Opinion | How India can square the circle of Russia with the US and other Quad partners
- For India, the affordability of Russian military equipment comes with lower quality and coercive leverage, and that is too high a price. The solution is to diversify towards suppliers such as the US
- Signalling such an intention at the coming Quad meeting would make clear to the world India’s implicit criticism of Russia
The next meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, is scheduled for May 24 in Tokyo. There, the like-minded democracies of Japan, Australia, India and the United States will rededicate themselves to keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open.
Achieving this goal will require respect for liberal principles, including deliberative dispute resolution, territorial integrity and sovereignty. These are all principles being violated on a massive scale in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Australians, for example, indicated that different states will approach the Ukraine problem based on their own situations and interests, according to Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla. This has, so far, averted open disagreement between members of the grouping.