Putin’s India Deal SHOCKS USA | Prof. Anuradha Chenoy

## Israel Visit and Iran Fallout A few high-profile diplomatic gestures have crystallized a deeper contradiction in India's foreign policy: close bilateral warmth with Israel at a time when much of the world views that relationship as morally and politically fraught, alongside lingering, substantive ties with Iran that predate current crises. The timing of the Indian prime minister's visit to Israel — coming just before Israel and the United States escalated military action against Iran — sharpened that contradiction into immediate strategic discomfort. As Professor Anuradha Chenoy observes, the visit telegraphed a degree of endorsement of Israeli policy that sits uneasily with India's long-standing support, in multilateral forums, for Palestinian self-determination. This diplomatic choice has material consequences. The closure and insecurity around the Strait of Hormuz, and the pressures on oil supplies, hit India directly. Energy security is not an abstract item in New Delhi’s strategic calculus: it is an economic imperative. The fallout from the Gaza war and the broader Israel–Iran confrontation risks alienating public opinion in West and Central Asia, and complicates India's relationships with Gulf states, many of which are balancing their ties with the West and their regional interests. Chenoy frames the Israel visit as emblematic of a government willing to prioritize bilateral symbolism and alignment with one major power constituency, even if it contradicts India's conventional multilateral posture. At the same time, India's silence on key aspects of the Iran crisis has been notable. Rather than offering strong condemnation or a principled alternative line, the government has preferred calibrated statements and measured diplomacy — a stance that some interpret as political caution and others as a drift from India's nonaligned-era rhetorical commitments. Whatever the intent, the immediate consequence is a credibility gap: India's historical leadership claims within the Global South and the Non-Aligned Movement clash with its current realpolitik gestures. ## India’s Split Foreign Policy India's external behavior increasingly reads as a deliberate performance of dual tracks. One track asserts strategic autonomy, commitment to multipolarity, and leadership of the Global South. The other tilts toward tighter alignment with the United States and other Western partners, especially in economic and military domains. Chenoy characterizes this as a split foreign policy driven by both long-term structural shifts — neoliberal economic opening since the 1990s — and a distinct political choice by the current government to accelerate alignment with Western power centers. That split is not purely ideological. It reflects a domestic economic transformation: the ascent of private capital, the turning away from state-led development models, and an eagerness to secure new markets and technologies. These forces press policymakers to cultivate deep ties with Washington, Tokyo and Canberra even as New Delhi seeks to preserve legacy relationships — notably with Moscow — that still underpin its defense-industrial base. The result is a foreign policy that is simultaneously multipolar in rhetoric and multilateral-instrumental in practice: India signs into frameworks that promise autonomy while accepting arrangements that tether it economically and strategically to external powers. The political calculus is also domestic. The government reads electoral politics, global prestige, and the needs of an emergent capitalist class into its external posture. But Chenoy warns that these internal drivers produce contradictions — for instance, championing the U.N. and humanitarian codes while maintaining robust military ties with a state facing international censure. That kind of inconsistency risks alienating both India's traditional partners in the Global South and constituencies at home who expect principled internationalism. ## Russia, China, and US Power The return of Vladimir Putin to New Delhi for a compact mix of high-level summits and quietly consequential agreements underlines how India is navigating great-power competition. Among the most consequential of these pacts was a maritime logistics exchange that grants Russian vessels access to Indian ports — a reciprocal nod to how New Delhi has already accommodated American logistics needs. Such arrangements are not mere symbolism: they expand Russian operational reach into the Indian Ocean while preserving India's ability to entertain multiple strategic partners. For New Delhi, the calculus involves hedging. India wants to maintain its time-tested relationship with Moscow — which has supplied critical military hardware and strategic ballast for decades — while also deepening economic and security engagement with Washington. Professor Chenoy points out how Washington's leverage over India