GS Paper: GS2-19.Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Why in the News

India has moved from urging restraint in the Russia-Ukraine war to actively working for peace, talking to both sides on a proposal to end the fighting. Both Kyiv and Moscow have praised India’s ideas, and the war’s strain on world food and energy supplies gives India a direct stake in ending it.

How has India’s role in the war changed?

1. Earlier stance: Since the war began in February 2022, Delhi has urged restraint. In September 2022 the Prime Minister told the Russian President “this is not an era of war”.
2. Beyond advocacy: The External Affairs Minister says India has gone “beyond advocacy” and now talks to both sides. India acts like a go-between carrying proposals across.
3. Acceptance in Kyiv and Moscow: Ukraine’s Foreign Minister called India’s proposal the “most comprehensive” Kyiv has received. The Russian President said the Prime Minister has “very good ideas” on peace.
4. Role to build on: Working for peace, not just calling for it, is a welcome shift that Delhi must now build on.
5. The takeaway: Praise from both warring capitals shows India is now trusted as a working channel, not just a voice for peace.

Why does ending the war serve India’s interests too?

1. Global food shock risk: Russia and Ukraine are both major grain exporters. Strikes on their ports and ships hurt farmers and raise the risk of a global food shock.
2. Fertiliser squeeze: The External Affairs Minister has warned of a “major food crisis” in coming months. It would worsen fertiliser shortages caused by wars in Eastern Europe and West Asia.
3. Energy and United States ties: The war has disrupted European energy markets. India’s purchases of Russian oil have also strained its ties with the United States (US).
4. Shared gain: An end to the war, or even de-escalation, would ease these pressures, so India’s interest here aligns with the world’s.

Where can Indian diplomacy actually deliver?

1. Narrow agenda: Delhi should focus on specific issues such as grain and energy, not sweeping questions of territory or security guarantees.
2. Common ground first: Both sides have immediate, shared interests in grain and energy, so a deal there does not need the harder questions settled first.
3. Limited leverage: India has less sway over Ukraine than the US, and over Russia than China. It can still show it is bringing the two sides to talk.
4. Answering critics: A record of even-handed diplomacy would answer critics who see India as too close to Russia. That tie has drawn scrutiny over oil for nearly five years.

Challenges

1. Territorial deadlock: Kyiv and Moscow remain far apart on territory, which caps how far issue-based deals can go.
2. Pressure over Russian oil: Washington’s pressure on India’s oil purchases narrows its room to act as a neutral channel. Eg. The additional US tariff on India in August 2025.
3. Fragile grain deals: Past food arrangements have collapsed under military pressure. Eg. Russia quit the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2023.
4. Crowded mediation field: Several states run parallel peace channels, which can dilute any single proposal. Eg. Saudi Arabia hosted Ukraine talks in Jeddah in 2023.

Way Forward

1. Safe passage for grain: India should propose a monitored safe-passage arrangement for grain ships and ports that both sides can verify.
2. Energy infrastructure truce: Delhi should press both sides to halt strikes on energy facilities as a first confidence-building step.
3. Coordination with other mediators: India should work alongside Türkiye, the Gulf states and the United Nations rather than run a rival track.
4. Wider crude sourcing: India should diversify its crude imports to blunt the charge of partiality toward Moscow.

Conclusion

India has turned its neutrality into active, issue-based mediation that serves both its own food and energy security and global stability. Whether Delhi can secure even a limited understanding on one shared issue will test whether both warring sides, and Washington, accept its role as even-handed.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

Why in the News

The US Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge A. Colby, has updated the 2026 National Defense Strategy a month before the US mid-term elections. The strategy asks partners to carry more of the cost of regional security, which changes what the US expects from India.

What does the 2026 National Defense Strategy aim at?

