India’s Multi-Alignment or Strategic Opportunism?
India has spent years presenting itself as an indispensable strategic partner: a democracy trusted by the West, an old friend of Russia, an emerging defence power, a close security partner of Israel and an economic stakeholder across the Gulf. Yet the deeper one looks at New Delhi’s conduct, the harder it becomes to identify a consistent principle behind these relationships. India’s foreign policy increasingly resembles transactional multi-alignment in which partnerships remain valuable only as long as they serve immediate Indian interests.
No example illustrates this contradiction more clearly than India’s relationship with Russia. Western governments imposed sweeping sanctions and attempted to reduce Moscow’s energy revenues after the invasion of Ukraine. India moved in the opposite direction. Rather than distancing itself economically from Russia, it became one of the biggest buyers of discounted Russian crude. In June 2026, Russian oil shipments to India reached a record 2.64 million barrels per day. In July, Russia still supplied roughly 2.47 million barrels per day, representing more than half of India’s crude imports that month.
New Delhi describes this as strategic autonomy and energy security. That defence has logic from a narrowly national perspective. But it also exposes the gap between India’s diplomatic rhetoric and its behaviour. Throughout the Ukraine conflict, India repeatedly abstained from consequential UN votes concerning Russia, including resolutions addressing the invasion and Moscow’s attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory. India simultaneously strengthened economic links with Moscow while cultivating Washington as a security partner against China. That may be sophisticated balancing, but allies inevitably ask what Indian commitments would mean in an actual crisis.
The contradiction extends into defence. According to SIPRI’s latest five-year dataset, India was the world’s second-largest importer of major arms during 2021–25, accounting for 8.2 percent of global imports. Russia remained its biggest supplier with 40 percent of Indian arms imports, although that share had fallen substantially as India increasingly purchased Western weapons. France, Israel, the United States and other Western suppliers have become increasingly important to New Delhi’s military modernisation. India therefore benefits simultaneously from Russian strategic ties and Western technology, while avoiding the type of binding alignment expected from conventional allies.
The Middle East presents another uncomfortable balancing act. India has deepened defence and strategic cooperation with Israel while the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has devastated Palestinian society. By October 2026, Gaza health authorities reported that more than 74,000 Palestinians had been killed since the war began. At the same time, India remains profoundly dependent on the Arab Gulf. Indian government figures for early 2026 showed approximately 4.33 million Indian nationals in the UAE, 2.75 million in Saudi Arabia, more than one million in Kuwait and hundreds of thousands more across Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. These communities underpin important economic and social links between India and the Gulf.
Strategic hedging by itself does not make India unique. What raises much more serious questions is the record of alleged and documented Indian intelligence activity inside countries that New Delhi publicly describes as partners.
Canada’s intelligence service has been unusually explicit. Its 2025 public report listed India among the principal states involved in foreign interference and espionage against Canada. CSIS said India had historically cultivated covert relationships with politicians, journalists and Indo-Canadian communities and identified surveillance and coercive activity associated with transnational repression. Ottawa and New Delhi have since attempted to repair relations, but the underlying security concerns cannot simply be erased by diplomatic handshakes.
The United States has confronted an equally troubling case. The US Justice Department charged Indian government employee Vikash Yadav in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate a US citizen and Sikh separatist activist in New York. The allegations remain subject to judicial process, but their seriousness is undeniable. American prosecutors allege that an Indian government employee helped direct a murder-for-hire operation on American soil.
Australia has faced its own counter-intelligence concerns. Reporting based on Australian security sources revealed that Indian intelligence officers were removed from the country after an operation targeting sensitive defence technology, airport-security information, politicians and members of the Indian diaspora. Australian reporting identified the network as linked to India’s foreign intelligence apparatus.
These episodes matter because alliances rest on more than trade figures, defence exercises and summit photographs. They depend on trust. A state cannot demand strategic confidence from Washington, Ottawa or Canberra while facing credible accusations that its intelligence services conduct intrusive operations inside those same societies.
India understandably pursues its national interest. Every major power does. The problem arises when “strategic autonomy” becomes a permanent justification for taking benefits from competing camps without accepting corresponding political costs. India buys Russian oil, acquires Western weapons, develops Israeli security cooperation, depends heavily on Gulf economies and simultaneously presents itself as a natural partner of liberal democracies. That is not traditional non-alignment. It is an increasingly assertive form of transactional statecraft.
The lesson for India’s partners is therefore straightforward. New Delhi should be engaged, traded with and cooperated with where interests genuinely converge. But it should not automatically be treated as a dependable ally. A country that keeps every strategic door open, resists choosing sides when partners face crises and has repeatedly generated counter-intelligence concerns abroad should be judged by its conduct rather than its branding. India wants the privileges of alignment without the restrictions of alliance. Other capitals are increasingly entitled to ask whether that bargain works equally well for them.
