India’s Strategic Culture: In Search of a Systemic Element

Abstract

India is emerging as a global power, but its strategic culture remains largely understudied. Expert literature calls into question the very existence of India’s own “systemic” strategic thinking. The article probes into the validity of this viewpoint, postulates that India has its own strategic culture, and highlights its key elements. With the help of Michel Foucault’s genealogical method, the genealogy of the concepts of ‘war’ and ‘power’ in Indian political philosophy is examined and, on this basis, the central conceptual elements of India’s military-political system are determined. This approach shows that India’s strategic culture is distinguished not only by its own systemic strategic thinking, but also by an original (different from the Western one) way of structuring and coding the conceptual space of ‘society,’ ‘politics,’ and ‘statehood.’ This gives an idea of how war and strategy were understood in Indian culture in the past and how they are seen today. The article offers a cautious forecast of what elements of India’s strategic thinking may persist in the long term, and what geopolitical implications this may have for the future of Russia-India relations.