Strategic autonomy is frequently confused with India's Cold War doctrine of Non-Alignment — but they are fundamentally different postures. Non-Alignment (1950s–1990s) was about staying outside the US-Soviet rivalry entirely. India refused to join either bloc. It was a principled abstention from great power competition. Strategic Autonomy (2000s–present) is the opposite of abstention. India actively engages with every major power simultaneously — the US, Russia, China, the EU, the Gulf states — extracting value from each relationship while refusing to be locked into any single alliance structure. The shift reflects India's changed position in the world. During the Cold War, India was too weak to leverage great power competition. Today, with a $3.5 trillion economy and a 1.4 billion population, India is too important for any major power to ignore — which makes multi-alignment strategically viable in a way it never was before.