The Compass and the Weathervane
Why India’s foreign policy needs principles more than ever - and a framework to apply them
Authors
There is a word that has quietly become the most dangerous word in Indian foreign policy discourse. That word is ‘pragmatism.’ When India looked the other way as Israeli bombs fell on Gazan hospitals, or when India looked the other way when the US and Israel attacked Iran, it was pragmatism. When New Delhi did not push back as Washington effectively ‘permitted’ India to buy Russian oil - as though that were Washington’s permission to grant - it was pragmatism. When silence replaced even a murmur of censure, it was pragmatism. Pragmatism has become the all-purpose anaesthetic that numbs the conscience and passes itself off as sophistication.
This is not a call to be naive. Foreign policy is, at its core, the pursuit of a country’s interests in an anarchic world. It has never been a seminar on ethics. But the idea that principles and interests are necessarily in opposition - that to stand for something is to be weak - is a false and frankly convenient argument, one that usually benefits whoever is doing the bullying at a given moment.
India is not a small country that can afford to be blown around by the winds of other nations’ interests. Yet that is increasingly what is happening. The framework that India seems to have been using - a vague, unanchored ‘strategic autonomy’ that in practice means reacting to whoever is pulling hardest - is failing us. India needs something better. It needs a compass, not a weathervane.
The Problem With Principled Pragmatism Without Principles
Martin Niemoller’s famous poem about the Holocaust - ‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist…’ - is not just a moral lament. It is a strategic observation. Countries that do not stand against bullying when it happens to others will find, sooner rather than later, that there is no one standing when the bully turns on them. India’s silence on Gaza is not just morally troubling. It is strategically unwise in the deepest sense.
The argument made for India’s current posture on Israel is essentially this: India needs their defence technology, their drone capabilities, their intelligence cooperation. This is a real argument. It deserves to be taken seriously. But taken to its logical end, it means India will never call out any country for any atrocity as long as that country has something India wants. Which means India has no foreign policy - only a shopping list. And countries with shopping lists do not have strategic autonomy. They have strategic dependency dressed up in different clothes.
The question is not whether India should have relations with Israel. Of course it should. The question is whether having relations with Israel requires India to be silent about what any reasonable observer would call war crimes. It does not. Deep engagement and public accountability are not mutually exclusive. Pretending they are is a failure of diplomatic imagination.
Framing the Question: What Should India’s Foreign Policy Decide?
Before presenting any framework, one needs to be precise about what question it is answering. The central question India’s foreign policy must address is this: When interests and values point in different directions, how should India calibrate its response - and how should that calibration change as a situation evolves?
This is not a question about whether to have ties with difficult countries. It is about what those ties should look like, what they should come with, and what they should be contingent upon. It is about drawing a distinction between engagement and endorsement. And it is about building a reputation - because reputation, in foreign policy, is not soft power fluff. It is hard currency. Countries that are known for their red lines are harder to push around than countries that are known for having none.
A 2×2 Framework: Interests vs. Values
The two axes India should use to evaluate any bilateral relationship are Strategic Importance (how much does this country matter to India’s core national interests - economic, security, regional stability?) and Value Alignment (to what extent does this country’s conduct align with the principles India holds as non-negotiable - respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, civilian protection in conflict?). These axes are genuinely orthogonal. A country can matter enormously to India’s interests and still behave in ways that violate Indian values. Conversely, a country can share all of India’s values and yet be strategically peripheral. The framework below maps what India’s foreign policy posture should be in each quadrant:
The Strategic Posture Matrix
Rows = Value Alignment (High/Low) | Columns = Strategic Importance (Low/High)
| ← LOW Strategic Importance → (to India’s core interests) | ← HIGH Strategic Importance → (to India’s core interests) |
|---|---|
| LOW Alignment with India’s Values ENGAGE WITH CONDITIONS Trade & commerce can proceed, but India maintains public distance on political positions. Censure at forums where warranted. No military deepening. | LOW Alignment with India’s Values STRATEGIC ENGAGEMENT + PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY Maintain ties for national interest but be unambiguous about India’s red lines. Call out violations openly. Technology or arms deals do not buy India’s silence. |
| HIGH Alignment with India’s Values DEEPEN QUIETLY Prioritise partnership. No need to grandstand, but share platforms, cooperate on multilateral agenda, build durable institutional ties. | HIGH Alignment with India’s Values FULL PARTNERSHIP The ideal zone. Deep cooperation across domains - economic, security, cultural. Invest heavily in the relationship and defend it proactively. |
The most important quadrant - and the most often mishandled - is the top-right: high strategic importance, low value alignment. This is where, for instance, Israel and the US currently sit for India. The instinct is to go silent, to take the technology and say nothing. The framework says otherwise: engage for strategic reasons, but be publicly accountable. Call out violations at the appropriate forums. Make it known where India stands. This is not inconsistency. It is the hardest and most mature form of diplomacy.
