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Geopolitics and geo-strategies are like shifting sands. They change according to developing circumstances and are also influenced by the quality and outlook of leaderships. They take into account the need to address old and emerging considerations of national interest. If long-held dogmas and ideologies impact outcomes, so do new pragmatism and fresh out-of-the-box initiatives. Domain experts have to be quick to revise their analyses, and leaderships have also to be nimble-footed in adapting to the changed scenarios. If the experts fail, they at the most have egg on their faces. But the adversarial effects of serious error by the second lot can be long-term.

This is why nations must refrain from knee-jerk reactions in their relationships with other countries when they face unanticipated downturns. If one commits too fully too early, then it becomes difficult to extricate oneself from the pit. There are many tested diplomatic ways in which rivals can be tackled. Diplomacy is about directing the course of events in a manner that is beneficial to self without hurting the other. It is about giving negotiations complete space, about sorting out differences—or, if that is not fully possible, at least ensuring that those differences do not impede the course of larger progress.

Of course, once a country is through with these niceties and realise that they have not worked, stronger and less accommodative postures can be adopted—as India has, towards Pakistan. Harsh measures are the last resort in good diplomacy, and New Delhi exercised those measures in Islamabad’s case after exhausting all reasonable options.

Many commentators, especially in television debates, have demanded a bellicose response from New Delhi towards Bangladesh in the wake of recent developments in that country. They must have been disappointed with the visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting Bangladesh’s leader Muhammad Yunus on foreign soil and conducting bilateral discussions.

India has so far handled the tricky matter with poise, avoiding needless aggression, even as it has strongly conveyed its concerns and dismay to Dhaka, and has apprehensions about Bangladesh’s tilt towards China. Also, it has not been inactive. The government recently terminated the trans-shipment facility that facilitated the export of cargo from Bangladesh to other countries, using Indian Customs stations falling on the route to ports and airports. Indian garment exporters had for long demanded an end to this facility, arguing that it adversely impacted their exports. The timing of the government’s decision is to be noted. New Delhi has many arrows in its quiver, and there is no need to exhaust all of them at the first pretext.

Patience is a virtue. When things had, not in the too distant past, turned problematic for India in neighbouring Sri Lanka and Nepal, demands were raised by excitable sections of the influentials that New Delhi must demonstrate its muscle power. But the Modi government did not succumb to the folly. It steadily worked the levers of diplomacy and continued with its people-centric outreach in those countries even as it locked its focus on issues of mutual interest. Once things cooled down, normalcy in the India-Sri Lanka and the India-Nepal bilaterals returned; a historic defence agreement between Sri Lanka and India was signed recently.

Another example of India’s mature and yet firm response was with regards to the Maldives, after some ministers of the Maldivian government made disparaging remarks about India and its Prime Minister. Over time, with better sense prevailing, the crisis blew over. Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu visited India and committed himself to having robust ties with India. New Delhi too wisely decided to let bygones be bygones.

The shifting sands of geopolitics is evident, to give one instance, from a comparison of today with the 1970s. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union and China were at loggerheads while the US and China had come close. India had a sound relationship with the Soviet Union, a fractured one with the United States of America, and an uneasy one with China. The rift between the Soviets and the Chinese was primarily triggered by ideological differences, with the People’s Republic of China denouncing Soviet communism as the work of ‘revisionist traitors’. Beijing’s outrage was prompted largely by the Soviet shift away from the Stalinist legacy.

By mid-1971, India, having nearly exhausted all its options, was on the verge of a war with Pakistan. The Soviets were willing to publicly back India’s position and they proposed a treaty of friendship. India was reluctant because inking such a document could be seen as back-pedalling on its long-held policy of non-alignment. Apart from its non-alignment underpinning, New Delhi was also concerned that such an agreement could annoy the US and China. India wanted the Soviets to publicly declare their support, regardless of the treaty.

