Book Chapter:A Yogic Foreign Policy For a Fractured World
To deal with the opportunities and challenges thrown up by a fractured world between orders, India’s foreign policy should be yogic: calm yet nimble and flexible. India must also shape the contours of the emerging order to its advantage.
Since the Cold War’s end in 1990, the contours of global power have shifted with unsettling speed and complexity. The brief ‘unipolar moment’ that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union marked by the unchallenged ascendancy of the United States was never destined to last. By 2008, global politics had begun to shift, with the rise and fall of major and middle powers in the global system. The rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, and the relative decline of American influence ushered in a new phase of geopolitical multipolarity. Yet even this new order has not fully taken shape. Ours is a world suspended between ordersone where old hierarchies have eroded, but no new equilibrium has taken their place.
The fracture runs deeper than geopolitics. Technology, climate change, and a shifting global economy have caused upheavals across domains. Each decade of the 21st century has been marked by seismic disruption: the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the global financial crisis of 2008, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a succession of wars, including the continuing conflict in Ukraine and renewed violence in Gaza. The 2020s have already unfolded as a long and volatile decade: a pandemic in 2020, economic dislocation in 2021, war in Europe in 2022, upheaval in West Asia in 2023, defining elections in 2024, and by 2025, a familiar disruption in the form of a Trumpian return to American politics.
In his 2024 book New Cold Wars, David Sanger aptly captured the zeitgeist: major powers are once again locked in strategic contestation, reminiscent of Cold War rivalries but now playing out in a far more interconnected and unpredictable world. China and Russia and a disruptive middle power like Iran are actively challenging the liberal hegemonic order that the United States built and led in the latter half of the 20th century. These tensions erupt not only in overt warfare but through proxy battles, economic coercion, and cyber confrontation.
The economic order too has shifted. The creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 heralded an era of deep global integration, and multilateralism. But this phase of globalization has been undercut by protectionist impulses, trade wars, and the strategic reshaping of supply chains. Meanwhile, climate change and pandemic-scale biological risks continue to pose existential threats that global governance seems ill-equipped to handle.
This is, in every sense, a fractured worlddisjointed, volatile, and increasingly unpredictable. The term captures the sense of systemic breakdown: where the certainties of a bipolar or unipolar world have vanished, and new architectures of cooperation and contest are yet to solidify. The assertive rise of China, the diminishing appetite of the United States for global stewardship, and the technological bifurcation of the world into rival ecosystems of data, surveillance, and AI have all compounded this fragmentation.
India was impacted by each of these disruptions and by several others closer home: China’s aggressive border behaviour, Pakistan’s terrorism and upheaval in the sub-continental neighbourhood. But even in this unstable context, India has emerged as a study in pragmatic resilience. Eschewing doctrinaire non-alignment but retaining a strategic autonomy, Indian foreign policy since the 1990s has embraced a supple, multi-aligned posture. India’s instinct is to engage the West through strategic and economic partnerships, preserve long-standing ties with Russia, cautiously manage the relationship with an unruly China, check Pakistan’s revisionist violence, and assert leadership in the Global South.
India’s post-Cold War diplomacyparticularly in the past decadehas reflected a realist recalibration, shaped by the imperatives of national interest and a long-term vision: to secure its strategic environment and fuel its ambition to become a developed economy by 2047. In a fractured and contested world, India’s foreign policy will need to be yogic-calm but nimble and flexible, as it seeks not just to respond to crisis, but to navigate complexity with agility and foresight.
Evolving Multipolarity: Shifting Geopolitics and India’s Strategic Choices
For India, the redefined global landscape of the 1990s required strategic recalibration. The loss of the USSR as a key partner and a severe balance of payments crisis at home led to economic liberalization and by the turn of the century, after the country went nuclear, a pivot toward the West, especially the United States. Yet, India maintained strategic autonomy with a cautious stance, balancing its non-aligned heritage with pragmatic engagement in a U.S.-dominated order. By the 2000s, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, a shift toward multipolarity became evident. China’s rise began to challenge U.S. hegemony, while powers like Russia, the EU, Brazil, Turkey, and Iran asserted regional influence.
This evolving multipolar world poses a series of complex challenges for India: First, managing its strategic partnership with the U.S. while preserving critical defence and energy ties with Russia. Second, confronting China’s assertivenessreflected in its Indo-Pacific expansionism, strategic alliance with Pakistan, and direct clashes with India in areas like Doklam (2017) and Galwan (2020). Third, the erosion of multilateral institutions like the UN, WTO, and WHO has limited India’s ability to shape outcomes through neutral global platforms. Fourth, the unpredictability of partnersexemplified by Donald Trump’s transactional foreign policyunderscores the fragility of bilateral relationships. Fifth, regional instability across South Asia and the Indo-Pacific, including Afghanistan’s turmoil, increased Chinese naval activity, and shifts in Pakistan’s posture on terrorism, complicates India’s security calculus.
The shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world has thus intensified India’s need for strategic autonomy, robust security, creative diplomacy, and agile decision-making.
The Changing Economic Order and India’s Developmental Dilemmas
The global economic order has undergone equally profound changesfrom the globalization wave of the 1990s to today’s fragmented, protectionist environment, which could even be described as de-globalisation.
Emerging from a 1991 balance of payments crisis, India embraced liberalization: reducing tariffs, ending the license-permit raj, freeing up its currency and attracting foreign investment. This spurred growth but also exposed India to the inequities of the global trading system, especially under WTO rules skewed in favour of the global rich. Key sectors like agriculture and pharmaceuticals were constrained by TRIPS and TRIMs.
The 2008 financial crisis shook the neoliberal consensus, fuelling protectionism and regulatory fragmentation. Shrinking export markets and volatile capital flows created external pressures. India’s 2019 withdrawal from the RCEP reflected its caution against exposing domestic markets to cheap imports, especially from China. China’s WTO-driven rise hurt Indian manufacturing, widening trade deficits and limiting policy flexibility.
Recent disruptionsCOVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the U.S.-China trade warintensified global decoupling. But they also presented an opportunity. India recalibrated its trade policy to focus on resilience and strategic autonomy, seeking to position itself as a China+1 alternative in global supply chains. This triggered investments in infrastructure, skilled labour, and the articulation of a coherent industrial policy. For India to become a manufacturing hub requires not just structural reform, Make in India and Production Linked Incentive schemes, but also a sustained commitment to structural reform and major public investment.
On the climate front, India took a leading role in demanding equity and climate justice in global fora, even as it pushed domestic green transitions through solar, EVs, hydrogen, and carbon markets. Its consistent advocacy for fair technology transfers and climate finance underscores its broader goal of reforming global economic governance to better reflect the needs of the Global South.
India’s core economic policy thus rests on the principle of ‘calibrated globalization’ combining global engagement with domestic capacity-building, policy flexibility, and an assertive leadership role in shaping a more equitable international economic order.
The Evolving Technological Order and India’s Policy Dilemmas
Since 1990, the global technological order has been the strongest disruptor, not just for the private sector, but also for nations. Tech disruptions have transformed economies, societies, and power structures, presenting India with both opportunities and challenges.
The Third Industrial Revolution, driven by ICTinternet, mobile telephony, and softwareenabled India’s rise as a global IT outsourcing hub through firms like TCS and Infosys. The 1999 telecom boom and Y2K crisis bolstered this position. Yet, India remained reliant on imported hardware and lacked investments in electronics manufacturing and core research.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), featuring AI, Big Data, IoT, 5G, and quantum computing, has deepened these gaps. India depends heavily on foreign tech, particularly for semiconductors and platforms, while a significant digital divide persists. Despite rising internet access, disparities in digital education, devices, and connectivity remain. India has indeed asserted digital sovereignty by developing public platforms like Aadhaar, UPI, and CoWIN, and passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Act in 2023. Still, India remains among the most cyber-attacked nations, lacking comprehensive cybersecurity laws. Internationally, it advocates a ‘third way’ in digital governancepromoting inclusivity over U.S. dominance or Chinese authoritarianism.
Though its startup ecosystem boasts over 100 unicorns, challenges persist due to low R&D investment, weak academia-industry ties, and limited deep-tech innovation. India’s challenge will continue to be balancing digital growth with sovereignty and democratic values, encouraging frugal AI innovation to seek breakthrough ‘Deepseek moments’, and develop niches for global tech leadership.
Climate Change and Global Health: The New Frontiers of Foreign Policy
Since 1990, non-traditional security threatsespecially climate change and global health criseshave increasingly disrupted domestic policy and global governance. For India, with its vast population, ecological sensitivity, and developmental ambitions, these challenges are complex and deeply interconnected. Climate change has become an urgent concern, with rising temperatures across the Indo-Gangetic plains and more frequent extreme weather events like floods, droughts, cyclones, and heatwaves. These shifts are driving water stress, reduced agricultural productivity, ecological degradation, and impacting food and water security, rural livelihoods, migration, urban planning, and disaster resilience.
At the same time, India faces growing global pressure to decarbonize, despite its low per capita emissions and the need for economic growth to reduce poverty.
Simultaneously, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of global interdependence. In India, the 2020 lockdown halted economic activity and strained millions of migrant workers. The second wave in 2021 brought a humanitarian crisis, with oxygen shortages and overwhelmed healthcare systems. However, the crisis also marked a pivotal moment for India’s global health diplomacy, highlighting both vulnerabilities and the potential of its health infrastructure. Together, climate and health emergencies now shape India’s national strategy and international engagement, underscoring the need for resilient systems and equitable global cooperation.
India has addressed these non-traditional security threatsboth climate change and global health crisesthrough domestic adaptation, policy innovation, and international engagement. To combat climate impacts like floods, droughts, and heatwaves, India launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), featuring eight missions, including the National Solar and Water Missions, to promote clean energy, water efficiency, and ecosystem health. It expanded renewable energy, becoming a global solar leader, and co-founded the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in 2015.
