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The Prospects of Russia and India Jointly Leading a New Non-Aligned Movement A Review Article A. Korybko, V.M. Morozov Вестник МГИМО-Университета. 2020. 13(2). С. 94-122 ОБЗОРНАЯ СТАТЬЯ DOI 10.24833/2071-8160-2020-2-71-94-122 The Prospects of Russia and India Jointly Leading a New Non-Aligned Movement A. Korybko, V.M. Morozov Moscow State Institute of International Relations (university) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia The ongoing global systemic transition is transforming international relations from its erstwhile unipolarity to what experts agree is either multipolarity or, less popularly, bipolarity. However one chooses to describe the present world order, it's clear that the US and China are the main global players, which places Russia and India – decades-long strategic partners – in a junior position vis-a-vis both of them, especially their mutual Chinese neighbor with whom they share membership in BRICS and the SCO. The neo- realist school of International Relations Theory preaches the need to pursue national interests, which sometimes align with others', and it is argued in the article that it is with this idea in mind that both countries have a motivation to jointly improve their strategic positions relative to the People's Republic, albeit in a non-hostile manner that avoids the risk of inadvertently triggering a security dilemma and reversing the recent gains made in Eurasian integration. Two articles published by Russia's Valdai Club in 2019 indicated the possibility of cre- ating a new Non-Aligned Movement, with the most recent one proposing that it be jointly led by Russia and India in order to advance the aforementioned neo-realist ob- jective of balancing China. This suggestion is very intriguing and deserves some further elaboration, to which end the present research was conducted in order to place the new Non-Aligned Movement proposal in a strategic context relevant to the ongoing global systemic transition. Nearly a dozen articles and reports by Russian experts were analyzed, resulting in the conclusion that the proposal is a promising one but requires much more research into its challenges and opportunities in order to become more than just a proposed concept. In the event that any tangible progress is made on it, however, it must be done so extremely carefully in order for China not to misunder- stand its intentions. Key words: Russia, India, China, multipolarity, bipolarity, New Non-Aligned Movement, Peaceful Development Movement, South Asia, Eurasia Received: December 16, 2019 Accepted: March 20, 2020 94 MGIMO REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS • 13(2) • 2020 Э. Корыбко, В.М. Морозов ОБЗОРНАЯ СТАТЬЯ ussia has closer and more strategic relations with India than it does with prac- tically any other country apart from China outside of the post-Soviet space, and this has held true for decades, whether during the era of bipolarity in the RCold War, the subsequent one of unipolarity that followed, or the ongoing global sys- temic transition to what is popularly regarded by many to be multipolarity. Russian- Indian ties have remained strong, though they have nevertheless been tested at times. The present moment is a defining one for both countries because it affords them the opportunity to strengthen their relations by transitioning them from their hitherto dependence on mostly weapons- and energy-related trade into other spheres of prior- itized cooperation such as the commercial one that would contribute to making their strategic partnership a more influential international force. One of the main questions of contemporary international relations is whether the current world order is already truly multipolar or if it's really in an unofficial state of bipolarity between the existing US hegemon and its rising Chinese competitor. This question is more than just of academic interest since the answer will shape the strategic contours of Russian-Indian relations, especially in the event that both countries tacitly agree that contemporary international relations are more bipolar than multipolar. The resultant policymaking outcome would naturally be to pool their efforts into jointly creating a third pole of influence that could more adroitly balance between the other two and therefore accelerate the multipolar transition over time. Moreover, this de- velopment could also attract the attention of less powerful states that might gravitate towards the third pole. Russia and India might believe that it is in their best interests to pioneer a new Non-Aligned Movement (Neo-NAM), the latest version of this idea was proposed by a Valdai Club program director Oleg Barabanov in May 2019 and expanded upon in de- tail by his two colleagues, Alexey Kupriyanov and Alexander Korolev, several months later in September 2019 following Indian Prime Minister Modi's milestone participa- tion in the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) as President Putin's guest of honor. The latter two experts proposed that the two countries jointly lead the new network, which they called the “Peaceful Development Movement” (PDM). This idea is certainly in- triguing, but in order