Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Poland and Ukraine this week marks the continuation of an under-appreciated effort in Delhi to raise Europe’s profile in India’s foreign policy over the last decade. Modi’s visit will plug a missing link — Central Europe — in India’s European policy at a time when Mitteleuropa has returned to the centre stage of great power conflict.
The war for Ukraine, now in its third year, is emblematic of the new geopolitical churn in Central Europe that destabilises the entire world. As Halford Mackinder the British geopolitical thinker put it at the turn of the 20th century, “Who rules East Europe, commands the heartland; who rules the heartland, commands the world-island; who rules the world-island, commands the world.”
Can India remain a passive bystander in this renewed struggle for Central and Eastern Europe? PM’s visit to Poland and Ukraine this week signals that India’s answer is a clear “no”. This is the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Poland since 1979, when Morarji Desai travelled to Warsaw; no Indian prime minister had visited Kyiv since Ukraine emerged from Russia’s womb amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also comes as Kyiv changes the line of military contact with its current offensive into Russian territory that is entering its third week.
Contrary to widespread expectations, Modi’s visit to Warsaw and Kyiv may be less about a new Indian peace initiative on Ukraine. Delhi can’t see this historic visit as a one-time event; for India this should be about setting the terms of a sustainable long-term engagement with Poland and Ukraine, and more broadly Central Europe.
Delhi knows that Russia and Ukraine have a long and shared history and a common faith and know each other even better than India and Pakistan. Moscow may not be looking for a peacemaker. President Vladimir Putin knows how to reach out to the US, which has the most leverage in the Ukraine war, and open negotiations when he finds it appropriate.
For Ukraine, the peace offensive is about winning friends to beef its diplomatic position against Russia. Moscow and Kyiv are waiting for the US elections in November and jockeying to improve their military position on the ground before the next administration takes charge in Washington. The other powers, including China and India, may have a role in promoting peace, but only on the margins.
The war in Ukraine today is a consequence of the breakdown of the post-Cold War political settlements between Russia and the West in Central and Eastern Europe. The nature of war termination in Ukraine will also define the framework for a new order in Europe. Whatever the nature of that new European order, a rising Poland and the current European battlefield, Ukraine will have a prominent place in it. As India seeks to intensify her European engagement, Poland and Ukraine are bound to emerge as important long-term partners. India’s outreach to Poland and Ukraine so soon after the PM’s visit to Russia underlines Delhi’s conviction that it does not view the relationship with Moscow and Central Europe as a zero-sum game.
For decades after independence, Europe has remained a relatively low priority for Indian foreign policy; it was narrowly based on the relations with Europe’s big four — Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. Over the last decade, India has sought to widen this outreach to Europe. During his first two terms as PM, Modi travelled 27 times to Europe and received 37 European heads of state and government. In his first term as foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar travelled to Europe 29 times and received 36 of his European counterparts in Delhi.
The elevation of Europe in India’s priorities was accompanied by an effort to fix some lingering problems with major partners like Italy (the Marines case that was hanging fire), which had put a hold on annual summits between Delhi and Brussels. The Modi government revived the trade negotiations with EU, concluded a trade and investment agreement with EFTA group, established a trade and technology council with Europe, launched a technology security initiative with the UK, outlined a joint defence industrial roadmap with France, embarked on regional security cooperation with Europe in the Indo-Pacific, and unveiled the India-Middle East-Europe corridor (IMEC).
Supplementing the major power relations, Delhi has stepped up engagement with Europe’s many smaller nations. India has begun collective diplomacy with many sub-regions of Europe, including the Nordics and Baltics. Connecting with Central Europe has been part of this plan. Modi’s visit to Austria last month (the first in 41 years) and Poland and Ukraine this week are part of that strategy. A quick survey of Central Europe will point to the fact that Ukraine holds the largest territory in Europe after Russia. Poland and Ukraine are seventh and eighth in European population rankings (including Russia). Poland is the largest economy in Central Europe and ranks eighth in Europe.
Rapid economic growth over the last three decades, a large population base (38 million), its location at the heart of Europe, and massive spending (more than 4 per cent of GDP this year) have turned Poland into a force to reckon with. As it rises, Poland has adopted a foreign policy orientation imbued with a measure of strategic autonomy much like France, Germany, and Italy.
Ukraine’s economy has been shattered by the war, but the prospect of its reconstruction after peace settlement has put it on the geoeconomic drawing boards around the world. Ukraine, which inherited a significant part of the Soviet arms industry, is now looking to the US and Europe to expand and modernise its defence industry. Ukraine’s natural strength as one of the world’s granaries adds to its strategic salience in the years ahead.
For much of its recent history, Central and Eastern Europe have been victims of great power rivalry that repeatedly carved up its territories, rearranged borders, and forced the nations of the region into spheres of influence of the dominant powers. But unlike in the Mackinder era, Central and Eastern Europe now have greater agency in writing their own destiny and reshaping regional geopolitics. Modi’s visit to Warsaw and Kyiv is about recognising that momentous change at the heart of Europe and deepening bilateral political, economic and security ties with the Central European states.
The writer is a visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies and a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express.
