Delhi needs its own Monroe Doctrine before it’s too late

History has been forgiving to nations that mistake restraint for strategy. Great powers do not lose influence overnight; they lose it one concession, one miscalculation, and one illusion at a time. Bharat today stands at precisely such a moment. While New Delhi continues to speak the language of cooperation and regional goodwill, Beijing is relentlessly speaking the language of power and leverage. Unless Bharat abandons its strategic complacency and articulates a doctrine that draws unmistakable red lines in its neighbourhood, it risks waking up strategically strangled one day.

The immediate trigger is Bangladesh’s latest embrace of China. Dhaka is, unquestionably, a sovereign nation. It has every legal right to choose its economic partners. But sovereignty has never existed in a geopolitical vacuum. Every sovereign state also carries the responsibility of ensuring that its decisions do not fundamentally threaten the security of its neighbours.

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This is not an Indian invention. It is the oldest rule of geopolitics. The United States never tolerates Chinese or Russian naval bases in its neighbourhood (remember what happened to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro?). Russia has done the same with Ukraine, though one would have expected Moscow to have handled Kyiv more effectively. China reacts aggressively to even symbolic military cooperation with Taiwan or in the South China Sea. Why, then, should India alone pretend that hostile strategic infrastructure in its immediate neighbourhood is merely another commercial investment?

Reports indicating that Bangladesh has allotted a 110-acre economic zone at Mongla Port — 180-odd kilometres away from Kolkata Port — to a Chinese state-owned enterprise should, therefore, alarm every Indian strategist. The project was earlier given to an Indian company under bilateral understandings.

Though Dhaka would want Delhi to believe that the Mongla agreement is strictly commercial and has no strategic implications, the fact of the matter is that the very location makes it commercially unviable. No such ports in the vicinity of Bharat can operate at even an operational profit, far less thrive. Such ports would be profitable only with Bharat’s presence and trade passing through them. And since Delhi will have nothing to do with a port that has dragon links, its viability becomes questionable. This is precisely what happened with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, demonstrating how commercially unviable infrastructure, financed through unsustainable debt, eventually translates into long-term strategic control.

China understands this well, and it invests precisely for this reason: to gain strategic control over the passage of time.

With this, the larger reality is unmistakable: China’s menacing footprints around India’s maritime periphery. Beijing already enjoys strategic leverage over Bharat through Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, and Kyaukpyu in Myanmar. It has already invested heavily in Chittagong. A deeper presence at Mongla would tighten yet another link in what strategic analysts have long called the “String of Pearls” — a network of Chinese ports and logistical facilities aimed at strategically strangling Bharat in the Indian Ocean.

The assumption that goodwill alone purchases geopolitical influence has repeatedly failed. History is replete with examples of Indian concessions that were justified in the name of peace and regional harmony but yielded little strategic dividend. Former envoy Rajiv Dogra writes in his latest book, How Nations Fail: “In 1953, India ceded the Kabaw Valley, Manipur’s rice bowl, to Burma (now Myanmar). Earlier, before Burma gained independence, India failed to assert control over the Coco Islands, which historically were Indian possessions. In 1947, its leaders acquiesced to Britain’s plan to partition the country. Later that year, the newly carved Pakistan succeeded in wresting another 13,297 sq km in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and 72,971 sq km of the Northern Areas comprising Gilgit and Baltistan.”

He continues, “In 1954, India surrendered its extraterritorial rights in Tibet, including shutting its military outposts at Yatung and Gyantse in Tibet and handing over Tibet’s postal, telegraph and public telephone services, which it had been running, to the Chinese occupying forces… In 1960, India conceded, through a most generous treaty, four-fifths of the total waters of the six-river Indus system to Pakistan. Even before the war in 1962, China had occupied 38,000 sq km of Indian territory in Aksai Chin. In 1966, India returned the highly strategic Haji Pir to Pakistan. In 1972, at Simla, India gave away its war gains at the negotiating table. In 1974, India gifted Katchatheevu Island to Sri Lanka.”

Ambassador Dogra’s conclusion is stark: India has too often confused accommodation with strategy, paying a long-term geopolitical price, especially with its neighbours. Yet, generosity has rarely produced lasting strategic loyalty. In fact, many neighbours have perfected the art of balancing Bharat against China, extracting concessions from both while steadily increasing Beijing’s influence.

Trust without deterrence is merely wishful thinking. This is precisely why Delhi needs its own Monroe Doctrine.

When US President James Monroe declared in 1823 that external powers would not be permitted to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, the United States was nothing more than just a regional power. It lacked overwhelming military dominance. Yet, this did not stop him from drawing the Lakshman Rekha: that America’s neighbourhood was not open to strategic penetration by rival great powers.

Critics may say that the United States could impose the Monroe Doctrine because of its geostrategic advantage: of being located far away from other rival powers. Bharat has China ominously lurking in its very neighbourhood. But then the presence of the Dragon makes it even more paramount for the country to have its version of the Monroe Doctrine.

Delhi must now formulate an equivalent principle suited to 21st-century realities. Such a doctrine would not seek territorial expansion. It would not deny the sovereignty of neighbouring nations. Nor would it compel exclusive alliances. All it would do is establish one fundamental proposition: any permanent military, dual-use, or strategically significant infrastructure established by hostile extra-regional powers in Bharat’s immediate neighbourhood will fundamentally alter bilateral relations and invite proportionate economic, diplomatic and strategic consequences.

The message must be unmistakable. Partnership with Bharat comes with benefits. Strategic facilitation of Delhi’s principal adversary comes with costs. Every great power operates by precisely this logic. India should not try to become the lone exception and expect things to fall into line on their own.

Critics will predictably dismiss such thinking as aggressive, hegemonic or outdated. They will argue that Delhi lacks the economic strength or military capability to enforce such a doctrine. But doctrines do not derive their power solely from military superiority. History reminds us they mostly stem from political resolve. Bharat today faces a similar test. Strategic ambiguity has encouraged encirclement. Excessive restraint has invited exploitation. And diplomatic generosity has been mistaken for strategic weakness.

It’s time for Delhi to do away with its strategic woolliness. It’s time for it to draw its own Monroe Doctrine before it’s too late.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)