1. What it is: The National Defense Strategy is the US defence master plan, like a business plan that ranks threats and assigns resources.
2. Four goals: Defending the US homeland, deterring China, gaining more support from allies and partners, and rebuilding the US defence industry.
3. China focus: The strategy aims to stop China dominating the Indo-Pacific through deterrence, especially along the First Island Chain (the island arc from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines).
4. Twin track with Beijing: The administration is also negotiating with Beijing on trade, so military competition and economic talks run together.
5. The takeaway: Washington wants stronger partners that pay more, so a partner’s value now depends on what it contributes.

What is the new bargain with allies and partners?

1. Burden shifting: The US once supplied most of its alliances’ military strength. Partners must now take more responsibility for their own regions.
2. Regional roles: Europe is urged to lead its own defence, South Korea to do more on the Korean Peninsula, and Japan and Australia to play bigger Indo-Pacific roles.
3. Division of labour: The US keeps advanced capabilities, strategic coordination and extended deterrence (its promise to defend allies, including with nuclear forces). Partners provide troops, infrastructure, funding and industrial support.
4. Russia calculus: Washington wants to cut its costs in the Ukraine war and push Europe to do more. It still wants to limit Russian military power and influence.

Where will Indian and US interests overlap, and where not?

1. India’s value: India’s location, military potential, Indian Ocean position, technology goals and Indo-Pacific role matter to Washington. These interests have stayed largely constant across US administrations.
2. New expectations: Washington now expects India to help keep the regional balance, work closely on defence, join technology and supply-chain projects, and build military strength.
3. Shifting China equation: India’s value to Washington is tied to the China challenge. US-China ties swing between competition and cooperation, so their interests will overlap but not always align.
4. Russia factor: US policy on Russia touches India’s defence ties with Russia, its energy needs and its desire for strategic autonomy.
5. Diversified partnerships: Ties with France, Europe, Japan, Australia, the Gulf and Russia widen India’s strategic choices.

Why does leverage matter more than partnership labels?

1. Importance is not leverage: A country’s importance to Washington does not set the terms on which Washington negotiates with it. Leverage does.
2. Sources of leverage: Economic scale, military capability, technology, market access and the ability to offer or withhold key capabilities all build bargaining power.
3. China example: Beijing’s economic and technological strength gives it tools to influence US decisions. India can gain similar influence as its economy grows.
4. Strategic task: New Delhi must build capability and keep the freedom to use it.

Challenges

1. US-China thaw: A trade deal between Washington and Beijing could lower India’s strategic value.
2. Russia ties under scrutiny: India’s defence and energy links with Russia may clash with US goals.
3. Capability gap: Building economic and military leverage takes years, but US expectations are immediate.

Way Forward

1. Defence industrial base: Expand domestic defence production so India contributes capability, not only demand.
2. Supply-chain projects: Join US technology and supply-chain initiatives on terms that build Indian manufacturing.
3. Clear red lines: Define in advance where strategic autonomy will not be traded, including Russia and energy.

Conclusion

The next phase of India-US relations turns on the terms of cooperation between two capable powers, not on partnership labels. India’s ability to add capability faster than US expectations rise is the test to watch.

About the India-US defence partnership

1. Foundational agreements: Four pacts enable military interoperability:
   • General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA);
   • Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA);
   • Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA);
   • Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA).
2. Joint exercises and dialogue: Exercises include MALABAR, YUDH ABHYAS and RED FLAG, supported by 2+2 Ministerial Dialogues between foreign and defence ministers.
3. Technology access: India received Strategic Trade Authorization Tier 1 (STA-1) status in 2018, easing access to US military technology.
4. Co-development: The Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) and India-US Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) support co-development of jet engines, armoured vehicles and space technology.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

Why in the News

At their Washington meeting, the US President and the Chinese President affirmed that the United States and China were victorious allies in World War II. The claim shows the memory of 1945 being used to reshape Asia’s great-power order, a debate India’s strategic community has largely ignored.

How are the great powers using the memory of 1945?