has grown through geoeconomic tools: tariffs, threats to restrict access to energy supplies, and invitations to invest in U.S. reindustrialization. These pressures expose the asymmetry in the India–U.S. relationship. Washington can set terms with the blunt instruments of economic statecraft; India must balance the immediate costs of resistance against the long-term imperatives of strategic sovereignty. China's re-emergence as a peer competitor to the United States complicates the equation. India's border disputes and rivalry with Beijing nudge it closer to Western security frameworks like the Quad, yet New Delhi remains unwilling to become a junior partner in any containment strategy that threatens its own independence. The result is a finely calibrated dance: accept cooperation with the U.S. where interests align, preserve Moscow ties where vital, and keep options open with Beijing to avoid losing trade and regional leverage. ## Regime Change and Domestic Stability Beyond external balancing, recent events illuminate how great-power strategies around regime change and political influence reverberate within South Asia. The U.S. playbook of leveraging economic pressure — tariffs, investment pledges, and strategic subsidies — functions as a modern instrument of external influence that can reshape domestic political economies. Chenoy links this to the broader trend of geoeconomics: the United States seeking to reconfigure supply chains and defense ties to buttress its strategic posture vis-à-vis China. Domestically, India’s ruling coalition has been effective at adapting to these pressures in ways that consolidate its political base. Economic concessions and elite alignments have produced a government that is resilient despite international criticism. Yet resilience does not equate to indifference: policy choices have redistributive consequences. Tariffs and forced investment arrangements can exacerbate inequalities between export-oriented sectors and domestic constituencies such as farmers and small producers, who may pay the immediate price for geopolitical realignments. The specter of external intervention to engineer favorable political outcomes remains a live one for many developing states. In India’s case, the interplay of foreign leverage and domestic political strategy results in a state that is both strategically assertive and pragmatically pliant — capable of asserting autonomy rhetorically while accepting constraints in practice. ## Iran, BRICS, and Gulf Tensions India’s relationships across West Asia are undergoing stress tests. Iran's long-standing cultural and trade links with India complicate any overt alignment with anti-Iran policies. At the same time, Gulf states — oil suppliers and significant sources of remittances and investment — are crucial to India’s economic well-being. Chenoy emphasizes that India’s diplomacy must now reconcile these competing imperatives amid a landscape of escalating Gulf tensions and a regional order being reshaped by new, often U.S.-driven security arrangements. Compounding this is

Putin’s India Deal SHOCKS USA | Prof. Anuradha Chenoy Multipolar deals are here. India’s most recent pragmatic foreign policy toward Russia defies the Western dictate. Professor emeritus Anuradha Chenoy from Jawaharlal Nehru University joins to discuss India’s foreign policy shifts: Putin’s India visit, US tariff and oil pressure, Modi’s Israel and Iran stance, BRICS, China, and how India tries to keep strategic autonomy while balancing the US, Russia, and the Global South. Links: Economic and Political Weekly: https://www.epw.in Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Intro and Russia Visit 00:07: 11 Tariffs and Investment Pledges 00:11:30 Israel Visit and Iran Fallout 00:14:13 India’s Split Foreign Policy 00:24:07 Russia, China, and US Power 00:29:40 Regime Change and Domestic Stability 00:31:39 Iran, BRICS, and Gulf Tensions 00:36:37 BRICS, Currency, and China 00:44:12 Europe and the Iran War #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today, again, with my dear guest, Anuradha Chenoy, a professor emeritus from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Anuradha, welcome back. #Anuradha Chenoy Hi, Pascal. Delighted to be on your channel, which does such incisive analysis of international politics. #Pascal Thank you very much. So kind of you. And you too, you write a lot, actually, a lot of analysis about India's foreign policy. And you're, of course, also a Russia expert. You've looked very deeply at Indian-Russian relations. We've talked about this several times. And actually, a lot of things have been happening in Indian foreign policy just over the last 10 days. Can you catch us up with the different events? #Anuradha Chenoy Sure. Well, I think a good starting point is that there was a Putin visit. President Putin visited India, and the press didn't give it a very high-profile kind of status, but he did