This comment examines India’s evolving foreign policy in the context of a shifting multipolar world order and intensifying great‑power rivalry in Middle East. It argues that India’s strategic autonomy, multi‑alignment, and normative activism, particularly its push for a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) position it as a “responsible middle power” seeking to balance security cooperation with normative leadership. This comment highlights India’s energy, diaspora, and security stakes in the Gulf, its pragmatic recalibration through Indo‑Israel ties, and challenges posed by Pakistan‑Saudi defence pacts. Ultimately, India’s credibility hinges on translating normative ambitions into operational capacity, reinforcing domestic enforcement, and institutionalizing cooperative intelligence and counter‑terrorism frameworks.
As a competitive multipolar (multi-theatre) world takes concrete shape in the post‑Cold War unipolar era with economics, technology, military power, and global norms increasingly intertwined, India confronts a complex mixture of opportunities and challenges. By pursuing strategic autonomy through multi‑alignment, proactive engagement in international institutions, and flexible, interest-based partnerships, New Delhi is positioning itself to play a more influential role on the global stage, and, crucially in West Asia. The region’s energy security, diaspora welfare, and security interests, particularly counterterrorism cooperation, has given India a strong foothold in its evolving geopolitics. In such a scenario, New Delhi’s strategic choices depend on the stability of its national institutions, policy flexibility, and coalition-building capabilities, which are features that closely align with its longstanding doctrine of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment. These perspectives have been repeatedly emphasised by India’s leadership as essential to navigating geopolitical uncertainty.
In this context, India’s rise is increasingly framed not as a function of any rigid alignment but as an outcome of its strategic independence and multi-alignment combined with intellectual renewal, enabling it to overcome challenges of supply-chain volatility, geopolitics and emerging technological battles. Indian foreign policy in this volatile milieu reflects a shift away from the symbolism of classic non-alignment towards pragmatic strategic alignment. It does not imply rigid alliances or alliances-based confrontation, rather, it denotes flexible partnerships calibrated to protect national interest and adapt to changing circumstances. Such an approach gives India to hedge structurally within a multipolar or the multi-theatre world, and to maximise autonomy while mitigating strategic exposure. Hedging, in this sense, becomes a stabilising strategy rather than a sign of indecision.
When it comes to West Asia, India’s interests are extensive and deeply embedded in pragmatism. The region has become indispensable to India’s energy security, source of investments, as well as remittance inflow from a large and economically significant diaspora. There are over 8.5 million Indians in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states alone which together contribute over 40 per cent of India’s annual remittances ($45 billion in 2024). It also sits strategically at the crossroads of major sea-lanes, global energy markets, and the growing great-power rivalry. Consequently, India’s policy must integrate energy and economic engagements with security collaboration, counter-terrorist cooperation, normative diplomacy, and cautious hedging amidst evolving and unfolding dynamics of engagements by external powers like United States and China with the region.
Within this framework, the India-Gulf counter-terrorism partnership has emerged as a pragmatic avenue for cooperation. Though it is currently envisaged as a loose but structured arrangement, it emphasizes intelligence sharing, joint investigations, capacity-building, and coordinated action against terror financing and extremism networks. For the Gulf states dealing with both domestic and international security challenges, such an alliance with India offers law enforcement expertise and understanding of diaspora dynamics. For India, counterterror cooperation with GCC states bridges the gap between its global counter-terrorism agenda and region-specific operational engagements, thereby helping align shared norms with tangible security outcomes. At the same time, this cooperative framework would need to remain sensitive to regional dynamics as well as the strategic relations of GCC states with major powers like the US, Russia and China. This renders India-Gulf security cooperation contingent on flexible, and informal arrangement rather than being institutionalised through formal alliances. Mirroring New Delhi’s broader multi alignment strategy, this flexibility preserves space for cooperation while avoiding perceptions of strategic encroachment.
India’s approach, however, is not without challenges. Firstly, the region’s centrality to great power rivalry renders regional players dependent on major power or per se US aligned security framework and hence limiting the space for independent security architectures. This makes it incumbent on India to calibrate its engagement carefully to avoid being perceived as a strategic challenger. Secondly, New Delhi’s initiatives such as Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) seeking an international legal framework on terrorism might be perceived as a constraint on state-backed non-state actors or proxy strategies, testing India’s diplomatic persuasion and soft power capacity. Thirdly, domestic constraints, including institutional capacity gaps, resource limitations, governance challenges, and inter-agency rivalries risk weakening India’s normative credibility abroad.
In the post-cold war world order, with India’s trajectory increasingly reflecting a model of “responsible middle-power multilateralism”, blended with strategic hedging, this opens space for new normative architectures and security coalitions grounded in functional cooperation in areas such as counterterrorism, financial regulation, trade security and migration management, rather than ideology or strategic bloc politics. It makes models or instruments like CCIT, export control regimes, multi alignment and regional partnerships as illustrations of India as a norm entrepreneur and potential regional stabilizer especially in the volatile West Asian theatre, contributing to a pluralistic and rules-based global order.
The evolution of Indo-Israel relations from cautious engagements to extensive cooperation in defence, intelligence sharing, technology and agriculture reveal India’s pragmatic recalibration of its West Asian policy. While prioritizing security cooperation New Delhi has sought to retain political flexibility, mindful of regional sensitivities involving Iran and the broader Islamic world. This implies a dual strategy. Firstly, it entails bolstering India’s threat monitoring capacity to deter terrorism by leveraging Israeli technological capabilities and intelligence-based cooperation. Secondly, it requires sustaining a calibrated diplomacy towards Iran and Arab states to safeguard energy supply interests and diaspora welfare. The result is strategic diversification within a multi‑aligned framework. Though recent developments like Pakistan-Saudi Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement does complicate India’s regional calculus, India has responded cautiously given the deepened ties with Gulf states.
Taken together, India’s foreign policy synthesis can be described as one of “realist responsibility” which preserves national interest while advancing institutional and normative architectures aimed at maintaining peace and stability. This approach acknowledges the limitations of unilateralism for middle powers like India and underscores the utility of cooperative institutions in constraining asymmetric threats. New Delhi’s success will depend on its ability to integrate doctrine, lawfare, and diplomacy with a strong exportable narrative, exemplifying the intent behind strategic autonomy as an enabler of cooperative security rather than one which undermines it.
Conclusion
India stands at a decisive moment amidst shifting global power structures, new economic architectures, technological developments and deepening normative divides. Its normative approach rooted in strategic autonomy, calibrated multi-alignment, and responsible statecraft offers a pathway to influence without being overbearing. The central challenge remains institutional consisting of the capability to convert normative leadership into effective operational capacity. If New Delhi can strengthen domestic enforcement mechanisms, delivery reliability and interest-based cooperative security frameworks, it can emerge as a potential stabilising actor in West Asia. The coming times will determine whether India's multipolar vision translates into practical outcomes or be restricted by emerging bipolarism and proxy politics.
*Ms Simran Rathore is a freelance commentator on security affairs in South Asia. The views expressed here are her own.
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