Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel on the eve of strikes by a combined US-Israel (USIS) force on Iran and India’s silence on the blatantly illegal assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not the foreign policy volte-face that it seems to be at first sight. It is the natural and predictable outcome of the path that Indian foreign policy has been on for the last decade. India has, by discarding moral legitimacy and conflating pragmatism with short-term transactional relationships, ended up in a position that is neither morally nor pragmatically sound. A feature of Indian foreign policy in the last decade has been a refusal to be tied down to either tradition or abstract principle. The argument offered in support of this is that a multipolar world requires flexibility and that such flexibility can only be maintained by side-stepping the “big” questions of principle and dealing with the principal actors one on one. While this argument might, on the face of it, seem appealing, it comes with two important caveats that are not frequently discussed. First, the benefits India gains from such naked pragmatism often come bundled with losses in influence. Second, these benefits are often contingent on the rest of the world still upholding some minimum level of principle and predictability in international relations. Moral legitimacy as a source of influenceA significant portion of post-colonial India’s influence in geopolitics came from striving to take the morally correct position in geopolitical situations in which it did not have a direct stake. While this might not have always led to morally correct outcomes – India’s role in Congo, where it got bogged down leading a hugely unpopular UN effort comes to mind – India’s positions were generally seen to be a reliable indicator of the right thing to do. This meant that within the Global South, India’s voice wielded a strong guiding influence, not because of its size or military strength, but because of the moral legitimacy its voice conveyed. Interestingly, India’s relationship with Israel offers an insight into the diplomatic currency this moral legitimacy once provided. The public conversation in India usually focuses on what India can get from its relationship with Israel, but rarely asks why Israel courts India. India might be valuable as a purchaser for Israel’s defense industry, or a trading partner, but these are replaceable benefits for Israel. What Israel seeks, and has always sought, more uniquely from India is its legitimising influence. Early Israeli leaders attempted to shed Israel’s tag as a European colony by integrating it with Asia in the public imagination. Nicolas Blarel argues that India, and Nehru in particular, were seen as critical to this attempt. From 1952, when Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion described India as the gateway to Asia, to the efforts made by Israel to join the non-aligned movement (correctly rejected given Israel’s ties to the West), India’s view of Israel was seen as having the power to shape how the rest of Asia would view Israel. While Israel’s self-perception has since shifted almost entirely to proclaiming their status as an outpost of “western civilisation”, the spectacle organised with Narendra Modi in the Israeli Knesset on the eve of the strikes on Iran demonstrate that the primary benefit sought by Israel from India is still legitimation. In this case, of its blatantly illegal strikes on an old Indian ally. India over the last decade has repeatedly asserted its right to make practical foreign policy decisions based on short term transactional benefits (which are then termed pragmatic). And yet, it expects to still wield the influence it once did from emphasising the role of morality in foreign policy. This is untenable. Indian public figures are of course free to assert that India leads the Global South, but a cursory glance at India’s voting record at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in the last decade demonstrates that this leadership has few takers. In this period, India has tended to abstain from questions of principle and to focus on pennies saved here and there from these abstentions. These abdications of moral responsibility are not positions that other countries can reasonably be expected to take their cues from. The benefits India has gained from discarding moral legitimacy in favour of pragmatism, has therefore come with corresponding losses in influence, especially in the Global South. Today, India, which is home to a substantial Shia population, by refusing to perform even the basic courtesy of offering condolences on the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, or condemn the illegality of his assassination, stands geopolitically as distanced from the rest of the Global South as is possible. Pragmatism in a volatile worldThe second caveat to the benefits of pure pragmatism is that these benefits are often contingent on the rest of the world still upholding some minimum level of principle and predictability in international relations. For example, abstaining from condemning the Russian aggression on Ukraine, allowed India to maintain its relationship both with the West and with Russia and allowed India (or at least its conglomerates) to benefit from lower crude oil costs. But when the West itself departs from even the pretense of upholding any principles of international law, as has happened since the Gaza genocide, the resulting free-for-all becomes impossible to navigate solely by considering short term interests. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States has moved from its post-Cold War norm of exercising dominance through institutions, to exercising dominance based on hard power, with its own self-interest as the only guide. India has struggled to keep up with this new world order. Shorn of any guiding principles, India’s pragmatism often pushes it into proximity with what it sees as the most powerful actor in any situation. However, in volatile and evolving situations, outcomes, including where power will lie at the end, are difficult to predict, necessitating frequent about-turns. What once looked like pragmatic flexibility now increasingly resembles a whiplash-inducing inconsistency.India’s relationship with Iran in recent years is a case in point. When Israel launched an attack on Iran in June 2025, India initially distanced itself from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) statement upholding Iran’s sovereignty and condemning Israel’s aggression. Two and half months later, amid a deteriorating relationship with the US, India without explanation signed on to the Tianjin declaration condemning the same Israeli military strikes on Iran. India, after investing millions of dollars and years into building Chabahar Port as a strategic investment, has in 2026, under American pressure, stepped back from operational control of the port. Offering support to Israel on the eve of this latest aggression, and rapidly downgrading its relationship with Iran, has left India that receives 50% of its crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz, and has 9 million citizens resident in the Gulf, in an unappealing position where its material interests are now tied to a quick and successful regime change by the US-Israel combine, in abject contradiction to every principle of international law or common feeling that India once tasked itself with upholding on the global stage. The domestic distaste for this position within India is so strong that multiple opposition parties have chosen to break ranks and issue their own statements of condolence and condemnation of the USIS strikes. What next?From Trump’s revival of the Munroe doctrine with respect to South America to Marco Rubio’s recent glorification of colonisation, it is increasingly clear that the international lawlessness that we see today is not an aberration. Through the course of the genocide in Gaza, and the systematic dismantling of international law and international institutions that has accompanied it, the US has indicated that it is willing to reframe its international relations entirely in terms of hard power. It is imperative therefore for Indian foreign policy to prepare for this new normal. If India’s strategy is to ingratiate itself to the US by supporting Israel, using the somewhat dated rhetoric of the global war on terror, the evidence suggests that this is unlikely to work. The Modi government has unquestionably been India’s most Israel-friendly government to date. This has not positively impacted the India-US relationship, which is perhaps on its worst footing in recent decades. The recent India-US trade deal has made it amply clear that Washington today approaches relationships not in terms of proclaimed shared values, but in terms of the material concessions they can extract. These concessions, for a country that values its strategic autonomy, or sovereignty, are likely to be intolerable. India’s position today is not particularly enviable, and yet decades of caution have made sure that it isn’t worse. There is time for a strategic reset. But in such a reset, it is important to recognize that Indian foreign policy needs principles to ground itself with in this new era. A dogmatic devotion to flexibility and chasing short term transactional wins, and the total rejection of moral legitimacy as a force in foreign policy, can become limiting in itself. Pragmatism does not preclude the use of guiding principles. For example, the so-called Beijing consensus is known for its pragmatism, and ability to work with a diverse variety of governmental structures, but it is still clear that the developing world must prioritise self-determination and keep their economies free from American control. While there is room to debate what these guiding principles should be for India, the protection of sovereignty – our own, and of every other country – is a good place to start. Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.