Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 14

Tone Shift: India’s Dominant Foreign Policy Aims Under Modi
sides to access supplies, spare parts and
services from land facilities, air bases
and ports.” 47 Pragmatism underpinned
this deal, with New Delhi critically diversifying
its defense supplies away
from Russia. 48 With the new Trump administration,
and in a 2017 visit to the
United States, the two sides declared
themselves “democratic stalwarts in
the Indo-Pacific region ... resolved to
increase cooperation, enhance diplomatic
consultations, and increase tangible
collaboration.” 49 In unison with the
drive toward strategic autonomy, and
continued economic growth, heightening
United States ties served to encapsulate
India’s sought-after status aims in
the new NDA.
Realizing a Multipolar World Order
At the core of the BJP’s wider vision of
global politics in the twenty-first century
is the concept of multipolarity. This
understanding pronounces that there
are multiple powers (or poles) competing
for influence in the international
system rather than it being dominated
by a single unipolar power through
hegemony. Within this worldview, the
multiple poles are argued—in addition
to the United States—to be China
and Russia, and potentially the EU, as
well as India once the country has fully
reached great power status. It is underpinned
by collective cooperation concerning
mutual development, equality,
and non-intervention—all of which
are core, longstanding principles within
Indian foreign policy, and which are
highly evident in relations with China
and Russia but currently less so with the
United States. Cooperation in multilateral
regimes bolsters these interactions,
whereby “an important trajectory ... has
been (the) simultaneous deepening of
India’s ties with all the major powers of
the world by focusing on ... mutual synergies
and gains.” 50 The greater frequency
and bandwidth with which these
relations have been pursued has been
central to Indian foreign policy under
Modi, as reflected by their preponderance
in official and analytical discourses.
In 2014, when the BJP came to power,
leading members further argued
that India was a vishwaguru (“world
guru”); “a ‘leading power’ ... equipped
with a clear vision of how international
affairs ought to be organized, not merely
a power that accepts the system as it
is” 51 —a sentiment that underscores the
presence of this foreign policy aim to
re-craft the international order.
With this proactive image in
mind—both of the world and India’s
status in it—Modi’s diplomacy has encompassed
“a strategy of building social
capital for upward mobility by networking
bilaterally and multilaterally to gain
prominent standing for India.” 52 Observers
have noted that this approach
rejects long-standing norms relating to
non-alignment, 53 which has been met
with “deafening silence,” 54 and has instead
been substantiated by “multi-alignment”—an
approach characterized
by “engagement in regional multilateral
institutions, the use of strategic
partnerships, and ... ‘normative hedging’.”
55 The desired preference for multipolarity,
in conjunction with multialignment,
represents “an ability to
adopt a paradigm of confident engagement
with the simultaneous pursuit of
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