The world order is ‘complicated’. Can Indian foreign policy navigate ‘situationships’?
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s much-discussed special address at Davos in January called for a world of “values-based realism.” First proposed by Finland’s President, Alexander Stubb, values-based realism describes not a strategy, but an “instrument – temporary, adaptive, and situational…that espouses values while engaging respectfully with those who do not share them.”
Put more colloquially, this macro-geopolitical landscape operates exactly like a Gen Z “situationship” – relationships that are not beholden to labels, exclusivity, and can be non-committal.
India, with its cautious diplomatic language and history of moral rhetoric on the global stage, may not seem like a player suited to this new world of “situationships.” Yet New Delhi’s record navigating problematic regimes in its own neighborhoods suggests that India may actually enter this new order with more experience than most.
Situationships and values-based realism
Where once the rules-based international order was the organising principle for global affairs, the broader strategic framework increasingly gaining traction is values-based realism, which underscores the rising salience of variable, issue-by-issue geometries that form when states choose immediate interests over long-term normative alignment.
This approach does not mean a complete rubbishing of values, but their discerning application, while also challenging the idea that a principle must be applied universally to count. Instead, it recognises that, in a fractured...