Trump has unnecessarily delivered body blows to India-US relations with the decision to impose 25% tariffs on Indian exports to the US and an additional 25% as punishment for buying oil and defence equipment from Russia. He is also holding India responsible for funding Russia's war on Ukraine and thus being responsible for the killings in Ukraine.
This is an atrocious way of interpreting India's purchases of discounted Russian oil. There is no legal basis for imposing a $60 a barrel ceiling on the price at which Russian oil can be traded. Those who breach this ceiling risk being sanctioned by the US. The important point to note is that Russian oil was not per se sanctioned - only the price at which it could be bought was arbitrarily fixed.
The Hypocrisy
The strategy behind this was to squeeze Russia financially by reducing the flow of oil revenue to the Russian government, but not creating a shortage of oil in the global market. But that would inevitably lead to a huge spike in oil prices, which would also affect consumers in the West. That would have been politically costly for the US government, besides raising energy prices for European industry and making it less competitive globally.
The US itself has been encouraging India to buy Russian oil to ensure global stability in oil markets. The former US ambassador to India and others have said this on record. India has, while protesting against Trump's decision to inflict additional 25% tariffs, officially underlined that the US wanted India to buy Russian oil. Europe profited from this arrangement, as it was the biggest beneficiary of India's export of refined petroleum products derived from Russian crude.
Holding India morally responsible for the killing of Ukrainians by Russia shows the depth of Trump's political chicanery. This European war is the product of the West and Russia clashing over an acceptable security architecture in Europe, with NATO expanding incessantly towards the borders of Russia and disregarding Russian protests, especially its warnings that it would not under any condition accept Ukraine's membership of NATO.
This Is Not India's Game
Other issues leading to this conflict were the overthrow of Ukraine's legitimate government in 2014 with US involvement, the arming and funding of Ukraine to counter the Russian military intervention, preventing the process of negotiations begun at Istanbul in 2022 from moving forward, and declaring that Russia's strategic defeat was a US objective. How is India responsible for any of this?
Trump has been holding Biden responsible for the war in Ukraine and has repeatedly claimed that he could end it in two days. When faced with the reality that peace in Ukraine is not a real estate deal and that his obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize cannot dictate the calendar of a peace breakthrough, Trump has kept extending the timetable for reaching a solution. His personal frustration with the slow pace of moving towards a ceasefire, much less a solution to the conflict, has eventually prompted him to threaten more oil sanctions on Russia, and especially, secondary sanctions on India and China, the main "sinful" buyers of Russian oil.
By this threat of secondary sanctions, Trump has hoped to bring Putin to the negotiating table for at least a ceasefire, and cap this performative success after falsely claiming to have brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan and showcasing his latest act of mediating a peace accord between Armenia and Azerbaijan. His strategy of applying pressure on Russia has not quite worked, as both China and India have rejected Trump's pressure tactics.
Brushing Off Questions
India, ahead of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, made clear its rationale for accessing energy and stated that it will take all necessary steps to safeguard its national interests and economic security. It has called the targeting of India unjustified and unreasonable. India has also called out Trump's hypocrisy by noting that the US traded goods worth an estimated USD 3.5 billion with Russia in 2024, and that it "continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals". When confronted with this information by an Indian journalist in the US, Trump conveniently pretended that he was not aware of this.
India decided to also expose Europe's hypocrisy after it imposed sanctions on Nyara Energy by noting that "it is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia". The MEA spokesperson stated that the EU had traded more with Russia in goods in 2024 than India had, and that "European imports of LNG in 2024, in fact, reached a record 16.5 million tonnes, surpassing the last record of 15.21 million tonnes in 2022".
Modi hardened India's response to Trump's tariff pressures by declaring firmly that he would protect the interests of India's farmers, dairy owners and fishermen, reiterating India's red lines, but this time, personally and publicly.
The Alaska Summit
After weakening Trump's hand and strengthening that of Putin in the context of the Alaska summit by firmly rejecting US tariff pressure, India has welcomed the US-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15. It has noted that the "meeting holds the promise of bringing to an end the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and opening up the prospects for peace", and recalled in this context PM Modi's statement on several occasions, "This is not an era of war."
It is typical of Trump to claim credit wherever he can to make himself look good; in the case of the Alaska summit, too, he has alluded to a possible role played by India in influencing Putin to explore peace. The arch-warmonger, Lindsey Graham, has spoken of this earlier, as if Modi could, in all absurdity, tell Putin that he should seek peace in Ukraine, all to enable India to preserve its ties with the US! It is possible that National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's visit to Russia and his meeting with Putin have prompted this self-serving speculation. Modi has since spoken to Putin and, in his post on X, has said that he thanked Putin "for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine". "We also reviewed the progress in our bilateral agenda, and reaffirmed our commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership. I look forward to hosting President Putin in India later this year," he said.
A Cavalier Move
On the eve of the Alaska summit and the unprincipled tariff pressure by Trump on India to reduce its ties with Russia, Modi's post on X is important as it lays out India's plans to actually step up its engagement with Russia.
Interestingly, Trump's Russia-related additional tariffs are to come into force only on August 27. The US President has apparently given himself time to resile from this rash move if special envoy Steve Witkoff's talks with Putin bore fruit. If some understanding is reached in Alaska, the case for imposing the additional tariffs on India evaporates. This goes to show just how geopolitically cavalier a move it is by Trump to make ties with India a mere byproduct of the US-Russia understanding on Ukraine.
(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
