For India, the challenge of adapting its foreign policy to emerging global realities is proving to be highly daunting for its foreign policy mandarins. Steeped in the traditions of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, they seem unable to come to terms with current realities. Adapting India’s foreign policy to new global realities is, however, an urgent necessity.
With the advent of President Donald Trump in the United States, multilateralism or even plurilateral ways of advancing foreign policy, seem to have lost all meaning. India, however, is yet to demonstrate the necessary flexibility to deal with a seemingly friendless world, in its neighbourhood and well beyond. As days go by, India’s trust deficit only seems to be growing, and the consequences can be serious.
The view about India
At one level, it would appear that India is losing its ‘geopolitical relevance’ despite the best efforts of its foreign policy establishment. Undoubtedly, Mr. Trump’s pyrotechnics are aggravating the situation and his constant shifting of goal posts clearly demands extreme nimbleness on the part of the foreign policy establishments. For the present, India’s foreign policy mandarins are finding themselves out of step, and increasingly isolated in the comity of nations. That we should find ourselves in this difficult situation is unfortunate. U.S. policy alone cannot be the reason, for there is much more happening across the world with India increasingly being seen as an ‘outlier’ when it comes to situations and events. All this at a time when India’s economic heft is growing and it is among the top five economic powers of the world.
Two recent events bring this out in stark detail. Even as the world celebrates the new Gaza peace settlement — a critical breakthrough in the troubled politics of this region which was largely orchestrated by Mr. Trump and the U.S., with the support of Türkiye, Egypt, Qatar and a few other nations, India’s absence or exclusion from the process smacks of its growing irrelevance in the politics of West Asia. That countries such as Türkiye, which demonstrate a degree of hostility towards India, should have been critical to the process of settlement adds further grist to India’s growing irrelevance.
India appeared to compound this situation even further by sending the lowest level of representation for the grand reconciliation held to celebrate the end of the Gaza conflict and the return of peace to West Asia, at which most world leaders were present. For Indians across the world, this should be a wakeup call, something that needs to be remedied sooner rather than later.
Closer home, another signal event where India ‘was a conspicuous absentee’ was the Gen Z revolution in Nepal that seemed to spiral out of control. It only seemed to further demonstrate that India’s foreign policy lacked both depth and content, even where its vital interests are at stake. The revolution, on India’s doorstep, may have followed a slightly different pattern than the youthful dissent seen in Bangladesh and Indonesia previously, but the fact that India found itself helpless and a mere bystander when tumultuous events were taking place on its doorstep, should make discerning observers of the scene sit up and take notice.
Additionally, there is a disconcerting strategic angle to India’s displacement from the driving seat, with this space being filled by countries not so well disposed, if not inimically inclined, towards India. Türkiye is a case in point, for during the recent India-Pakistan conflict, it was seen siding with Pakistan. Recently, Türkiye along with countries such as Egypt and Iraq were the toast of West Asia even as Mr. Trump spread benediction across the entire West Asia.
Additionally, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have signed on to a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement to treat aggression against one as against both, which only seemed to confirm India’s position as an outlier in a region where previously Indic influence reigned supreme. All this would suggest that India’s foreign policy has not demonstrated adequate ingenuity and flexibility to deal with the many vicissitudes and problems that afflict the region.
The situation in the neighbourhood
India cannot afford to be complacent. In its immediate neighbourhood, the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict threatens peace across a swathe of India’s northwest. India may tend to view the attacks by the Afghan Taliban on Pakistani cities as retributive justice, but this would be shortsighted. Since Field Marshal Asim Munir effectively took over the reins of power in Pakistan, the threat that Pakistan poses to India and the region has gone up significantly. There is every need to ‘unfang’ the Pakistani dragon to ensure peace in the region. Being satisfied with the Afghan Taliban’s attacks on Pakistan’s rear can provide cold comfort at best. India’s efforts should be on how best to create a conducive atmosphere where wars remain the last resort.
The rest of India’s neighbourhood also remains in turmoil, and the challenge before India’s diplomats is how to persuade countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal, which are currently perceived as hostile to India, to retrace their steps and make it worthwhile for them to maintain better relations with India. India-Sri Lanka relations are seen like an enigma wrapped in a mystery. While outwardly, India-Sri Lanka relations are on an even keel, it would be a mistake to underestimate the intrinsic potential of countries such as China to muddy the waters.
Vis-à-vis China, while India’s diplomacy may look like ‘work in progress’, it appears more an effort to patch over differences. This is specially so in the context of what may be termed as the current India-China bromance. Since Tianjin (August 2025), there has been a tendency in India’s diplomatic circles, and possibly within the political establishment as well, to gloss over the June 2020 Galwan episode as a ‘mere blip’ in long-standing China-India ties.
This willingness to ignore the realities of a long-standing and fast-festering China-Indian border problem appears intended to give an impression that ‘peace is at hand’. Little, however, has changed on the ground and the current diplomatic and military exchanges clearly lack candour.
Ties with China
Indians have seldom been able to comprehend Chinese elliptical thinking on global and regional issues, and even more so in its diplomatic manoeuvres. China-India ties today have not returned to the period that existed in 1988, following Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s highly successful visit to China. There is, hence, every need for India to be cautious; India would do well to acknowledge that China is a conundrum that is not easily cracked. China’s President Xi Jinping is much less a statesman than his predecessors Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao, and India cannot be too careful in its dealings with Xi’s China.
China and the U.S. are, without doubt, presently engaged in a ‘cat and mouse game’ on tariffs, and Mr. Xi’s gambit, viz., immediate and tangible concessions for long-term gains (including entering into deals with regard to the resumption of exports on rare earth materials to the U.S.) cannot possibly be the model for India to follow or adopt.
Also, what India needs to be concerned about is that, friendly or not, China is steadily expanding its influence across much of the region to India’s east, and adopting devious ways, including proliferation of small businesses at one level to a growing presence in universities, research centres and in cyber space at another, to establish its dominance and eclipse India’s influence across this region. India’s needs to be wary and it is increasingly becoming evident that as the U.S.’s influence wanes across much of the world and is steadily being eclipsed in large parts of Asia, a new China-led order is emerging in East and Southeast Asia.
This article, hence, should be seen as a wakeup call. Reiteration of the old adage that ‘eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ is important. India’s future is assured, but it also depends on how much effort is made to protect its brand of civilisation. It is quite distinct and different from that of China, the West, the Persian/Arab variety and other forms of democracy that had held sway over the years.
M.K. Narayanan is a former Director, Intelligence Bureau, a former National Security Adviser, and a former Governor of West Bengal
