India continues to invoke its time-tested policy of strategic autonomy vis-à-vis both the United States of America and Russia by rejecting US’ offer of mediation on Kashmir issue and by refusing to criticize Russia in its ongoing war against Ukraine. Comment. (2025, 20 Marks)
Strategic autonomy is the capacity to take consequential decisions without an external veto. It is not neutrality or equidistance: India can partner Washington closely on one issue and differ on the next. Its roots lie in a civilisational self-image (on Angus Maddison’s estimates India produced about a quarter of world output around 1700) and an anti-colonial memory. Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-alignment was its Cold War instrument; multi-alignment is today’s. The two 2025 episodes show the objective intact, though under unusual pressure.
Rejecting American mediation on Kashmir
- Doctrinal basis: the Simla Agreement (1972) committed India and Pakistan to bilateral settlement, reaffirmed at Lahore (1999). Mediation would concede that Jammu and Kashmir’s status is open.
- The 2025 test: after hostilities ended on 10 May 2025, President Donald Trump claimed to have brokered the halt and offered to help on Kashmir. India held that the cessation was agreed between the two Directors General of Military Operations at Pakistan’s request, and on 17 June 2025 Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Trump that India does not and will never accept mediation.
- Logic: internationalisation dilutes India’s superior weight and sets a precedent; Washington’s 2025 courtship of Pakistan’s army chief made a neutral broker even less plausible to Delhi.
Refusing to condemn Russia
- Voting record: India has abstained on the main Ukraine resolutions, most recently in the General Assembly in February 2026 (107–12–51), invoking sovereignty and territorial integrity without naming the violator, and has not joined unilateral Western sanctions.
- Material reasons: Russia still supplied 40% of India’s arms imports in 2021–25 (SIPRI), down from 70% in 2011–15; discounted crude cushioned the import bill after 2022; and India wants to slow Moscow’s drift toward Beijing.
- Balance, not endorsement: Modi’s Samarkand remark (2022) that “today’s era is not an era of war”, his Kyiv visit (August 2024), and Vladimir Putin’s 23rd annual-summit visit to New Delhi (December 2025), which set a $100 billion trade target for 2030.
- Contested framing: John J. Mearsheimer (“Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault”, 2014) blames NATO enlargement; Indian realists find it congenial, though New Delhi has never endorsed it.
Autonomy under stress
- The price: Washington added a 25% penalty tariff from 27 August 2025 (50% in all). An interim understanding in February 2026 cut it to 18%; Trump said India would stop buying Russian oil, while India’s statement never mentioned oil.
- Sanctions bite, then fade: US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil (binding from November 2025) cut Russian volumes, but purchases rebounded after the Iran war disrupted Gulf supply in 2026.
- The next test: the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, signed on 18 September 2026, authorises tariffs of up to 100% on leading buyers of Russian oil; S. Jaishankar raised India’s concerns with Marco Rubio days later.
- Critiques: Western partners read issue-based choices as opportunism; Iran ties sit uneasily with US sanctions; and free-riding charges follow a state that enjoys an open order without underwriting it.
- Defence: in The India Way (2020) S. Jaishankar urges India to “engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia”. A developing economy facing two nuclear-armed neighbours loses more by choosing than by hedging.
Conclusion
The statement is broadly valid. The objective is time-tested; the method, being inside many groupings rather than outside all, is new. 2025–26 showed its strength, since India yielded neither mediation nor condemnation, and its limit, since tariffs and sanctions can price autonomy. India should diversify energy and defence supply so that autonomy rests on capability rather than on great powers’ tolerance; for now it remains earned sovereignty, not opportunism.