sign several important agreements. For example, and I'll give you one outstanding example, India and Russia signed a maritime logistics exchange agreement by which Russian ships can anchor in Indian ports, and this -- 1 of 16 -- gives them more access to the Indian Ocean. Of course, India has signed a similar agreement earlier with the Americans, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum, which gives American naval ships a similar facility. So you can see that was one important kind of development. #Pascal Are they equal? Is it basically equal rights for the Russians as for the Americans? So, a copy-paste effort? #Anuradha Chenoy It's not exactly copy-paste, but it does give them rights. And the thing is, the American agreement became very controversial because, you know, India doesn't want to be—at least so far, it has not wanted to be—part of any American adventure or containment against China, which it doesn't see with Russia. And it gives Indian ships access to the Arctic. So it's a much more equal agreement than that with the Americans. Now, Indian ships don't really have an interest to go to U.S. ports— the naval fleet doesn't have an interest to go to U.S. ports—but they do have an interest in the Arctic and Russian ports on its east coast, Vladivostok onwards, upwards to the Arctic. So that was one important thing. Then nuclear plants, increase in trade. The whole issue is that the Americans have put so much pressure on India not to take Russian oil. So in a way, while India wants to have—and they are—a strategic partner of the U.S., a lot of people can see that the relations are so asymmetrical with the U.S. compared to those with Russia. The U. S. dictates terms to India. They said, for example, we will allow you or not allow you to buy Russian oil. That was a statement from Scott Besant, repeated several times, that you're not allowed, or we allow you to buy Russian oil for one month. We give a sanctions waiver, and this has been extended by another month to manipulate oil prices, which the U.S. does. So they want that flow to continue. And again, Blinken has been in town—that is, the U.S. Secretary of State. He was in town the last two days to attend a Quad meeting in India, the Quad foreign ministers' meeting, in which, again, his whole agenda was to sell Indian oil in the bilateral that he had directly with the prime minister, and even not directly with the foreign minister. He just walked into the prime minister's office. So you can see how unequal those relations are, where the whole assertion is of U.S. power over India. And then India has promised to invest 500 billion U.S. dollars in the American economy to buy American goods. Now, even the British Financial Times, which is a conservative paper, called this bizarre in its headlines, that, you know, India needs every bit of its foreign exchange, and here it's doing foreign direct investment in the U.S. #Pascal And is that in relation to the tariff threat, or is that something else? -- 2 of 16 -- #Anuradha Chenoy It is in relation to the tariff threat, which we had discussed—I think you and I had discussed. But the thing is that India has not pushed back sufficiently. And while the tariffs imposed by the U.S., which had gone up first from 25% to 50% if they continued taking Russian oil, then India decreased taking Russian oil. And the talks which took place are not still very open. We still, you know, the documents haven't emerged. But in the meantime, the U.S. Supreme Court annulled some of the tariffs, but they do stand to some extent. And I think what I've seen written by many Indian economists is that these have not gone in favor of Indian farmers or the Indian economy, though the government has denied that. But this figure, which India has repeated several times, as has the U.S., that India would invest 500 billion U.S. dollars in the next five years, has actually stunned everyone. That is, you know, India is not that big an economy that it can do this kind of investment. In fact, India is trying to welcome foreign direct investment in India, not the reverse. So this kind of, you know, reverse investment, which India has agreed to, shows a kind of leverage that the U.S. is putting on India, besides the fact of pretty high tariffs on Indian goods. So India assists in American reindustrialization, in a sense. But we don't know what India gets in return, really. #Pascal Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this can happen anytime again. So please consider subscribing not only here, but to my mailing list on Substack. That's pascallottaz.substack.com. The link's going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. I mean, a lot of countries pledged this kind of investment, right? Also the Japanese. But the point is, a lot of Japanese companies actually have plants in the United States, and they sell to the U.S., so they earn U.S. dollars. And basically what this