At COP26, India pledged net-zero emissions by 2070, balancing development with environmental responsibility. Domestically, it promoted compensatory afforestation (through CAMPA) and urban resilience (via the Smart Cities Mission). The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) targets air pollution reduction in 122 cities.
India’s approach reflects a balance between resilience, strategic autonomy, and developmental priorities. This balancing act must be sustained but will become harder as the impacts of global warming intensify.
The Trumpian World of 2025: Disruption on Steroids
The return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 has deepened the fractures in an already unsettled global order. His second term signals a revolutionary departure from the US-led, UN-defined ‘liberal hegemonism’ that shaped post-war multilateralism. In its place stands a worldview defined by transactionalism, protectionism, and institutional scepticism.
This new US iconoclasm has profound implications for India, even though it is in the sweet spot of being only a ‘friend’, not a ‘free-riding’ treaty ally (like Europe, Japan) or adversary working against US interests (like China). Still, while opportunities have sprung up, the challenges are sharp and evolving quickly.
Traditional US alliances like NATO and the G7 are under strain, and U.S. commitments to global governance are no longer assured. Trump’s sporadic overtures to Russia for peace in Ukraine and his mercurial stance on China have increased unpredictability, US behaviour has simultaneously encouraged Chinese assertiveness and cemented the China-Russia axisan unwelcome development for Indian strategic planners.
In response, India has adopted a strategy of hedgingmulti-vector engagement, deepening ties with the U.S. through mechanisms like the Quad, iCET, and defense agreements, while continuing robust military and energy cooperation with Russia. Simultaneously, India is expanding its engagement with Europe, ASEAN, and West Asia, to broaden its strategic base, and placing greater emphasis on self-reliance in defence and critical technologies to insulate itself from global disruptions.
On the economic front, Trump’s return has revived tariff threats, weakened the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism, and reinforced an ‘America First’ re-industrialisation policy. These actions reflect a broader move away from free trade and global economic coordination, exacerbating global economic uncertainty and compelling nations like India to recalibrate their trade and investment strategies.
India faces complex challenges amid rising global economic volatility: protectionism, trade wars, and supply chain disruptions that hurt India’s exports and expose its firms to tariffs and tech controls. But opportunities also arise. India is gearing up to attract investment and particularly the China Plus One hedge by global corporates. To benefit from new trading realities, India has entered into FTAs with the UAE, Australia, and the UK, and is negotiating new ones with the EU and the US, while pushing for Global South-centric trade norms via G20, BRICS and SCO. On the tech front, the U.S.-China decoupling is fragmenting digital ecosystems, but could present India with advantages if it leans towards the US AI ecosystem.
In global public goods like climate and health, where Trump’s disengagement has left vacuums, India has some space to step up. From leading the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure to championing LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) and Vaccine Maitri, India is shaping the global commons even as traditional powers retreat.
India Needs a Yogic Calm but Nimble Foreign Policy
India’s post-Cold War foreign policy evolution is a study in strategic agility. Faced with shifting power equations, economic realignments, and non-traditional threats, India has not merely adaptedit has begun to lead. Rather than succumbing to the binaries of the Cold War or the false comfort of rigid alignments or blocs, India has embraced a multi-aligned strategycollaborating with competing power centres while maintaining strategic autonomy. It has encouraged issue-based coalitions like the Quad or I2U2, diversified partnerships, and responded to disruptions with composure and creativity.
This approachbest described as yogic: simultaneously calm, supple and nimblehas allowed India to sustain its rise in a fractured world. Initiatives like TRUST, the Digital India stack, the G20 presidency, and Vaccine Maitri exemplify this posture. India is no longer a rule taker; it is steadily becoming a rule shaperasserting its voice on trade, climate, technology, and development.
The global system is entering a hybrid era, where nineteenth century realist impulses of hard power and spheres of influence coexist uneasily with twentieth century ones of rule of law, and interdependence. As institutions falter and transactionalism rises, India’s capacity to operate across this spectrumanchored in autonomy, guided by principle, and responsive to changemakes it uniquely placed to act as a bridging power between the West and the Rest.
Looking ahead, India aspires to be a developed economy and a major power by 2047, as also a leading power of the Global South. It will be the third-largest economy by 2030, and a global stakeholder that offers solutions, not just critiques. It seeks to bring equilibrium to its periphery and credibility to global fora through a reformed multilateralism.
In this turbulent century, India’s foreign policy must remain grounded in its civilizational ethos yet attuned to the churn of geopolitics. The world will continue to fragment and reconfigurebut if India takes some deep breaths to maintains its calm, flexibility and policy agility, it will not just survive this disorder. It will shape what comes after.
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This Chapter is contributed by Ambassador Ajay Bisaria to the book “The Policy Pivot
Inside India’s Strategic Shift” Published by Public Affairs forum of India.