(Security Conversations) Prof. Tej Pratap Singh

 Security Conversations

Strategic Autonomy at a Crossroads: A Conversation with Prof. Tej Pratap Singh

Department of International Relations, Banaras Hindu University

Prof. Tej Pratap Singh

As Bharat navigates simultaneous pressure points, from Washington's sanctions architecture to a cautiously thawing frontier with Beijing to the enduring shadow of cross-border terror, Prof. Tej Pratap Singh of Banaras Hindu University offers a clear-eyed reading of where the nation's strategic autonomy stands, and what it will take to hold it.

Q1. On the US-Bharat relationship under sanctions pressure

The US Senate's passage of the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, threatening tariffs of up to 100 percent on buyers of Russian energy, arrived just a day before VP Vance's cordial call with PM Modi. How do you read this pattern of Washington pairing strategic warmth with economic coercion? Can Bharat continue to balance its energy security interests with the Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership, or is a harder choice approaching?

Prof. Tej Pratap Singh:

I would resist the temptation to read this as choreography. Washington rarely coordinates its legislative and diplomatic tracks that neatly. The Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act by an overwhelming 86 to 11 margin, and the bill as it now stands gives the President authority, not an obligation, to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the top five importers of Russian oil and gas, of which Bharat is one, alongside China, Azerbaijan, Hungary and Slovakia. The bill carves out an exception for countries that account for less than 15 percent of Russia's own global natural gas exports and are taking significant steps to reduce that dependence, and it still has to clear a House that reconvenes only on August 31, with its tariff provisions already drawing scepticism from members of both parties. The Vance call, meanwhile, came against the backdrop of a personal note, congratulating him on the birth of his son, and a readout emphasising the sustained momentum in trade, defence, technology, energy security and critical minerals cooperation. That the two events sat a day apart tells you more about the messiness of the American legislative calendar than about a deliberate stick-and-carrot sequencing.

That said, the underlying pattern you are pointing to is real, and it predates this bill. Washington has, for at least two years now, tried to hold two positions simultaneously: Bharat as an indispensable partner in the Indo-Pacific balancing architecture, and Bharat as a country whose Russian oil purchases offend the sanctions logic Washington has built around Ukraine. These are not reconcilable through goodwill alone, and my reading is that Bharat should not expect the warmth to insulate it from the coercion. What insulates Bharat is leverage, not sentiment. New Delhi has three cards worth playing. First, the scale of the bilateral relationship itself, goods trade alone was valued at roughly 129 billion dollars in the most recent full-year USTR figures, with the balance running in Bharat's favour, and combined goods-and-services trade has been cited by the Foreign Secretary at over 241 billion dollars, which raises the cost to American consumers and companies of any blunt tariff instrument. Second, the fact that Indian refiners buying discounted Russian crude have kept global oil prices from spiking, which serves American and European consumers as much as it serves Bharat, a point Indian negotiator have made before and should keep making. Third, the waiver architecture inside the bill itself, which gives the executive branch discretion, meaning the actual outcome depends far more on the ongoing bilateral trade negotiation than on the statute's ceiling.

Can Bharat continue to balance energy security against the Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership. For now, yes, but the room for manoeuvre is narrowing, not widening. The honest answer is that Bharat has already been diversifying, quietly, reducing the share of Russian crude from its wartime peak, and that trend will likely continue regardless of what Washington does, because commercial logic, refinery economics and the reputational cost of being singled out all point the same way. What Bharat should not do is accept a framing in which energy sourcing becomes a loyalty test. Strategic autonomy was never meant to be comfortable, it was meant to be functional, and its value is precisely that it lets Bharat absorb pressure from multiple directions without being permanently captured by any one of them. A harder choice is approaching in the sense that the tolerance band for ambiguity is shrinking, but I would not call it a binary yet. Call it a compression rather than a chokepoint.

"What insulates Bharat is leverage, not sentiment."

— Prof. Tej Pratap Singh, BHU

Q2. On the China dialogue ahead of the BRICS Summit

The 36th WMCC talks in New Delhi produced agreement on a new Expert Group for boundary delimitation, even as Beijing continues its cartographic assertions over Arunachal Pradesh. Is this diplomatic momentum a genuine normalisation, or tactical calm before a high-profile summit? What should Bharat's red lines be?

Prof. Tej Pratap Singh:

The meeting produced language on establishing an Expert Group under the WMCC to work on boundary delimitation, alongside a Working Group on border management and additional General Level Mechanisms in the eastern and middle sectors, all building on the National Security Adviser's meeting with Wang Yi on the sidelines of the BRICS NSA gathering in New Delhi this June, itself an extension of the process set in motion at the 24th round of Special Representatives talks held in August last year. This is genuine institutional plumbing, and institutional plumbing matters, because durable de-escalation is built through mechanisms, not through summits. But I would be careful about calling it normalisation. China has not altered its cartographic claims over Arunachal Pradesh, and there is no evidence that the renaming exercises or the assertive mapping have paused even as the talks proceed. What we are seeing is Bharat testing whether process can be decoupled from posture, which is a defensible strategy, but not the same thing as trust.

On red lines, I would name three. No further attempt to alter facts on the ground along the LAC while diplomatic engagement is ongoing, since any transgression during a period of apparent goodwill would be a far graver breach of faith than one occurring amid open hostility. Full transparency on upstream hydro projects on trans-border rivers, an issue Bharat has now raised repeatedly at the WMCC without full Chinese reciprocity, and which touches water security for the entire eastern Himalayan belt. And no linkage between border normalisation and Bharat's core partnerships, meaning no expectation that warmth on the boundary buys Beijing leverage over Bharat's Quad participation or its defence relationships. Tactical calm managed carefully, with verification built in rather than assumed, is not a bad outcome. It becomes a bad outcome only if New Delhi mistakes the calm for resolution.

