New Delhi, India – When United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday, their summit will be followed closely not only in both those countries, Europe and Ukraine – but also more than 10,000km (6,200 miles) away, in New Delhi.
Since the end of the Cold War, India has juggled a historically strong relationship with Russia and rapidly blossoming ties with the US. New Delhi’s relations with Washington grew particularly strong under the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, and remained that way during Trump’s first term and under Joe Biden.
At the heart of that US warmth towards India, say analysts, was its bet on New Delhi as a balancing force against Beijing, as China’s economic, military and strategic heft in the Asia Pacific region grew. With Soviet communism history, and China, the US’s biggest strategic rival, Washington increased its focus on Asia – including through the Quad, a grouping also including fellow democracies India, Australia and Japan.
But a decade after Obama famously described the US and India as “best partners”, they appear to be anything but.
Trump has imposed a 50 percent tariff on Indian imports, among the highest on any country’s products. Half of that penalty is for India’s purchases of Russian oil during its ongoing war with Ukraine – something that the Biden administration encouraged India to do to keep global crude prices under control.
Meanwhile, China – which buys even more Russian oil than India – has received a reprieve from high US tariffs for now, as Washington negotiates a trade deal with New Delhi.
That contrast has prompted questions over whether Trump’s approach towards China, on the one hand, and traditional friends like India on the other, marks a broader shift away from the US pivot to Asia.
Troubles for India, and Modi
Since the early 2000s, successive governments in New Delhi have embraced closer ties with Washington, with its stocks rising in the US as an emerging strategic partner in security, trade and technology.
Trump made that relationship personal – with Modi.
During Trump’s first term, he shared the stage twice in public rallies with Modi, as they also exchanged frequent bear hugs and described each other as friends.
But none of that could save New Delhi when Trump hit India with tariffs only matched by the levies issued against goods from Brazil.
“The tariff moves have triggered the most serious rupture in the US-India relations in decades,” said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
For months after Trump threatened tariffs on Indian imports, New Delhi tried to placate the US president, refusing to get drawn into a war of words. That has now changed, with India accusing the US of hypocrisy – pointing out that it still trades with Russia, and that Washington had previously wanted New Delhi to buy Russian crude.
“One thing is clear: Trust in the United States has eroded sharply in recent days, casting a long shadow over the bilateral relationship,” Vaishnav told Al Jazeera.
To Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, the crisis in the relationship also reflects a dramatic turn in the personal equation between Modi and Trump. The state of ties, he said, is “a result of a clash of personalities between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi”.
India has previously faced the threat of US sanctions for its close friendship with Russia, when it decided to buy S-400 missile defence systems from Moscow. But in 2022, under the Biden administration, it secured a waiver from those proposed sanctions.
“Not long ago, India could avoid sanctions despite purchasing S-400 weapon systems from Russia. However, now, India’s policy of multi-alignment clashes with President Trump’s transactional approach to geopolitics,” said Donthi.
To be sure, he pointed out, America’s Cold War history of bonhomie with Pakistan has meant that “a certain distrust of the US is embedded in the Indian strategic firmament”. The Trump administration’s recent cosiness with Pakistan, with its army chief visiting the US this year, even getting a rare meeting with the president at the White House, will likely have amplified those concerns in New Delhi.
But through ups and downs in India-US ties over the years, a key strategic glue has held them close over the past quarter century: shared worries about the rise of China.
“A certain bipartisan consensus existed in the US regarding India because of its long-term strategic importance, especially in balancing China,” said Donthi.
Now, he said, “the unpredictable Trump presidency disrupted the US’s approach of ‘strategic altruism’ towards India”.
It is no longer clear to Asian partners of the US, say experts, whether Washington is as focused on building alliances in their region as it once said it was.
Turn from Asia
Under the Obama administration in 2011, the US adopted what was known as the “Rebalance to Asia” policy, aimed at committing more diplomatic, economic and military resources to the Asia Pacific region, increasingly seen as the world’s economic and geopolitical centre of gravity.
This meant deeper engagement with treaty allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia, strengthening security ties with emerging partners such as India and Vietnam, and pushing forward trade initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The idea was to shape a regional order that could balance China’s rise.
During Trump’s first term, the economic leg that gave the pivot its weight hollowed out. The US withdrawal from the TPP in early 2017 removed the signature trade pillar, leaving behind a strategy that leaned heavily on military cooperation and less on binding economic partnerships.
