India's role in Ukraine crisis: A test for positive non-alignment

In the post-Cold War years, geopolitics was marked by three noticeable trends -- a shift towards the economic combat as different from a military confrontation, recession of open warfare and the rise of proxy war as a phenomenon of the unipolar world order and a growing belief that there was scope for multipolarity in the new global environ.

With the advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, India has been able to steer these paradigm shifts in international relations to its advantage and gradually emerge as a major power, capable of influencing the world on issues of 'war and peace'.

It is extremely significant that in the current Ukraine-Russia military conflict, Prime Minister Modi was the only world leader whose intervention was sought by both sides, and also that he lost no time in speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin upfront and called for immediate stoppage of Russian military action and resumption of talks for mutually resolving the issues and establishing peace.

Putin, it can be presumed, felt assured that India understood Russia's economic and security concerns. Understandably, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky also reached out to Modi -- predictably after India let it be known to the world that its abstention at the UNSC on this issue was meant to establish its 'impartiality' towards both sides.

Prime Minister Modi also talked to him, reiterated that India stood for immediate cessation of military operations by Russia and commencement of peace talks and indicated that 'India was willing to help' the process of peace negotiations.

This is a historical development showing that Modi stands tall in the world community and confirming the status of India as a major sovereign power not aligned to any 'camp'.

It needs to be mentioned here that under the Prime Minister's direct guidance, India stepped up the process of safe evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine as the conflict showed signs of getting protracted.

The rise of India on the world scene as the counsel of sanity and peace in the context of Ukraine- Russia military confrontation has to be credited to Prime Minister Modi's policy framework for handling international relations.

First, India is guided by bilateral relationships based on mutuality of economic and security interests in consonance with the larger cause of world peace.

Secondly, Prime Minister Modi's foreign policy is free of any ideological baggage of the past and is truly non-aligned in the sense that it wants friendship with all without compromising with the larger interests of humanity.

That is how India has been able to maintain strategic partnership with the US and a deep friendship with Russia as well -- these relationships are not at the cost of either of them.

Finally, what has given strength to India's voice of wisdom is the fact that it has a firm belief in the philosophy of upholding the truth at home and abroad -- as a civilisational legacy of this country -- while yielding no ground to an adversary and countering any aggression of the latter with full might.

The strategic Indo-US bonds are rooted in the common mission of the two largest democracies of defending the cause of the democratic world against the aggressive moves of a dictatorial regime like that of Marxist China under Xi Jinping.

China has joined hands with Pakistan -- a fundamentalist State -- to pursue anti-India designs. While India is prepared to deal with any aggression of China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and any further mischief of Pakistan on the Line of Control (LoC) on its own, it has -- in joining hands with the US in Quad -- laid emphasis on the maintenance of 'rule-based order' in the Indo-Pacific and also pressed for an active role of this forum in the sphere of global humanitarian causes such as the joint handling of the Covid pandemic.

India's strategic partnership with the US is independent of US-Russia relations, and similarly, India's friendship with Russia is not weakened by Russia's close bonds with China.

It is a tribute to Prime Minister Modi's uprightness that US President Joe Biden also hoped to have consultations with India on Ukraine-Russia armed conflict -- he gave that indication after Modi had spoken to the leaders of the two warring nations.

On the character of this conflict itself, India with an impartial view has seen that recognition of Ukraine as a sovereign nation and measures to address the security concerns of Russia hold the key to this impasse.

After the dismemberment of the USSR, it was necessary for the Western world to encourage peaceful coexistence between Russia and the erstwhile East European countries that had declared independence.

Moves to induct immediate neighbours of Russia -- Ukraine is one of them -- into NATO, which is a military alliance, would be considered a provocation by Russia and similarly any separatist trend in the eastern provinces of Ukraine predominantly inhabited by Russian-speaking population would cause concern to the Ukraine government.

President Putin sitting pretty on annexation of Crimea in 2014 felt emboldened to first militarily intervene in the name of peace-keeping at Donetsk and Donbas, and finding that President Zelensky was speeding up the process of joining NATO, extended military operations to the mainland of Ukraine from its eastern arc.

Putin seemingly aimed at taking control of Kyiv after militarily weakening Ukraine to pave the way for a favourable regime there. All through this, however, he significantly created an impression of him being open to an acceptable settlement.

Putin watched the US and its European allies offering only to send arms and military equipment to Ukraine without making any promise of committing boots on the ground there, and talking principally of economic sanctions that did not unsettle Russia in the immediate term.

The US and its Western allies, along with others who had stakes in peace, should have gotten into the act in the wake of the conflict over the Crimean Peninsula, and worked for a principle-based framework of peace between Russia and its neighbours.

A non-military friendship pact should still work for protecting the sovereignty of Ukraine and alleviating security concerns of Russia. The pact could possibly confer special status to Crimea as a bridge of friendship between the two countries.

Biden's arrival on the scene evidently queered the pitch for Putin, who seemed to have enjoyed a degree of strategic adjustment with former US President Donald Trump and taken note of Trump's aloofness from EU.

Biden put Russia on notice along with China as the potential adversaries for him. Also, Europe -- even after the end of the Cold War -- seemed to be viewing Russia from the prism of global antagonism rooted in security that had guided the tense superpower rivalry earlier.

The option of a peaceful relationship between Russia and its East European neighbours should have been tried harder.

The Ukraine-Russia military confrontation is running into a stalemate as Ukraine would not give up easily. Biden had in his State of the Union address called Russian action in Ukraine a 'premeditated' offensive, but has not gone beyond affirming that the US and European allies are united in their resolve to counter it.

There is still time for speeding up peace efforts. The international community does not want a war of global impact. The US has to deal with an expansionist China and avoid opening a second front with Russia.

It is good that India leads a powerful voice for the resolution of the conflict. The UN should work on a two-plank mediation -- guarantee of Ukraine's sovereignty without NATO membership and withdrawal of Russian military presence from Donetsk and Donbas as a follow up on a peace pact between Russia and Ukraine that would guarantee equal opportunity of development and equal protection of law for all Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine in a classic practice of democracy. It should be possible to oversee the observance of such a peace agreement through a tripartite arrangement.

In today's scenario, economic issues should be handled without invoking military power. Europe-Russia relations should rest on an acknowledgement of this new reality. At the same time any attempt at 'salami slicing' so obviously adopted by China as a strategy, should not go unchallenged.

This is extremely important for a world that has seen open wars being substituted by 'asymmetric warfare' in its multifarious forms -- from utilisation of social media as an instrument of combat to cyber-attacks, and of course the trans-border 'covert' offensives in which terrorists -- raised through ideological or faith-based motivation -- are used as the weapon.

The world scene is marked by a new vulnerability to 'invisible' methods of causing destabilisation in a country -- the Sino-Pak is becoming infamous for practising these.

The voice of wisdom raised by India should be listened to by both the US and Russia--that there is a likelihood of this happening ultimately is a matter of great satisfaction for all advocates of world peace.

Prime Minister Modi has the distinction of being a world leader who has an equation of personal friendship with both Biden and Putin and there is little doubt that when the Ukraine-Russia impasse is resolved, the outcome would have a definitive Indian imprint.

(The author is former Director of Intelligence Bureau. The views expressed are personal)