A book that explains diplomatic ties as live-in relationships
Sreeram Chaulia’s ‘Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners’ explains how strategic friendships can become models of mutual benefit
Sreeram Chaulia’s Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners brings together not only the doctrines at play but also the variegated dynamics of seven of India’s valuable friends to illuminate the opportunities and challenges facing India as a rising power.
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He explains the intricacies of India’s vital bilateral partnerships with Japan, Australia, the US, Russia, France, Israel and the UAE. The title, Friends, and the author’s usage of Kautilya’s characterization of friendships in the epigraph are intriguing. Can two countries be friends the way two individuals can be? Chaulia draws parallels, pointing out that a strategic partnership is akin to a live-in relationship and that an alliance evokes the exclusivity and commitments of a marriage. Strategic partnerships give both sides benefits but also accord space to each to pursue other friendships as long as those are not inimical to the interests of both.
Therein lies the crux. They must have each other’s backs. Recent developments in Bangladesh and controversies over harbouring and encouraging violent extremists, terrorists and separatists against India are tests of India’s strategic partnerships and highlight the need to draw some red lines even as governments change in democracies like the US.
Chaulia’s book builds on the theory and practice of international relations discourse regarding special ties, which became a trend around the beginning of the 21st century. Contrary to earlier scholarship, which defined the relationships India had as transactional, ad hoc, tactical or opportunistic, Chaulia avers that these friendships matter to boost India’s image and soft power. India’s strategic partners also act as force multipliers by gathering the allies and partners of each friend into the equation of goodwill, profit and influence. Chaulia shows how strategic partnerships are crucial for India to maintain its independent judgement and multi-alignment strategy.
One of the key merits of this work is to demonstrate why, how and under what conditions friendships between India and these seven countries emerged, evolved, are likely to subsist and could dissolve.
Multilateral or plurilateral cooperation can reinforce core bilateral partnerships, as was seen during India’s successful G20 presidency in 2023. Bilateral dyads are good not only for advancing India’s core national interests, but also for geopolitical and geoeconomic stabilization and regional and global governance. While the symbiosis between India and its best friends in economic, military and geopolitical domains is growing, one has to be wary of weaponization of interdependencies. What if the volatile regional and global situation changes and the dependability of some of these friends comes into question? Chaulia has raised the issue of parallel dependencies of some of India’s friends on China. India must continue tobuild self-reliance and diversification in critical areas as an insurance vis-a-vis the inbuilt risks of some of its strategic partnerships.
One could argue that other strategic partnerships could have been included in this book. But the seven that Chaulia has chosen are worthy enough. Some, like Russia, are time-tested friendships that have survived major tremors and tensions.With others, like Australia, Japan and the UAE, we have witnessed a metamorphosis in the Modi era, with a strategic closeness that no one would have imagined a decade ago. In the case of the US, the doctrinal shift from ‘Asia-Pacific’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’ and India’s induction into Washington’s ‘latticework’ of regional security arrangements have reduced many barriers with New Delhi.
Still, given recent crosscurrents, India must have safeguards against slide backs and it should keep itself open to other friendships beyond the three dozen strategic partnerships that it has signed around the world. As Chaulia emphasizes, far from being monogamous, strategic partnerships are promiscuous and involve dual-faced hedging games. India is not about to join an ‘Asian NATO’ nor tie itself down to one or the other blocs in the ‘new Cold War’. It must ensure that its friendshipsbecome models of mutual benefit and spawn and inspire other such partnerships that are safeguarded through storms, be they internal to those countries or regional and globalupheavals.
Chaulia has presented a thought-provoking narrative about India’s seven closest strategic partners being our best friends, philosophers and guides in what is bound to be an exhilarating but bumpy road in an unpredictable world.
Lakshmi Puri is a former ambassador of India and a former Assistant Secretary-General, United Nations.
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First Published:8 Dec 2024, 10:00 AM IST
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