Q3. On conflict resolution frameworks for the Pakistan front

The Kulgam killings in July are a reminder that infiltration and terror continue even as the ceasefire on the LoC formally holds. Is there a durable pathway between Bharat's zero-tolerance posture and any long-term de-escalation with Islamabad, or has Operation Sindoor permanently redefined what "normal" relations with Pakistan can mean?

Prof. Tej Pratap Singh:

We need to be precise about what Operation Sindoor changed. Kulgam was a grim reminder that infiltration and the targeted killing of non-local labourers, in this instance two workers at a brick kiln in Kelam village, one from Chhattisgarh and one from Uttar Pradesh, remain a live tactic, and Lashkar-affiliated elements continue to operate even with a formal ceasefire holding on the LoC. Sindoor established that Bharat will respond kinetically and directly to mass-casualty terrorism traced to Pakistani soil, collapsing the old assumption that Pakistan could sponsor proxies while sheltering behind nuclear deterrence and diplomatic ambiguity. That is a genuine redefinition of the ceiling of Indian restraint, and I do not think it is reversible.

But a redefined ceiling on retaliation is not the same as a foreclosed floor for engagement. Conflict resolution theory would tell you that even adversaries locked in protracted rivalry maintain narrow functional channels, military hotlines, water-sharing mechanisms, humanitarian corridors, precisely because total severance raises the risk of miscalculation. My own view, and here I will be direct rather than hedge, is that a return to composite dialogue in the old sense is not realistic and probably should not be attempted, because it would signal that terrorism carries no cost. What is durable is a posture of zero tolerance on terror combined with narrow, verifiable, non-symbolic engagement on things like the LoC ceasefire mechanism itself. Normal relations in the pre-2016 sense are almost certainly gone. What replaces it is a colder, more transactional coexistence, punctuated by periodic crises, managed rather than resolved. That is not a satisfying answer, but I would rather give an honest one than a hopeful one.

Q4. On the Bharat-US-Russia trilemma

Bharat has historically prized strategic autonomy, yet Washington's sanctions architecture is designed to force a binary choice on Russian oil. How durable is Bharat's multi-alignment doctrine when both Washington and Moscow are raising the cost of neutrality?

Prof. Tej Pratap Singh:

This is really the analytical core of the conversation, so let me take it seriously. Multi-alignment was always premised on the idea that Bharat could extract value from multiple relationships without being forced to choose between them, precisely because no single partner could offer Bharat everything it needed. That premise is being stress-tested, not broken. Russia needs Bharat more than Bharat needs Russia at this point, given Moscow's dependence on Indian and Chinese purchases to sustain its war economy, which gives Bharat more latitude with Moscow than is commonly assumed. Washington's sanctions architecture, even with its 100 percent ceiling, is discretionary by design, built with waiver authority that reflects an awareness inside the American system that a blunt application would damage the broader Indo-Pacific partnership Washington itself values.

The durability of Bharat's doctrine, in my judgement, does not depend on whether pressure exists, pressure will always exist, it depends on whether Bharat keeps building the economic and technological weight that makes coercion costly for the coercer. Multi-alignment is not free. It has always required Bharat to absorb friction from all sides simultaneously. What would break the doctrine is not sanctions pressure itself, but a moment where Bharat's own economic vulnerability, energy dependency, or defence dependency on any single partner became acute enough to remove its bargaining power. That is the real risk to watch, not the rhetoric of any bill.

Q5. On indigenous defence capability and diplomatic leverage

With the Kusha interceptor test, INS Mahendragiri's commissioning, and the ₹52,000 crore procurement push, Bharat's defence indigenisation is visibly accelerating. Does this meaningfully strengthen Bharat's hand with major powers, or does genuine strategic autonomy require deeper structural shifts beyond hardware alone?

Prof. Tej Pratap Singh:

I would answer this in two parts, because collapsing them together is a common analytical error. The Kusha interceptor's first flight test, intercepting a simulated high-speed aerial target with an indigenously built missile, radar and command network, the commissioning of INS Mahendragiri with roughly 75 percent indigenous content, and the roughly 52,000 crore rupees of fresh Defence Acquisition Council clearances weighted toward counter-drone and layered air defence systems, are all genuinely significant. They reduce Bharat's exposure to supplier leverage, they reduce the political cost of using force since indigenous systems carry no risk of a supplier state withholding spares or software updates mid-crisis, and they signal credibility to partners and adversaries alike. In that narrow but important sense, yes, hardware indigenisation strengthens Bharat's hand, because it removes one of the classic levers other powers have historically used against countries dependent on imported arms.

But hardware alone does not constitute strategic autonomy, and I would push back gently on any framing that treats it as sufficient. Genuine autonomy requires depth in critical and dual-use technology supply chains, particularly semiconductors and advanced electronics where Bharat still imports heavily. It requires financial autonomy, meaning reduced vulnerability to dollar-denominated sanctions architecture of exactly the kind we discussed regarding Russia, which is why the slow, careful work on rupee trade settlement and alternative payment mechanisms matters as much as missile tests, even though it generates far less headline attention. And it requires diplomatic bandwidth, the institutional capacity to run simultaneous, high-intensity relationships with Washington, Moscow, Brussels and the Global South without any one of them crowding out the others. Kusha and Mahendragiri are necessary. They are not sufficient. The next decade of Bharat's strategic autonomy will be decided less by how many systems carry the Made in India label and more by how few chokepoints remain where a single external actor can, in a moment of crisis, simply say no to Bharat.

Seema Sanghosh English: August 2026