The Escalation Ladder: A Graduated Response Framework
Foreign policy is not binary - it is not a choice between full partnership and total severance. Between those two poles lies a ladder of graduated responses, each carrying a different diplomatic cost and sending a different signal. India needs to institutionalise this ladder so that its responses to deteriorating situations are predictable, calibrated, and credible. The two axes of the ladder are Severity of the Trigger (how badly has the other country violated principles or harmed Indian interests?) and Bilateral Stakes (how much does India stand to lose by acting?). Here is what that ladder looks like:
India’s Diplomatic Escalation Ladder
| Rung | Action | When to Use | Diplomatic Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Calibrated Silence | No official comment; watch and wait | New or ambiguous situation | Low |
| 2. Back-channel Signal | Private diplomatic note or envoy message | Close partner erring; preserve relationship | Low-Medium |
| 3. Abstention at Forums | Withhold vote at UN/multilateral body | Principle matters, but bilateral stakes are high | Medium |
| 4. Public Statement of Concern | MEA/PM statement expressing concern | Ally crosses a clear line on values | Medium |
| 5. Vote Against at Forums | Active vote censuring the country | Repeated violations; India’s credibility at stake | Medium-High |
| 6. Bilateral Demarche | Formal diplomatic protest, recall of envoy | Direct affront or harm to Indian interests/values | High |
| 7. Suspension of Agreements | Pause specific MoUs, visits, or cooperation tracks | Egregious conduct; needs clear signal | High |
| 8. Sanctions/Downgrade | Economic measures, downgrade of ties | Last resort; conflict with Indian interests direct | Very High |
The power of this ladder is not in any individual rung. It is in the predictability of the whole. If other countries know that India will move up the ladder when certain lines are crossed - not impulsively, not out of domestic political pressure, but according to a clear framework - then India becomes significantly harder to manipulate. You cannot exploit a country that has announced its own red lines in advance and has a history of honouring them.
What This Means in Practice
Applied to the Israel-Gaza situation or US-Israel-Iran war, this framework would have India staying firmly in the top-right quadrant of the matrix - maintaining defence and technology ties - while moving to at least Rung 5 on the escalation ladder (voting at international forums to censure disproportionate civilian harm) and issuing a Rung 4 public statement of concern through official channels. This is not rupture. This is not anti-Israel or anti-US. This is India saying, in effect: we do business with you, we value our partnership, and we hold you to the same standards we hold everyone else. That is not weakness. That is confidence.
On the question of American ‘permission’ to buy Russian oil: India’s response, if it had a framework like this, would be simple. Strategic Importance of the US - very high. Value Alignment - generally reasonable, but with a concerning trend toward treating India as a junior partner. India should be in the top-right quadrant with the US too, which means engaging deeply but also being willing to move up the escalation ladder when Washington overreaches. A quiet Rung 2 back-channel signal - ‘we note your concern, we are not asking for permission, let us discuss where our interests genuinely align’ - is far more effective than either silent compliance or public confrontation.
Principles as Strategy, Not Sentiment
The argument for a principled foreign policy is ultimately a strategic argument. Countries that are known to stand for something are courted differently from countries that are known to stand for nothing. India’s civilisational weight - its genuine non-alignment tradition, its role as a voice for the developing countries, its constitutional commitment to a rules-based international order - is an asset that is being quietly squandered every time it chooses transactional silence over principled engagement.
This is not about lecturing other countries. India has no interest in being the world’s moral tribunal. It is about knowing what India will and will not do, and making that legible to the rest of the world. A country with clear principles is a country with leverage. A country without them is simply available - available to be used, pressured, and ultimately disregarded.
The compass exists. India just needs to pick it up and use it.