The USSR continued to persuade India. In keeping with the geopolitical situation of that day, the Soviet leadership told the Indians that Pakistan was a minor irritant; India was capable enough to take care of that on its own. The real problem for New Delhi, the Soviets presciently emphasised, was China. Moscow pressed on, arguing that an Indo-Soviet pact could stem the growing Chinese influence in the region. The Soviets were wary of publicly expressing their backing without a treaty, perhaps apprehending that once they made their support known, the incentive for New Delhi to sign the pact would be gone.

Eventually, after much to and fro, which involved lengthy missives by Moscow reiterating and elaborating on the China threat, and a rethinking in New Delhi on its earlier position vis-à-vis the ground realities, the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation between the Republic of India and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR] was signed on 9 August, 1971, by India’s External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh and his Soviet counterpart, Andrei A. Gromyko. A few months later, the war with Pakistan broke out.

New Delhi’s initial reluctance to sign the pact with the USSR may be understandable, but it was not the first treaty that it would ink with another country. In 1950, it had signed a Treaty of Peace and friendship with Nepal. India had also inked an agreement with Bhutan in 1949. Nobody had argued that New Delhi had compromised on its policy of non-alignment by entering into these pacts. Perhaps the absence of criticism was because, unlike Nepal and Bhutan, the Soviet Union was a superpower ‘bloc’—just as the US was. The Indo-Soviet treaty had an immediate impact. After the US’s Seventh Fleet sailed into the Bay of Bengal, ostensibly as a sign of support to when the India-Pakistan war broke out, the USSR directed several of its vessels from the Persian Gulf to the Bay of Bengal as a counter-measure.

The Soviet Union had its own reasons, besides the ideological clash with China, in seeking to convince India. President Richard Nixon of the US, assisted by Henry Kissinger, had made a major outreach to China (with Pakistan’s mediation), and there had developed a sudden bonhomie between the two nations. This had naturally worried the Soviets, as the carefully crafted balance of power between the US and the USSR would swing in the US’s favour. Soviet-China differences went back earlier years, though. In 1960, diplomatic relations between the two countries had snapped under the weight of several bilateral disputes. Interestingly, on the issue of developments in Tibet that had led to the Dalai Lama fleeing to and gaining asylum in India, the Soviet leadership had squarely blamed China.

Cut to the present day, and the geopolitical situation is very different. The Soviet leaders’ warning to the US of the 1970s—that the Americans were committing a big mistake in trusting China—has come true. Ironically, though, it is Russia and China that are today on the same page on a number of issues and are jointly taking on the US. Geopolitics has turned upside down, though India finds itself doing pretty well with all these three players, albeit at different levels of intensity. Russia has proved to be India’s all-weather and trusted friend; the US-India partnership has flourished in multiple areas; and the India-China relationship, though at times marred by conflicts along the borders, has remained largely on course.

The West, including the US, has often frowned on New Delhi doing business with Iran, a country it has sanctioned for a variety of reasons. Not only had India imported oil from Iran, but it is also involved in the development of the Chabahar port there. There was a time, however, during the 1950s and the 1960s, when the US and Iran shared a close relationship. It was the US that had reportedly helped Iran kickstart its nuclear programme in 1957, by providing Tehran its first nuclear reactor and fuel; this was followed up with the delivery of weapons-grade enriched uranium.

The partnership broke up after the 1979 revolution in Iran, when the Shah of Iran was deposed and a religious regime took office with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the country’s supreme leader. In November 1979, Iranian revolutionary students, with the Ayatollah’s backing, seized the US embassy in Tehran, taking more than 50 Americans hostage for over 400 days. It was one of the worst moments of ignominy for the Americans. Formal diplomatic relations snapped between the two countries in 1980.

In the present day, a reconciliation between Washington D.C. and Tehran appears highly unlikely. But one never knows what the shifting sands of geopolitics and geo-strategy could throw up in the future. Whatever happens, India must be prepared for it.

Rajesh Singh
25 April 2025

 

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