Gambling on India's Foreign Policy: The Importance of Implementation

Abstract

Gambling on India's Foreign Policy:The Importance of Implementation Kate Sullivan de Estrada (bio) As Indian prime minister Narendra Modi ricocheted around the globe in mid-2023—welcomed in Japan and Australia in May, embraced in a four-day state visit to the United States in June, and celebrated as the guest of honor at France's Bastille Day parade in July—newspapers and policy journals brimmed with India analysis. Confronted by the hype around Modi as a metonym for India's growing power and influence, rising uneasiness about the future of Indian democracy under his watch, and New Delhi's equivocal position on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, much of the commentary framed intensified relations with India through the metaphor of a "gamble." Ashley Tellis began with an analysis of "America's bad bet on India" in Foreign Affairs in early May, arguing that the deepening defense relationship between Washington and New Delhi was unlikely to lead to India partnering with the United States in a military coalition against China.1 Later that month, Christophe Jaffrelot argued in Le Monde that "betting on India is a short-sighted strategy for France," highlighting concerning domestic political trends and describing Indian democracy as "literally put on hold" between elections that are no longer fair.2 By July, Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf had concluded both that "Western leaders are making a sensible bet on India" because of its economic growth prospects and that "Modi's India is moving in an illiberal direction."3 Other analysts [End Page 120] questioned whether India's rise was "inevitable" and if it would be best to deal with India "as it is, not as we might like it to be."4 Anyone interested in these questions would benefit from reading Rajesh Basrur's careful and rigorous book Subcontinental Drift: Domestic Politics and India's Foreign Policy. Rather than assessing India's policy achievements and failures through the lens of the United States' imperative to counterbalance China in its systemic challenge or India's democratic potential to support the values-based construction of the Indo-Pacific as "free and open," Subcontinental Drift's start and end point is New Delhi. Basrur's interest is "the central concerns of Indian national security strategy" (p. 28) and, more specifically, the ability of the Indian state "to ensure the security of its people" (p. 24). Importantly—and this is where the book's emphasis on "drift" comes in—his focus is less on the formation of domestic policy preferences and more on whether policymakers are able or willing to make good on those preferences once they have been formed (p. 23). The study's overall conclusion is sobering: "India's potential for achieving major power status stands on a relatively weak foundation, owing to its inability to follow through on those policies that are crucial to its security" (p. 193). Subcontinental Drift's point of departure is the observation that "Indian foreign policy has often been characterized by multiple hesitations, delays, and diversions" (p. 181). This justifies the volume's analytical focus on the domestic drivers of policy drift, which is defined as a policy process "initiated purposefully but…greatly impeded by intervening factors" (p. 8). Some of India's most pressing security concerns—its strategic relationships with the major-power United States and smaller-power Sri Lanka at pivotal moments, its long-term nuclear strategy, and its patchy record on protecting Indian citizens from cross-border terrorism—form the empirical substrate of the book. Basrur's focus on the domestic determinants of policy drift in each of these cases positions Subcontinental Drift in productive company with a small, though growing, number of existing works that take seriously how India's domestic context gives rise to and shapes its foreign policies. Policy drift is different, Basrur clarifies, from "policy paralysis" or purposelessness (p. 7). Where policy drifts, it has a direction but does not travel or travels only in a slow or meandering fashion. This is a weighty clarification to make: Are perceptions of Indian foreign policy ambivalence [End Page 121] both within and outside India better explained by policy drift by than policy preference? For example, does...