Yet, he refrained from the bulldozing negotiations that have shaped his approach to tariffs, even with allies like Japan and South Korea, and from the kind of tariffs Trump has imposed now on India.
“There is currently a period of churn and uncertainty, after which clarity will emerge,” Donthi said. “There might be some cautious rebalancing in the short term from the Asian powers, who will wait for more clarity.”
India, which, unlike Japan and South Korea, has never been a treaty ally to the US – or any other country – might already be taking steps towards that rebalancing.
Russia-India-China troika?
Faced with Trump’s tariff wrath, India has been engaged in hectic diplomacy of its own.
Its national security adviser, Ajit Doval, visited Moscow earlier this month and met Putin. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to travel to the Russian capital later this month. Also in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit New Delhi. And at the end of the month, Modi will travel to China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, his first trip to the country in seven years.
India has also indicated that it is open to considering the revival of a Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral mechanism, after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed the platform’s resurrection.
The concept of trilateral cooperation was first proposed in the 1990s and formally institutionalised in 2002, an idea Lavrov credited to the late Yevgeny Primakov, former chair of the Russian International Affairs Council.
Although the RIC met regularly in the years following its creation, there has been a gap in recent times, with the last meeting of RIC leaders in 2019, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
India’s Modi faces some “very difficult choices”, said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation. “Clearly, India is not going to turn on Russia, a very special partner. And India does not turn on its friends.”
But doubling down on its strategic independence from the US – or multi-alignment, as India describes it – could come with its costs, if Trump decides to add on even more tariffs or sanctions.
“The best outcome for India immediately is the Russians and Ukrainians agree to a ceasefire,” said Kugelman, “because at the end of the day, Trump is pressuring India as a means of pressuring Russia.”
Even as questions rise over Washington’s pivot to Asia under Trump, such a rebalance will not be easy for countries like India, say experts. Ultimately, they say, the US will find its longtime partners willing to return to the fold if it decides to reinvest in those relationships.
The cost of a rebalance
An RIC troika would ultimately be “more symbolic than substantive”, Kugelman said.
That’s because one of the sides of that triangle is “quite small and fragile: India-China ties”.
While there have been “notable easing of tensions” in recent months, “India and China remain strategic competitors,” added Kugelman. After four years of an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff along their Himalayan border, they finally agreed to withdraw troops last year, with Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting in Kazan.
But “they continue to have a long disputed border”, Kugelman said, and trust between the Asian giants remains low.
Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment agreed.
“There may be opportunistic venues and moments where the countries’ interests converge. But I think, beyond defence and energy, Russia has little to offer India,” he said. “With China, while we may see a thaw in economic relations, it’s difficult to see a path to resolving broader security and geostrategic disputes.”
Jon Danilowicz, a retired diplomat who worked in the US State Department, said that a total breakdown of the US-India partnership is in neither’s interest. “The cooperation in other areas will continue, perhaps with less open enthusiasm than had been the case in recent years,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Trump tariffs could help Modi domestically.
“Trump’s hardball tactics could bolster Modi’s domestic standing. They highlight Washington’s unreliability, allowing Modi to frame himself as standing firm in the face of the US pressure,” said Vaishnav.
Modi had been facing pressure from the opposition over the ceasefire with Pakistan after four days of military hostilities in May, after 26 civilians were killed in an attack by gunmen in Kashmir in April. The opposition has accused Modi of not going harder and longer at Pakistan because of pressure from Trump, who has claimed repeatedly that he brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad – a claim India has denied.
“Any further appearance of yielding – this time to the US – could be politically costly. Resisting Trump reinforces Modi’s image as a defender of national pride,” added Vaishnav.
Many analysts have said they see Trump’s tariffs also as the outcome of as-yet unsuccessful India-US trade talks, with New Delhi reluctant to open up the country’s agriculture and dairy sectors that are politically sensitive for the Indian government. Almost half of India’s population depends on farming for its livelihood.
Modi has in recent days said that he won’t let the interests of Indian farmers suffer, “even though I know I will have to pay a personal cost”.
“He is demonstrating defiance to the domestic electorate,” said Donthi, of the International Crisis Group.
Ultimately, though, he said, both India and the US would benefit if they strike a compromise that allows them to stop the slide in ties.
“But the warmth and friendliness won’t be present, and this will be evident for some time,” Donthi said.
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