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US ties are invaluable; India won’t cut back Russia trade
India’s ties with the US constitute a “very invaluable relationship”, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Friday.
India’s ties with the US constitute a “very invaluable relationship”, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Friday, while simultaneously asserting that New Delhi should “not be intimidated” from pursuing its economic relations with Russia.
Jaishankar spoke extensively on India’s foreign policy and relations with countries in the neighbourhood and with key global powers such as China, Russia and the US at an event to mark the release of the book “Strategic Conundrums: Reshaping India’s foreign policy” by former ambassador Rajiv Sikri.
He said, just as the book acknowledges, the relationship with the US is for strategic and economic purposes a “very invaluable relationship for us”. He added: “Therefore, I would actually argue that the US is today indispensable for our multipolarity to go up, that if we need that decision-making space, that freedom, we need countries whose interest is that we have those margins on our side.”
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Jaishankar said no one is in denial about the history of the India-US relationship, which faced a series of challenges from the 1950s to the 1980s. “The challenge for us is when we think of multipolarity and strategic autonomy, because of that history, it is often a concept where we position ourselves against the US,” he said.
“The reality of the world today is something very different. That if we look at where the pressures are, the primary sources of pressure, it is no longer the US.
In a way, because the world has changed, our understanding of the US has changed...The US understands us too.”
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Jaishankar also pointed to convergences in India-US relations. “India and the US, by their nature, will always have interests which will differ and diverge from those of the other,” he said.
When it comes to Russia, India will have to be sensitive to a “Eurasian balance”, he said. “It’s a core strategic requirement for us. But I would also say if you look at trade with Russia, which has gone up five times, and it’s not just a simple oil issue, I would urge you to look at it much more deeply, that there is an economic complementarity between India and Russia,” he said, referring to India’s decision to ramp up purchases of discounted Russian crude since 2022.
“And we should not be intimidated from pursuing the advantages of that complementarity,” he added. Russia is now following its own “look east” policy and there has been a shift in how Moscow approaches the world after 2022, and India needs to “understand and take advantage” of this.
In the case of Pakistan, Jaishankar said, the “era of uninterrupted dialogue” is over, and where Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, the issue of Article 370 “is done”. He was referring to the Indian government’s move to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in 2019.
In a reference to India’s long-standing concerns about Pakistan sponsoring cross-border terrorism, he said, “Actions have consequences.” While the book suggests that India would be content to continue at the current level of the relationship with Pakistan, Jaishankar said: “Maybe yes, maybe no. What I do want to say is we are not passive and whether events take a positive or a negative direction, either way, we will be happy.”
Turning to China, with which India has been locked in a military standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) since 2020, Jaishankar said New Delhi has done substantial work to “fix the border infrastructure deficit”, which is key to maintaining peace and tranquillity in border areas.