1. History as politics: The past is reinterpreted to serve present politics, so references to the war are “rarely innocent”.
2. Washington’s use: The US President invokes wartime cooperation with Russia and China. Critics see this as cover for his direct outreach to their leaders, which unsettles US allies.
3. Moscow’s use: Victory supports Russia’s claim to a leading role in European security and a return to the “Yalta System”, the US-Soviet order of post-war Europe.
4. Beijing’s use: Posing as a victor of 1945 helps China undermine the “San Francisco System” of US alliances that defined the post-war Asian order.
5. The takeaway: Wartime memory is now a tool for claiming a say in today’s order.

Why does the claim unsettle Taiwan and Japan?

1. Which China: Washington’s wartime ally was the Republic of China (RoC) under Chiang Kai-shek, which now endures in Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged only in 1949.
2. Taipei’s charge: Taiwan accuses Beijing of “narrative diplomacy”, using history to erase its separate identity.
3. Tokyo’s unease: Imperial Japan, the common enemy, is now Washington’s principal Asian ally, and its Prime Minister sought reassurance.
4. Militarism charge: Japan is raising defence spending in response to China’s military edge. Casting Japan as the defeated aggressor lets Beijing brand this as militarism.
5. Enemy state clauses: China opposes Japan’s call to remove the UN Charter’s obsolete “enemy state” clauses against Japan, Germany and Italy. The UN had earlier agreed to drop them.

What does China gain by recasting the war?

1. Targeting the alliance: The San Francisco System, built on the 1951 peace settlement with Japan, centres US strategy on Japan. Beijing wants to weaken it and nudge the US towards a “China-First” Asia policy.
2. Victim narrative: Under Mao the war was awkward, because Chiang’s Nationalist armies did most of the conventional fighting. From the 1980s it anchored a victim story of China’s “century of humiliation”.
3. Victor narrative: Today commemorations, parades and textbooks stress China’s place among the powers that defeated Japan and founded the United Nations.
4. Claim to authority: Historian Rana Mitter shows this memory supports China’s claim to the apex of the global hierarchy, since victory claims a right to shape the order.

Why is India missing from the debate over 1945?

1. Wartime mobilisation: 2.3 million Indians served under arms, from North Africa and Italy to Burma, and 14 million worked in war production.
2. Denied recognition: At a Russia-India-China (RIC) foreign ministers’ meeting, India’s External Affairs Minister called India’s neglect in the post-war order an uncorrected “historical injustice”.
3. Divided movement: The Congress opposed the war and launched Quit India. The Communists backed the war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Subhas Chandra Bose sought Axis help.
4. Elite neglect: Indian elites ignore how the war shaped Partition and India’s post-war marginalisation, so strategic debate leans on abstract concepts instead of this history.

Challenges

1. Narrative as leverage: China’s victor story gives it grounds to question Japan’s defence build-up and US alliances in Asia.
2. Alliance uncertainty: US outreach to Beijing leaves Indo-Pacific partners, including India, unsure of Washington’s priorities.
3. India’s missing claim: Without an agreed account of its war role, India cannot use 1945 to back its case for a larger global role.

Way Forward

1. Official war histories: The Ministry of Defence should publish accessible histories of Indian campaigns abroad.
2. Commemorative diplomacy: India should mark Burma campaign anniversaries jointly with Southeast Asian partners.
3. Link to UN reform: India should cite its wartime contribution in its case for a permanent UN Security Council seat.

Conclusion

The contest over who won the Second World War is a contest over who shapes Asia’s order now. India’s wartime sacrifice will count only when an agreed account of it backs India’s claim to a larger global role.

About the post-1945 world order

1. Yalta Conference (February 1945): Allied leaders planned Germany’s final defeat and the shape of the post-war order.
2. Founding of the UN: India was an original signatory of the UN Charter in 1945, before independence.
3. Hub-and-spoke alliances: The US signed separate treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia and New Zealand, not one NATO-style Asian bloc.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

Why in the News

The summit between the Chinese President and the US President in Washington produced only a modest package on artificial intelligence (AI). The two powers could not even agree on what to call the technology, and their rivalry now shapes the AI rules India must live under.

