Is India "Shaky" on Ukraine? It's Complicated

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

President Joe Biden recently made headlines when he described India as being "somewhat shaky" on the issue of punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution sat down with Ryan to explain why India is taking a quieter and less aggressive tact as it navigates this international crisis. The answers to the question in the title are far more interesting and complicated than you might think. Join Ryan and Tanvi for this wide-ranging conversation, which touches not only on India's relations with Russia, but how this all fits in with its relations with China and Ukraine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense and Foreign Affairs.
0:15.2	My name is Ryan Evans and I'm sitting here with Tambi Madan of the Brookings Institution.
0:20.0	India is one of those countries that a lot of people have been looking at and wondering, why aren't they
0:24.6	fully on the west side when it comes to the Russo-Ukraineian war and what's going on there.
0:29.8	A lot of people are wondering, well, we're on India's side against China, the US and India are coming into increasing alignment.
0:38.0	So what's the deal? And Tanvey's here to explain that to us.
0:41.0	So thanks for doing this time v
0:42.8	thanks for having me on the pod Ryan all right let's get into it could you
0:47.8	set the stage historically about the Russian Indian relationship so as most of your listeners probably know, India was considered very close to the Soviet Union during the Cold War,
1:00.0	wasn't quite a formal ally, came pretty close especially after 1971 to at the very
1:07.2	least being aligned with the Soviet Union and during the course of that alignment through the 60s and 1970s, which you particularly
1:16.7	saw was a very close military relationship, defense trade and technology relationship.
1:23.4	And the legacy of that exists to this day.
1:26.4	So just to give you a sense, anywhere from the estimates vary,
1:30.8	but 60 to 80 percent of India's existing military equipment is of
1:35.2	Soviet or Russian origin and that goes back to that relationship. Having said
1:40.6	that today's India-Russia relationship is not that of the Cold War.
1:45.4	So the way I put it is this is not your father's India-Russia relationship.
1:49.7	You do see a relationship that over the last kind of I would say five to ten years has seen a
1:56.2	dynamic that has both divergence and yet continuing relevance for India.
2:02.2	So in terms of divergence, what you've seen is for India, it now is in a situation where part of the strategic rationale for its relationship with the Soviet Union had been that the Soviet Union was
2:14.8	India's insurance policy against China and so because there was a sign of Soviet
	...

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