How India’s strategic autonomy shaped the Brics declaration

The adoption of the Delhi Declaration at the 18th Brics summit shows that India’s policy of strategic autonomy in foreign policy is paying off.

Strategic autonomy does not mean India is neutral.

Rather, it signifies New Delhi’s resistance to alignment with any single global power and determination to preserve the freedom to pursue foreign policy based on its national interests.

It allows India to maintain relationships with adversaries like Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Iran, while pursuing its own economic and strategic priorities.

This diplomatic flexibility was on display at the Brics summit, where India brought together countries with sharply divergent interests and helped forge consensus on some of the most contentious issues confronting the grouping.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the handling of the West Asia conflict.

With Iran and the United Arab Emirates both members of Brics, and with the region engulfed in war, reaching agreement on language acceptable to all sides was always going to be difficult.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan held talks on the sidelines of the summit, against the backdrop of the wider Brics effort to encourage dialogue.

The eventual compromise was reflected in carefully calibrated language in the New Delhi Declaration.

“We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia,” the declaration stated, calling for “maximum restraint” and urging countries to avoid actions that could aggravate the situation.

The wording is significant because it avoids assigning blame to individual countries, while allowing those with different positions to sign the same document.

India’s diplomatic balancing act was also evident in the declaration’s treatment of terrorism.

The declaration reaffirmed the grouping’s commitment to combating terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations”, specifically highlighting the cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorism financing and safe havens.

It also called for “zero tolerance” and rejected double standards in countering terrorism.

For New Delhi, the language is particularly significant because India has long sought greater international recognition of cross-border terrorism, allegedly backed by Pakistan, as a security challenge.

The fact that the declaration was adopted by consensus, including by China, makes the wording diplomatically notable.

The declaration also contains language on trade and sanctions reflective of India’s strategic autonomy.

It condemns unilateral coercive measures, criticising unilateral and secondary sanctions for their impact on social development and vulnerable populations.

It expresses concern about unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures that distort trade and are inconsistent with World Trade Organisation rules.

Though the US is not named, the clause was added against the backdrop of Washington’s tariffs and sanctions against several Brics members, including India, Russia, Iran and South Africa.

At the same time, New Delhi has sought to maintain and deepen its relationship with Washington.

The declaration’s careful wording therefore allows India to defend its position on sanctions and trade restrictions, without turning the document into an explicitly anti-American statement.

This is arguably the essence of strategic autonomy: engaging competing powers without becoming strategically subordinate to any one of them. Perhaps the clearest illustration came in the media arena.

Following the summit, Pezeshkian gave an exclusive and frank interview to India Today on the West Asia conflict, the Strait of Hormuz and the wider geopolitical crisis.

For Iran, the interview provided an opportunity to present its case to an international audience through an Indian media platform at a moment when global attention was focused on New Delhi.

For India, it was a demonstration of the diplomatic space it created by maintaining channels of communication with countries on opposing sides of major geopolitical divides.

The Brics summit, therefore, offered a useful snapshot of India’s foreign-policy philosophy in practice.

New Delhi is neither abandoning its relationships with the West nor distancing itself from Russia, Iran or other members of the global south.

Instead, it is seeking room to engage all sides, protect its economic and strategic interests and use its relationships to facilitate dialogue where possible.

The success of strategic autonomy will ultimately depend not simply on the ability to maintain relationships with competing powers, but on whether India can convert that diplomatic space into tangible economic, security and geopolitical gains.

Meanwhile, at the level of Brics, India demonstrated the value of having the diplomatic room to talk to everyone.