2022: The Year India Found Its Global Voice

As another turbulent year comes to an end, international politics seems to have reached an inflection point. Great Power politics is now firmly entrenched, with war reaching the European shores in ways that few had anticipated when the year began. The world had barely come to terms with post-Covid-19 normalcy when the Russian invasion of Ukraine threw a new set of challenges at the global order. The United States (US)-China contestation sharpened with the Russia-China axis getting further cemented. The debate around deglobalisation gained traction as the weaponisation of almost everything emerged as the new normal. Amid all this turmoil, global institutions seemed remarkably ill-equipped to rise to the challenges, and so, the search for new institutional frameworks gained pace. Indian foreign policy had to respond to all these shifts in a year when some of the fundamental assumptions of the nation’s strategic thinking became overtly contested. Just as the Galwan crisis of 2020 forced New Delhi to re-evaluate its China policy, the Ukraine war pushed India to relook at the drivers of its Russia policy. It also allowed it to set new terms of engagement with the West. When the Russian invasion began in February, there was much discussion on how India would find it difficult to navigate its ties with a demanding West on the one the side and a disruptive Russia on the other. But what began as a balancing act has culminated in New Delhi finding its own voice on a critical global issue. India has managed to continue with its engagement with Russia and even enhanced its energy ties with Moscow in search of energy security. At the same time, India’s ties with the West continued to gather momentum throughout the year, despite criticism in certain quarters in the West about New Delhi not siding with the West in publicly condemning Russia. For its part, India’s stance shifted from framing the issue of Russian aggression around the United Nations (UN) charter, international law and territorial sovereignty to Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly exhorting Russian President Vladimir Putin that this was not the time for war, a sentiment that managed to find expression in the G20 communique at the Bali summit. As the year concludes, there are now growing expectations that India will take a more proactive role in trying to bring the Ukraine crisis to an end, with even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling PM Modi this week.