Grand Strategy | The material limits of strategic autonomy

NOt unity daylight passes in young new delhi without a serious conversation in the urban center or its social media on the importance of strategic autonomy, and how we must jealously guard it. With Trump’s America hurting Indian interests more frequently than ever before, the anger at those critically analysing strategic autonomy has only become more pronounced. Of course, we must safeguard our strategic autonomy. But much of our conversation about strategic autonomy has been lop-sided. We have been debating its political grammar with little focus on its material base. Debating the political foundations of strategic autonomy without addressing its material foundation is like theorising nuclear deterrence without possessing nuclear weapons.Let me put it bluntly: A country’s autonomy is, at the heart of it, a function of its national power, not a function of its political intentions or declarations. Let’s take a look at the nature of our material dependence on external powers. The Middle East supplies most of our energy; a great deal of manufacturing comes from China; technology and capital come from the US; Russia replenishes our legacy defence inventory; and France and Israel (and increasingly the US) provide us with high end military ware. So whether or not we pretend this material background exists, Indian state’s policies cannot ignore this background.Also Read: Grand Strategy | Eight steps for India’s strategic reorientationWhile it is not unique in India’s case, India faces this dilemma way more than other states because small states do not typically face this dilemma. Their autonomy problem has a clean answer because their ambition has clear limits. A country with a continental landmass, two nuclear-armed adversaries, a maritime arc to defend, a billion and a half population to care for, and ambitions to be a global power, cannot abandon its strategic autonomy. The bigger and more ambitious a country, as is India, the less it would want to align with an external power. Conversely, the bigger and more materially dependent it is on external powers, the less it can act on its own. Ambition pushes India to claim strategic autonomy while dependence stops India from exercising it. It is a function of comprehensive national power not keeping pace with its physical size and political ambition.I must concede that several of our dependencies are also strengths of our policy of multialignment. The Russia relationship gets us discounted oil and sustains military platforms we cannot yet replace. The American relationship brings technology and capital that no other partner is in a position to offer. The French and Israelis give us military capabilities neither Washington nor Moscow will share. The Chinese supply chain, however dominant and therefore worrying, keeps Indian manufacturing cost-competitive and profitable. Our external material vulnerability is also, read differently, the logic of diversification at work without which we would either be dependent on one partner or short of much needed resources for growth. Diversification across competing suppliers gives us the room to manoeuvre that a tighter alignment would shut off; abiding by pure strategic autonomy would shut it off too.We can either lament our vulnerabilities or choose to navigate it cleverly. For that we must know what is a strength and what is a vulnerability, and at what moment one becomes the other.Consider the Russia example. Russian oil is a strength until Western secondary sanctions came along. American technology access is a strength until an unfriendly White House makes it a weapon. The Chinese supply chain is tolerable until a border incident makes the supply chain a Chinese weapon. Each of these has been tested in the last five years. And to be fair, we have not always passed the test. Nor have we failed them all.This has been a persistent condition of Indian foreign policy. Non-alignment was always a feel-good political posture and belief; material non-alignment almost never existed. If anything, there is more material basis for nonalignment today than ever before in our history. We had serious external dependencies through the decades: American grain powered the 1960s; the 1970s and 1980s ran on Soviet defence; Western capital arrived in the 1990s. We have always negotiated our autonomy against our dependencies, even when our strategic elite grew used to pretending otherwise. The pretence that our strategic autonomy is not negotiable has only cost us conceptual clarity.I think the time has come to focus less on “strategic autonomy” and focus more on “strategic capacity”: the ability to produce, deploy, replace, and sustain in the critical domains of the country. True strategic autonomy is a product of strategic capacity.Also Read: Talks have failed, but diplomacy is aliveI also think that multi-alignment should be discussed more honestly and without being too embarrassed about it, because it is a serious response to the dependence portfolio that we have. Sometimes, multi-alignment is intelligent hedging, and at other times it is weakness being managed carefully. Hedging buys us time while only material capacity buys autonomy. If we confuse the two we will keep mistaking options on the table for actual power.Building material power is politically unglamorous and definitely slower than electoral cycles. Critical minerals, semiconductor fabrication, aero-engine programmes, indigenous propulsion, pharmaceutical intermediates, energy storage or even creating fashion brands: these have long build cycles and won’t produce news headlines anytime soon. But then that is the difference between a country that can act decisively and a country that can only hedge.I must clarify that none of what I am saying is an argument against India’s global geopolitical ambitions but an argument to match our language and desire to our material condition. We are a big country with the dependence portfolio of a big country which will mean that our strategic autonomy will always be partial, negotiated, and managed. So we must know the difference between a political posture and a material position because in the end autonomy is built, not just declared. We must live with the gap between our ambition and our capacity, while attempting to close that gap.