution of dispute (recall Modi’s repeated comments that today’s era is not of war), respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and respect for civilian lives. However, it has refused to speak of the war in rules-based international terms and, when pushed, accused the West of insularity and not paying sufficient attention to the Asian theatre of the rules-based order in the recent past.

Furthermore, Modi’s July visit to Russia lessened the international isolation of President Vladimir Putin. In his meeting with Putin, Modi repeated his above-mentioned stance on the Ukraine war and indirectly expressed anguish at the death of children in Russia’s previous-day missile strike on a Kyiv hospital. However, a warm hug, affable words and acceptance of Russia’s highest civilian honour from Putin appeared to legitimise an unpleasant regime that is repressive at home and whose external actions have destabilised the global order.

It is possible that by deepening its relations with Russia, New Delhi is applying counterforce to the growing proximity between Moscow and Beijing. But the effectiveness of this tactic depends on India’s ability to exceed the value that China brings to Russia. China’s greater resources and ability to resist western pressure, should equations with the US worsen, put it at a clear advantage. At the same time, as a major transcontinental power, Russia will not become a Chinese vassal and Indian strategy remains in play against this fact. But it is unclear if embittering relations with the West to pursue this strategy is a risk worth taking. The question becomes acutely relevant if one notices that the Sino-Russian relationship is part of an emerging authoritarian order that spans a vast geography from North Korea to North Africa. Is this the order that New Delhi should abet?

Third, New Delhi’s actions have undermined its order-building efforts in another way. Although western strategy remains favorably disposed toward India, New Delhi has, puzzlingly, become adversarial in its rhetoric toward the West. Its “assertive” foreign policy has entailed sharp language directed at the West in recent years.

Furthermore, an extension of India’s assertiveness are the reported attempts at eliminating Khalistani separatists on Canadian and American soil and apparent efforts to coerce them in Australia, allegedly coordinated by Indian security officials. Australia and the US are India’s Quad partners and Canada, a core member of the West’s global strategy and security architecture. India has rejected and denounced these reports. However, if true, these actions violate the rules of interstate conduct as well as undermine the commitment to “rule of law” that Modi spoke about in his Shangri-La speech. From the point of view of India’s critics in the West, these actions position India in the same category as China and Russia, who are accused of subverting western governments and societies.

New Delhi’s assertive posture vis-à-vis the West has a domestic fanbase but it hurts foreign policy. It is almost certainly eroding elite goodwill in western societies – something India had generated since the days of decolonisation – and encouraging western governments to approach relations with India with greater instrumentality than at any time before. It is true that the West’s global influence is being balanced by the rise of the “rest”. But it is wrong to conclude that the West is placed second in the global security hierarchy. The thinning of the basis of relations with the West, when seen against India’s security needs, amounts to depleting the very resources the country needs to secure its own interests. New Delhi wants a rules-based world, but the policy to bring it about needs coherence and greater commitment.

Atul Mishra is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR.

This article was first published in India in Transition, a publication of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.