to better understand its possible game-changing role, it must be placed into the proper strategic context. It is important to say a few words about the original Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the initial academic discussion of a new version of it that the authors were able to discover. NAM was first conceptualized during the Bandung Conference in 1955 as a platform for the dozens of countries caught between the two superpowers of the time to collectively balance between them. It was formally established in Belgrade in 1961, and Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia were its leading members. This organization was most active and symbolic during the Cold War but became somewhat obscure after 1991 (Ray 2012). Marco A. Vieira from the University of Birmingham, however, argues that it still continued to provide its members with what he regards as ontological security (Vieira 2016). Citing scholar Anthony Giddens, Vieira describes ВЕСТНИК МГИМО-УНИВЕРСИТЕТА • 13(2) • 2020 95 Review Article A. Korybko, V.M. Morozov this concept as helping actors counter “'ontological anxiety'...by developing and main- taining a coherent understanding of the world and a stable sense of their presence in it”, which is important because they “are fundamentally driven by a psychological desire for predictability and self-understanding, which shapes expectations and dis- positions toward other actors.” He also references Jef Huysmans, who “first applied the term ontological security to the field of critical security studies”, after which the scholarship “primarily split into two distinct theoretical and analytical treatments of the term: (1) the sociological or exogenous approach and (2) the psychological or en- dogenous approach.” In summary, Vieira believes that the NAM allowed its members to experience a ‘shared self-identity’, which the authors of the present article consider being relevant for the relations between Russia and India (endogenous approach) and between themselves and others (exogenous approach). This ‘shared self-identity’ is changing in parallel with the contemporary interna- tional system, and rather than reflecting a middle ground between the US and USSR or opposing American unilateralism, it signifies balancing between the US and China. The evolving role of the NAM explains the reason for considering the prospects for a “'new' non-alignment”, as Professor Abdul Nafey of the Jawaharlal Nehru University first postulated in his article (Nafey 2005). Although referring at the time to the IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa) Forum, the logic behind his proposal is pertinent in the current context and to the present article. Nafey believes that the NAM was “too large and amorphous” to successfully protect the multilateral rules-based order, and that changes in the international system during the 1980s greatly weakened its unity and overall effectiveness. For this reason, he proposes that India, Brazil, and South Af- rica do more to comprehensively enhance their cooperation with one another in order to overcome these shortcomings and ultimately revive the spirit of NAM. We consider Russia and India capable to function as dual cores of the Neo-NAM because they both fulfill Nafey's requirements of potential great powers in that they have “power resources, geopolitical attributes, and attitudes and goals in international system” and expand their capabilities, which is another crucial indicator of a poten- tial great power according to Nafey. The Indian scholar's views that the NAM was weakened by the gradual global economic restructuring of the 1980s and the briefly intensified Cold War between the superpowers is relevant today in the sense that the world is once again undergoing an economic restructuring between the competing models of economic nationalism spearheaded by the US and the reformed globaliza- tion vision advanced by China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Remembering the need for the NAM countries to remain focused during such transformative times (which according to him wasn't the case during the crucial decade of the 1980s), our argument is that Russia and India can jointly take up the mantle of leadership of the Neo-NAM in a manner which overcomes the structural challenges of the past and therefore helps revive its relevance. Therein lays the significance of the present research, which references a few official documents and then examines the views of leading Russian experts on the state and 96 MGIMO REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS • 13(2) • 2020 Э. Корыбко, В.М. Морозов ОБЗОРНАЯ СТАТЬЯ potential of bilateral relations between Russia and India. The objective is to discern the stance of influential figures who might in the future have an impact on shaping policy by virtue of their prestigious professional positions and attendant institutional contacts, to which end their published works will be analyzed. Once the strategic back- drop has been established, the research will then proceed to discussing the two pre- viously mentioned works about the Neo-NAM, with a focus on the one authored by Kupriyanov and Korolev.
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