Why India Has Friends Everywhere, But Leverage Nowhere

For more than a decade now, India has sought to build its “strategic autonomy.” New Delhi has booked a place at every high table — the Quad with Washington, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Beijing, BRICS with Moscow, and the I2U2 Group with Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. The national interest, we were told, required us to be close to everyone, but not too close to anyone. Officials cultivated the art of the rhetorical win, and crafted exquisite put-downs for neighbors and superpowers alike.

But what is the national interest that was being protected precisely? There are three priorities that New Delhi’s foreign policy is supposed to center. First, the safety of the vast Indian diaspora; second, that the neighborhood remain largely terror free; and third, securing oil and gas for an energy-poor but fast-growing nation. Each of these is threatened by the crisis in the Gulf — but particularly the third.