Foreign Policy Lessons from 1991
Historical Parallels: Context and Background
- Today, the Iran-US-Israel war beginning February 2026 has raised energy costs and disrupted Hormuz navigation.
- The Ukraine war enters its fifth year, with Russia generating mounting questions about its own future.
Key Lessons from 1991 for India’s Foreign Policy
The certainties of the 1980s — a stable Soviet Union, bipolar order and dependable partnerships — vanished with astonishing speed in 1991. Unpredictability is not an interruption of normal international politics — it is one of its permanent features. India’s strategic thinking must devote as much attention to discontinuity as to continuity.
India’s domestic strategic consensus in 1991 was hardly realistic — large sections of the foreign policy establishment sympathised with Saddam Hussein as a friend and secular Arab nationalist symbol. The same rigidity shaped Indian reactions to the Soviet crisis. A foreign policy community organised around a rigid consensus will repeatedly miss inconvenient possibilities; India needs stronger expertise on Russia, Iran, Central Asia and Middle East internal politics, and institutions willing to encourage contrarian judgments.
What rescued India after 1991 were not diplomatic manoeuvres but internal reforms — the 1991 economic reforms unlocked India’s growth trajectory through liberalisation. Today’s answer must be the same: sweeping domestic reform to cope with a changing world. Diplomacy’s role is to support internal transformation, not substitute for it.
Challenges Facing India’s Foreign Policy: Structural Concerns
Iran Policy Personalisation
India’s Iran policy rests on sympathy for Tehran’s resistance to America rather than on careful assessment of Iran’s internal strains and changing relationship with China.
Russia Policy Sentimentalism
India’s Russia debate is sentimentalised through the memory of Soviet-era support, obscuring Russia’s domestic politics and its deepening partnership with China.
Contradictory Positions
In 1991, India was caught between competing imperatives — evacuating Indians from Iraq, preserving Arab relations, responding to US military assembly and accommodating Gujral’s embrace of Saddam.
Rigid Consensus
A foreign policy community that dismissed Gorbachev’s reforms and could not imagine the Soviet collapse exemplifies the danger of groupthink in strategic circles.
American Sanctions Risk: Proposed US sanctions legislation against Russian oil imports could put India’s energy diplomacy under increasing stress.
