31 July 2024

India Must Embrace Security Coalitions – Analysis

Rahul Jaybhay

June 15, 2024 marks the fourth year since China’s deadly escalation at the Galwan Valley. Since they began in 2020, negotiations and dialogue are yet to deliver any resolution to the border dispute. As such, India’s multi-alignment strategy, precisely implemented to ‘manage’ China, has run its course and requires recalibration.

The multi-alignment strategy is conceptually synonymous with the non-alignment approach that India followed post-independence. India avoided alliance entanglements, renounced bloc politics and raised collective consciousness in post-colonial independent nations.

In the same vein, the multi-alignment strategy stipulates maintaining ties with all the great powers without commitment to any of them, straddling multiple global institutions and pushing the voices of the Global South foreward.

Both non-alignment and multi-alignment embrace employing India’s defence capabilities to push back against powers that encroach on India’s sovereignty. But both approaches also shy away from prescribing security coalitions or alliances to manage India’s security relations with a more powerful revisionist actor — China.

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