What did the summit deliver on AI?

1. Groundwork in New York: At the first AI talks under the two countries’ trade mechanism, on 20 September, Washington proposed a channel to notify AI incidents, meaning AI events with national security consequences.
2. Modest package: The summit confirmed a dialogue on risks and benefits, a channel for incidents and a next meeting by November.
3. Dispute over the name: The White House says the leaders agreed to use the term “super intelligence”. China’s list speaks of a “China-US dialogue on artificial intelligence”.
4. Nuclear control dropped: At Lima (November 2024), the two sides affirmed human control over nuclear-use decisions. Neither fact sheet repeats it, and only China’s list has a military crisis communication memorandum.
5. The takeaway: The two powers agreed to talk about AI risk without agreeing on what it is, so the channel can handle incidents but not set rules.

Why will rivalry, not dialogue, shape the AI order?

1. Race to be won: The US President calls the case for slowing AI a “hoax”. He prefers prosecutors to police AI harms afterwards over regulators acting in advance.
2. Language of control: The Chinese President wants AI “always under human control”. His call for both sides to “play to their strengths” criticised US export controls.
3. Safety as containment: Beijing reads US safety talk as a cover for holding back China. State media accused a US firm of calling distillation (training a cheap model on a stronger model’s outputs) a threat.
4. Regime security first: China’s security minister calls AI “the main battlefield” of rivalry. Party control of labs limits what models may say, not how fast they grow more capable.
5. Tools of competition: The US relies on chip controls and Pax Silica, a US-led network of trusted chip suppliers. China pushes chip self-reliance and open-weight models, which anyone can download and adapt.

What concerns does this raise for India?

1. G2 overlay (a US-China duopoly): The two powers hold most frontier compute, the computing power behind top models, so they can set the rules. In the nuclear order, such deals justified discriminatory controls on others.
2. Two AI systems, two sets of standards: India faces pressure from both camps:
   • Washington expects trusted partners to keep China out of their AI ecosystems;
   • Beijing proposed a BRICS open-source AI community at the New Delhi summit;
   • India is unlikely to join China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO), a China-centric initiative like the Belt and Road Initiative.
3. Pull of cheap Chinese models: Chinese open-weight models are competitive, cheap and adaptable. Eg. Alibaba’s Qwen has spawned more than 150,000 derivative models.

Challenges

1. Private adoption: Stopping private firms building low-risk apps on Chinese models is hard, as low cost attracts Western and Indian companies. Eg. Singapore, Malaysia and Brazil use them.
2. American dependence: Access to US models can vanish quickly. Eg. June’s brief cut-off of foreign access to top American models.
3. No rival offer in BRICS: India has no alternative yet to the Chinese AI offering in the grouping.

Way Forward

1. Multilateral norms: Welcome US-China risk reduction, but insist on multilateral frontier AI norms and a place in incident-notification arrangements.
2. Nuclear human control: Make human control over nuclear-use decisions part of India’s nuclear discourse, and press all nuclear powers to affirm it.
3. Dual and differentiated de-risking: Bar Chinese models from government systems, critical infrastructure and sensitive data; require security testing and local hosting for private use.
4. Capability at home: Build compute, chips, models, datasets, talent and the ability to test frontier systems independently.
5. Shape BRICS: Insist that BRICS AI initiatives be consensus-based and technology-neutral, rather than cede the space.

Conclusion

The new channel manages incidents between two rivals but leaves the rules for everyone else unsettled. What to watch is whether India is admitted to incident notification, and on what terms the BRICS AI community takes shape.

Government Initiatives for AI capability in India

1. IndiaAI Mission (2024): Treats AI as a public good, built on shared compute, open datasets and decentralised talent development.
2. Shared compute: More than 38,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips that train AI models, form a national compute grid for startups and researchers.
3. AI Kosh: Offers over 360 curated non-personal datasets across sectors such as agriculture, health and climate.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”