When it Comes to Arms Sales, India and its European Friends are Equally Transactional

Official utterances usually conceal more than what they reveal, so it is hard to understand why recent statements by external affairs minister S. Jaishankar only tacitly referred to European arms sales to Pakistan, while participating in the Kultaranta Talks in Finland on June 11. The discussion was about ‘A World in Transition: Global, Regional and Local Perspectives’. “No European country has been attacked with Indian weapons,” asserted Jaishankar. “I wish I could say that for Europe weapons vis-à-vis India…. We Indians have never done anything to endanger Europe.”

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

His seemingly strong statement sounded rather vague for two reasons. First, he did not explain why India has never sold matériel to any state attacking a European country. The fact is that as a lower middle income country, India is a nascent arms manufacturer which is not self-sufficient in weapons.

It therefore cannot sell much to European countries (or their enemies), some of which have well-established arms manufacturing industries going back at least to the 19th century. And, after the First World War, many European countries perceived a national defence industry as an element of their national sovereignty and also the path to gaining strategic leverage over buyer countries. Surely the last two reasons also account, in part at least, for contemporary India’s wish to manufacture and sell arms?

At the moment, however, India does not even rank in the list of top 25 arms exporters. Its Asian arch-rival China stands at number five, above most European countries, except France, Russia and Germany. (The United States is the world’s top arms exporter).

Generally, economically advanced countries spend considerable amounts on research and development because they have made more social and economic progress. One doesn’t have to go as far as Europe to realise that. Asian countries including China, Japan and South Korea also establish that fact. India, the economic slowcoach, spends a measly 0.6 to 0.7% on research and development.

Some European countries, including France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy, have sold arms to India’s neighbour, Pakistan, which has launched attacks on India, the last being in 2025. But France and Sweden have also sold arms to India. Currently, France is India’s second-largest arms retailer (29%) after Russia (40%). And India is the largest customer of France and Russia.

Sweden is Pakistan’s third largest arms retailer and 12% of its arms exports go to that country. Sixteen per cent of the arms exports of the Netherlands go to Pakistan.

Even Russia, the expansionist power that India wrongly claims “has never hurt our interests,” started selling arms to Pakistan in 2014, after Moscow’s first invasion of Ukraine, when it annexed Crimea.

At another level, having two neighbours who have fought territorial wars with it, India is the world’s second-largest arms buyer and imported 8.2% of the global share between 2021 and 2025. That is because it is far from the ‘self-reliance’ it aspires to achieve.

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On another plane, how many Europeans would agree that “We Indians have never done anything to endanger Europe?” In the name of strategic autonomy, India has helped Moscow to keep its defence industry well-oiled by purchasing a larger percentage of weapons from Russia than from any other European country. And its past and ongoing collaboration with Russia helps to keep Moscow’s defence industry running, especially at a time when Russia’s victory against Ukraine looks uncertain.

More than that, its refusal – like Pakistan’s – to condemn Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, has confirmed that it neither sympathises with, nor understands, why some European states are terrified that they might be next on Moscow’s ‘hit list’ – given Putin’s delusion about rebuilding Russia’s large 18–20th century empires, as a 21st-century imperialist version of Peter the Great. Ask Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland. They could tell India why they think it is dangerous to ignore the Kremlin’s delusion.

By styling itself as a ‘Vishwaguru ‘and preaching that the world is a global family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam), characterised by trust, New Delhi misleads itself and India’s citizens. Given that states have fought wars for centuries, no arms-manufacturing country believes in the global family – each believes in upholding its respective intertwined national military and commercial interests. In any case, who are the Vishwaguru’s students? Definitely no major arms-exporting country, whether Asian or European.

India should not be deluded by its own hypocrisy. New Delhi is aware that transactionalism, rather than trust, is a dominant characteristic of international and regional power politics. That is why it aims to establish itself as the world’s largest arms manufacturer in the first place. Even its long list of Free Trade Agreements, including an unratified one with the European Union, highlights the reality that transactionalism is a characteristic of global and national politics – and India and the EU clearly accept and practice that reality.

Merely blaming Europeans for double standards and sermonising about ‘trust’ will not suffice to establish India as a major, transactional arms retailer – or as an equally transactional global player.

Anita Inder Singh is a founding professor of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi. She has been a Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC and has taught international relations at Oxford and the LSE.

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