C Raja Mohan writes: 1991’s biggest lesson for India is not about diplomacy

The collapse of old certainties transformed India’s strategy once before. Iran and Ukraine should force Delhi to rethink it again

Historical analogies must be approached with caution. Yet there is a striking symmetry between the foreign policy challenges that confronted India in 1990-91 and those now posed by the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Simultaneous upheavals in the Middle East and Europe in 1991 shattered India’s economic and strategic assumptions. Today, the two regions are again compelling Delhi to reconsider the foundations of its national strategy.

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, and the US-led war to reverse Saddam Hussein’s annexation, sent oil prices soaring, disrupted remittances and aggravated India’s balance-of-payments crisis. Within months, the Soviet Union — the principal anchor of Indian foreign policy during the Cold War — collapsed. The twin shocks forced India to reform its economy, diversify its international partnerships and rethink its place in the world.

The circumstances today are different, but the underlying challenge is familiar. The war that began with the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader on February 28 has raised energy costs, disrupted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and exposed India’s dependence on the Middle East.

The relief in Delhi after Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding in June has proved premature as the conflict escalates again. In Europe, meanwhile, the Ukraine war has entered its fifth year without a clear path to settlement. Russia is not about to disintegrate as the Soviet Union did in 1991. But the prolonged war, with its mounting costs, is generating new questions about Russia’s future at home and abroad.

India is much better placed to manage these shocks than it was in 1991. It has a larger economy, greater diplomatic weight, and wider international partnerships. Yet its exposure to the world and the resulting vulnerabilities are greater.

American policies are intensifying this vulnerability. The sanctions legislation associated with the late Senator Lindsey Graham is proposing massive punitive tariffs against China, India, and others importing Russian oil. President Donald Trump has also called for the legislation to be expanded to cover Iran. Whether or not Congress accepts that proposal, India’s energy diplomacy will come under increasing stress.

The Indian government has shown considerable flexibility in navigating these pressures so far; but it could get trickier in the days ahead. As in 1991, however, the government appears more flexible than the foreign policy debate surrounding it might suggest. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, India’s official position was caught between competing imperatives. It had to evacuate a large Indian expatriate population, preserve relations with Iraq and the Arab world, respond to the violation of Kuwaiti sovereignty, and accommodate the overwhelming military power assembled by the United States. The government’s contradictory manoeuvres — including Foreign Minister I K Gujral’s embrace of Saddam and the provision of refuelling facilities to American military aircraft — reflected these multiple pressures.

But the domestic strategic consensus in 1991 was hardly realistic. Large sections of the political and foreign policy establishment sympathised instinctively with Saddam, long viewed as a friend of India and a representative of secular Arab nationalism. His annexation of an independent country was viewed as less important than his confrontation with the United States.

The same rigidity shaped Indian reactions to the Soviet crisis. By the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev’s internal reforms and retrenchment abroad had made clear that the old Soviet order was unsustainable. Yet a large section of Delhi’s foreign policy community denounced him for seeking accommodation with the West. When communist hardliners attempted a coup in August 1991, there was barely concealed political glee in parts of Delhi. The coup collapsed within three days; the Soviet Union disappeared in December.

The protagonists have changed, but the instinct survives. Sympathy for Tehran often rests less on the character or conduct of the Islamic Republic than on its resistance to America. Saddam’s secular autocracy and Iran’s Islamic theocracy are as different as chalk and cheese. Yet, the Indian foreign policy community embraced them both as symbols of anti-American defiance.

The debate on Russia is similarly personalised around Putin and sentimentalised through the memory of Soviet support for India. This obscures the need to examine Russia’s internal strains, its changing relationship with China and its imperatives for reconciling with Europe and America. India’s interests require an empathetic understanding of the domestic politics of Russia and Iran — not reflexive signalling of solidarity to the governments of the moment.

The first lesson from 1991, therefore, is that no balance of power is permanent. The certainties of the 1980s — a stable Soviet Union, a bipolar order and dependable partnerships — vanished with astonishing speed in 1991. Unpredictability is not an interruption of normal international politics; it is one of its permanent features. Indian strategy must devote as much attention to discontinuity as to continuity.

The second is that debate itself is a strategic asset. A foreign policy community organised around a rigid consensus will repeatedly miss inconvenient possibilities. India needs stronger expertise on Russia, Iran, Central Asia and the internal politics of the Middle East. India needs sustained investment, more than ever, in languages, history and regional specialisation. It also needs institutions willing to reflect on competing scenarios and encourage contrarian judgments.

The third and most important lesson is that external shocks and systemic changes cannot be managed by diplomacy alone. What rescued India after 1991 were the internal reforms. The answer must be the same today — sweeping domestic reform to cope with a changing world. Diplomacy’s role then and now is to support internal transformation.

The writer is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express. He is also a Distinguished Professor at the Motwani-Jadeja Institute of American Studies, Jindal Global University and the Korea Foundation Chair on Asian Geopolitics at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, Delhi