The rise of India’s swing state diplomacy

Indian elections are usually known for being contested, like in most developing countries, on domestic issues. As the country moves full throttle into election mode in 2024, this year stands out for being one where the government is boasting foreign policy achievements as a major electoral plank. 

The release of eight former Indian Navy personnel from Qatar in the same week as a highly cordial prime ministerial visit to the Gulf indicated much of what is changing in Indian diplomacy. Even before the Gaza crisis upturned the West Asian regional order, the announcement of the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) at the 2023 G-20 Summit and the buzz surrounding I2U2 (India, Israel, US, UAE) were already heralding a different era in Indian relations with the region. A country that spent much of its post-colonial history looking at West Asia through the Pakistani (and sometimes, Palestinian) prism has now come into its own through a radical reorientation in the way it conducts its diplomacy in the region and beyond, premised on the appeal of its economic and security capabilities.

These diplomatic successes are, however, much more than the fruits of quiet diplomacy -- they are a consequence of structural changes in the way India looks at the world, and extend far beyond West Asia. Consider, for reference, another region India has periodically struggled with: South Asia. The recent Maldives controversy is a glimpse into the continuing precariousness of mediating rising-power status in a neighbourhood oiled by China’s ingress. 

It has been posited that the drift of India’s South Asia strategy consists of two plans (Prashant Jha, Hindustan Times). ‘Plan A’ rests on “having a friendly regime in power in the vicinity, shaping politics in subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, ways to influence a favourable outcome, and using this proximity to address security concerns”. ‘Plan B’ relies on “maintaining a working relationship with whatever regime is in power, incentivising the regime with the lure of cooperation, showing very clearly the power of the Indian market and economic costs for that country if political or security redlines are crossed, and waiting for the opportune time to nudge domestic political processes in a friendlier direction.” Both of these plans centre around India’s ability to convey and develop its own security and economic capabilities.

Do we have a paradigm to understand India’s diplomatic transition in the broader context of how the world is changing? Indeed, what can analysts look at to better understand how India is looking at the world?

Last year, Goldman Sachs’ Jared Cohen spoke about the emergence of “geopolitical swing states”. Modelled on the idea of swing states in American elections, he argued that the fragmentation of the global landscape is providing certain countries with the diplomatic leeway to chart their own course on an issue-by-issue basis, and ultimately determine the balance of power. 

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, a seasoned career diplomat-turned-politician, has concretely outlined this act of balancing in his latest book, Why Bharat Matters, which reads as both a political statement and a statement of diplomatic intent. In a section he calls “The Arrival of Others”, he makes a similar evaluation of global politics, arguing that a major re-globalisation is on the cards, and that India no longer fashions its global ambitions in linear terms.

This idea of “re-globalisation” is crucial to comprehend Indian diplomatic behaviour. The ‘Washington Consensus’ is being redefined, accepting that the original Washington Consensus was naïve in expecting economic integration alone to create more responsible global players. The redefinition is meant to acknowledge and adapt to the reality of what the IMF has flagged as “geoeconomic fragmentation”, roughly along the axes of trade, migration, capital flows, technology diffusion, and the provision of global public goods.

The weakening of bipolarity has facilitated greater freedom of movement for Middle Powers like India to create new axes of convergence through issue-based cooperation on key issues. Beyond the diversification of dependencies, Jaishankar also acknowledges that the globalised world doesn’t require major players to be developed in all spheres -- even if some facets are adequately developed, they have the space to make a difference. This understanding is at the core of India’s attempt to re-globalise.

India’s instrument to operationalise this understanding – minilaterals -- is more in voguein diplomacy these days than anything else. Not only do these issue-based formulations transcend the traditional dependence on proximity (e.g. the BRICS is spread over four continents), they have much lower overhead costs, and do away with the hassles of treaties, obligations, or establishments. Moreover, they are inherently compatible with the emerging global consensus on “nearshoring” and “friendshoring”.

This approach has positioned India in a geopolitical sweet-spot. Despite equivocating on key Western interests, India has nurtured partnerships like the Quad and supported the US’ Indo-Pacific rapprochement, whilst at the same time engaging with BRICS and SCO, as a leading voice of the Global South. An abstention on the Ukrainian invasion and a hike in oil imports from Russia has enabled it to maintain longstanding links with Moscow even while deepening bilateral partnerships with the West. While the Sino-Indian relationship has deteriorated due to unsettled border disputes, bilateral trade has skyrocketed. India has chosen strategic autonomy through ‘multi-alignment’ -- hedging tactical bets and refraining from taking sides in a troubled US-China relationship.

The idea of a global “swing state” itself is not new, as IR scholars have looked at both “pivotal states” and “global swing states” in many different avatars since the US’ unipolar moment. Notably, most of these formulations have included India, but the attempt has been to evaluate its potential as a pawn in Western strategy. Swing states have mattered in these formulations only in terms of how they can be used to advance Western interests (both realist and liberal internationalist), but rarely have the motives of these countries been analysed in their specificity and with reference to the advancement of their own geopolitical ambitions. It is time to do so in the case of India, whose swing state diplomacy is definitely here to stay.

(The writer is a student of political science at Kirori Mal College, Delhi University)