India occupies a rare political space on the world stage that almost no other major power can fill. 

The foreign policy of this vast Asian giant has become far more than its founding concept of non-alignment. Its determination to work with competing powers without becoming alienated or subordinated is now known as strategic autonomy.

Within that, India practised strategic arbitrage, using rivalry between competing powers to extract advantage while remaining aligned with none.

Ukraine provides a sharp example.

Delhi has resisted Western pressure to break with Moscow and instead has become a major buyer of discounted Russian crude.

Its argument is unapologetic: affordable energy for more than a billion Indians outweighsdemands that it chooses sides in a distant European war.

That line resonates across the Global South, the diverse countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific many of whom believe international rules remain disproportionately shaped by Western interests.

And the policy goes far wider than Ukraine.

India is not only standing up to the West; it is also showing how to resist pressure without turning partners into enemies.

While buying Russian oil and weapons, India is deepening defence and technology ties with the United States. It draws closer to Washington but refuses to become a formal American ally.

India’s trade with China rapidly grows, while Delhi strengthens military ties with Beijing’s arch-enemy, Japan. 

Despite being a nuclear-armed G20 member and one of the world’s biggest economies, Indiapresents itself as a still developing nation, therefore mirroring countries that feel ignored by the established order.

Once, these strands looked like contradictions. Now, they have become India’s geopolitical asset.

Unlike China, India is a democracy with deep educational, commercial and political links to the West.

Unlike the West, it carries historical experiences shared by many, including China, of colonial rule, poverty, famine, partition and decisions imposed from distant capitals.

Few countries can sit so naturally in organisations pointing in opposite geopolitical directions.

India belongs to the Quad with the United States, Japan and Australia, widely regarded as the strategic response to China’s rise. Yet it simultaneously sits with China and Russia in BRICS, the grouping of emerging economies seeking greater influence over the global order, and in the Beijing-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation alongside its longstanding adversary Pakistan.

This positioning can produce striking moments.

At the August 2026 SCO summit in Bishkek, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat beside Vladimir Putin,publicly calling him out to end the Ukraine war.

‘Every day that the war continues, humanity is, in effect, set back a step,’ Modi told Putin. ‘We need to move from endless war to an ​end to the war, ​to a cessation of hostilities.’

India’s attempt to show that partnership does not mean taking sides is a concept difficult to understand by many in the West raised on win-lose election cycles and the good-evil polarisation such as between democracy and authoritarianism.

The question is how India can convert the growing global resonance of its policies into the hard currency of diplomacy, leverage, access and influence.

It cannot match the financial muscle of China or the United States. India’s multi-billion offer of cheap loans to African countries is dwarfed by China’sentrenched financing and infrastructure across the continent.

And it faces visible challenges close to home.

Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives have all pushed back against what they see as India’s overbearing regional influence, while turning to China to widen their room for manoeuvre.

India needs to reverse this patterninSouth Asia by treating smaller neighbours as sovereign partners and demonstrating that proximity to India brings opportunity rather than dependence.

As Professor Abhinay Muthoo told last month’s Democracy Forum debate, the question is how effectively India can convert ‘weight into leverage and leverage into influence’.

‘Power depends on how difficult it is for others to achieve their goals without India at the table,’ Muthoo argued. ‘What is the cost of India not being there?’

For decades American-led foreign policy has been reduced to the choice: You are either with us or against us.

India rejects that premise.Its old non-alignment has evolved into strategic autonomy andarbitrage, a path that is appealing to smaller nations determined to preserve their sovereignty and dignity amid renewed great-power rivalry.

Beijing can offer greater quantities of money, infrastructure and market access.

Delhi offers something harder to quantify: the example of a developing country able to deal simultaneously with the big powers without formally belonging to any of their camps.

Within the global balance, India is writing a new playbook, one that is catching the attention of nations who do not want another superpower dictating who will be their friend and enemy.