Instead of advocating for competing visions, Russia, India and China must explore interoperability standards, joint financing for third-country projects, and complementary corridor development. RIC must remain issue-based rather than evolving into a formal alliance, preserving utility while avoiding a bloc formation that could trigger balancing responses, writes Maj Gen (Retd) BK Sharma.
Introduction
The global system stands at an inflexion point. The unipolar moment has conclusively ended, yet what has emerged in its place remains fundamentally amorphous. Rather than a settled multipolar equilibrium, we are observing a more turbulent landscape: civilisational assertions, overlapping spheres of influence, competing institutional frameworks, technological disruptions, and ideological divergence—all playing out most intensely across Asia. Within this fluid landscape, the RIC triangle, despite its informal character and internal contradictions, offers a potential stabilising core for the emerging Asian order. Today’s multipolarity is characterised by cooperation, competition, and confrontation, with states participating in multiple, contradictory institutional alignments. China and India collaborate within BRICS+ while facing off across the Himalayas. Russia aligns with Beijing while partnering with Delhi. The United States competes with China while probing the G2 concept. The RIC grouping possesses three distinguishing attributes: civilisational depth spanning millennia, continental centrality bridging Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific, and shared impulses toward strategic autonomy in resisting hierarchical alliances.
RIC as an anchor for the New Asian Order
Asia’s evolving strategic tapestry defies single-power hegemony, such as the Pax Americana or Pan-Sinica. Instead, Beijing’s economic gravity, Delhi’s demographic scale, Tokyo’s technological sophistication, Moscow’s resource prowess, ASEAN’s centrality, SCO regionalism, and BRICS universality—interact within layered and often competing institutional frameworks, imparting a polycentric character. China drives continental connectivity through the BRI, while the United States anchors maritime security through its alliance networks. India positions itself as a swing state, participating in the Quad while deepening engagement with Russia and maintaining trade ties with China. A functional RIC core could contribute several stabilising elements to this fractured landscape. It spans the critical interface between continental and maritime Asia, linking energy-rich Russia, manufacturing-dominant China, and services-oriented India. It offers potential mechanisms for managing Eurasian landmass geopolitics—from Central Asian stability to Arctic corridor development—outside Western-dominated frameworks. Most critically, it provides a consultative platform through which the three largest Eurasian powers can coordinate positions on global governance issues, the evolution of the financial architecture, and technology governance without triggering concerns about bloc formation.
Strategic Convergences
The protagonists share a multipolar vision underscored by the rejection
of unipolar dominance. Russia seeks strategic parity; China pursues greater global influence; India champions multipolarity in order to preserve its autonomy. The RIC members together espouse the cause of the Global South. They reiterate the primacy of the UN Charter, as well as reforms in the UN Security Council and the Bretton Woods institutions. Western sanctions on Russia, technology restrictions on China, and financial coercion concerns in India converge on seeking an alternative payment infrastructure through BRICS mechanisms. There are shared concerns about religious extremism and violence, non-traditional security, and organised crime spanning Eurasia. Russia’s hydrocarbon exports meet the demand of China and India, creating durable commercial linkages that endure geopolitical turbulence.
Structural Divergences
Yet RIC’s promise confronts formidable obstacles. The China-India strategic rivalry, steeped in unresolved border questions, military standoffs along the Line of Actual Control, and China’s strategic embrace of Pakistan have created fundamental trust deficits. India perceives China as its principal long-term challenger, not only territorially but also in terms of influence across the Indo-Pacific. The 2020 Galwan Valley clash, Pakistan-China collaboration during Operation ‘Sindoor’, and the ensuing military build-ups demonstrate how quickly bilateral tensions can override aspirations for trilateral cooperation. China’s economy exceeds the combined GDP of Russia and India, while its military modernisation outpaces that of both. This creates apprehension in both Moscow and Delhi that any trilateral arrangement could devolve into a Sino-centric hierarchy.
Russia’s post-Ukraine war dependence on China—economically, technologically, and diplomatically—reduces Moscow’s traditional balancing role and heightens Indian concerns about being the junior partner in an asymmetric triangle. India’s increasingly maritime orientation, symbolised by its participation in the Quad and adoption of the Indo-Pacific vision, conflicts with China’s continental priorities and Russia’s Eurasian focus. Russia and China view Indo-Pacific frameworks as a form of containment; Delhi sees them as a necessary part of its external balancing of an assertive China.
This strategic divergence undermines the prospects for coordinated strategy. India’s opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on sovereignty grounds, Russia’s informal alignment with BRI while supporting the International North-South Transport Corridor, and competing visions for Central Asian development create friction. Each envisions regional connectivity, such as the Middle Corridor across the Caspian or the extension of CPEC to Afghanistan on different terms, thereby complicating infrastructure coordination.
Western Resistance
RIC revitalisation would prompt calibrated responses from the US-led alliance. Washington would intensify the US-India strategic partnership through a carrot and stick strategy- offering, on one hand, the carrot of technology transfers, defence cooperation, and semiconductors, and coercing on the other with higher tariffs and the CAATSA stick. Simultaneously, the United States would strengthen counter-balancing: deepening AUKUS integration, extending NATO Indo-Pacific partnerships, and expanding IPEF frameworks. Likewise, the US could nudge Europe to adopt a more strident position toward China and on the issue of Ukraine.
Making RIC Plausible
In order for RIC to evolve from a sporadic grouping into functional cooperation, some critical issues would demand attention. Sino-Indian border disengagement, military CBMs, and crisis hotlines are prerequisites. Without continental stability, trilateral cooperation remains hostage to bilateral crises. China must provide transparency regarding military cooperation with Pakistan while demonstrating a tangible commitment to counterterrorism in order to address Indian concerns. Strategic trust between India and China is the key element here. Moscow must come to be seen as a neutral player between Beijing and Delhi despite its economic dependence on China, and sustain defence technology transfers to India. Any overt slant by Russia towards China will raise heckles in New Delhi. Rather than embracing competing visions, they must explore interoperability standards, joint financing for third-country projects, and complementary corridor development. RIC must remain issue-based rather than evolving into a formal alliance, preserving utility while avoiding bloc formation that could trigger balancing responses. AI regulation, cyber norms, digital currencies, and data sovereignty require trilateral consultation in order to prevent fragmentation. Joint initiatives in climate finance, food security, and development banking build cooperative legitimacy beyond geopolitics.
Conclusion
RIC’s relevance in the era of contested multipolarity lies in its modest yet meaningful contributions to Asian stability rather than in grandiose visions of an alternative world order. The format offers potential as a crisis-management consultative platform, a Eurasian security dialogue mechanism, and a Global South agenda-shaping caucus—provided that expectations remain realistic and that management of internal contradictions takes precedence over external posturing. Success requires all three powers to prioritise conflict resolution over alliance building, connectivity cooperation over infrastructure competition, and shared governance reform over exclusive bloc formation.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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