pledge is, is to reinvest those dollars into the economy over there. But you need to put the money somewhere anyhow, right? But for India, I think it's a different game, because do we have a lot of Indian companies that are directly engaged in the U.S. market to make USD? #Anuradha Chenoy Well, the thing is that the trade is pretty good — the India-U.S. trade, where India has had a surplus. So it's something like $10 billion yearly trade between the two, where they have a large surplus. But there are not that many Indian companies, though large Indian companies like the Adanis now have promised to, you know, start their companies in the U.S. because of different kinds of pressures that they have faced. And you can see the same thing happened with South Korea. You know, South Korea was the most advanced in shipbuilding, and now they have committed to invest 150 billion U.S. dollars in American shipbuilding. -- 3 of 16 -- So what the U.S. is doing both in, I think it's part of their foreign economic policy, their geoeconomics, where they're doing burden sharing, just like they put pressure on NATO for burden sharing — that they buy U.S. weapons, invest in the military-industrial complex — and there's a deindustrialization, which I can see, for example, in Germany, etc. I've seen it being discussed on your channel. Similarly, that process has started in Asia, and it was evident in the Quad meeting, which happened — the Quad Foreign Ministers meeting. The kind of pressure that the U.S. is putting on Asian countries is to do burden sharing. So it's not just that they will have U.S. bases. Of course, India does not have any U.S. bases, but Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and others do. So they're not just going to be bases, but they're integrating them with their supply chains and American reindustrialization. So they're going to be key. The network, economic networks, I think I can see from what I read — and I read the original documents signed in these bilateral arrangements — where the U.S. now is not just using them as forward bases. Of course, they will, in their struggle and conflict with China, but they want to integrate them and make them into kind of defense hubs for the U.S. military. Of course, they were there earlier also importing military and weapons from the U.S., but also with economic supply chains where they will invest in the U.S. and the U.S. will sell their goods here. So it's that kind of, I could call it, some new form of neocolonialism, really. And the governments and the regimes are accepting it quite willingly. #Pascal This is kind of fascinating that India went along with it. I mean, pressure is one thing. But on the other hand, we've seen that the government of Mr. Modi has been very willing to go along with a lot of things. And of course, there was also this very unfortunate timing coincidence that he went to visit Israel basically like five days or so before Israel and the U.S. started their sneak attack on Iran. But ever since then, on the one hand, I think India is not very happy with the Iran war. On the other hand, Mr. Modi has been very silent about it. Yet the impact also of the oil must be there. I mean, how does the closure of the Strait of Hormuz now impact India? #Anuradha Chenoy It's impacted India very negatively. And I link it up to what you said about Mr. Modi's visit to Israel. It was planned at a time when Israel has been so isolated. For the first time, many European countries see it as a pariah state. The whole International Court of Justice, which calls this a plausible genocide and has said that countries should not give it military assistance or have military relations, both of which India has violated, you know, by going there and continuing with military and economic ties with Israel. And in a sense, this alienates at least the Muslim Arab population. Though the Arab regimes, many of them, are also complicit in this, except for Iran. And Iran has had very old and significant relations with India for decades. And to do this at this time, when everyone knew that the negotiations were not working, and this is the second time that the U.S. and Israel -- 4 of 16 -- were going to bomb Iran, it was a unilateral aggression of choice. It was against the United Nations, every convention of the United Nations. And yet the prime minister went to show his relationship with Israel and almost endorsed Israel's policies by using terms in the Israeli Knesset, by saying, "If India is the motherland, Israel is the fatherland." Now, how can you say such a thing for a country which is committing genocide against the Palestinians, a cause for which India has been one of the first countries since the 1940s and 1950s to recognize the Palestinians' right to self-determination, which, again, by the way, India, as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, as a member of the BRICS, reiterates in these huge forums, i