The Trump pendulum seemingly swung back to a friendlier arc last week, when he stated, 'We get along with India very well,' following it up with encomiums to Narendra Modi, and how the US and India 'have a special relationship'. But the sudden warmth hardly belies the chaotic and personalised policies of Trump that have caught many countries, India included, in a bind.
Trump's selective targeting of India is as irrational as his slamming a similar tariff on Brazil, ostensibly because his friend and former president Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest. It's equally irrational that China, whose oil imports from Russia are expected to be around 133% higher this year than India's, was excluded from Trump tariffs - because of the US fearing geopolitical reprisals and disruption of global supply chains.
In meting out 'special treatment' for India, Trump has reversed gains of nearly three decades of efforts to integrate India more closely with the West in general, and with the US in particular. He has also brought the US once again closer to its Cold War ally, Pakistan. Not many have missed the link between Trump's sudden fondness for Pakistan and his family-owned World Liberty Financial's, a crypto and decentralised finance company, connection with Pakistan's Crypto Council. Or, for that matter, Islamabad nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
India, a fellow democracy and the world's most populous country, supports a rules-based international order that the West touts as the reason for its supposed fight against authoritarian regimes. This alone should have qualified it for closer ties. But Washington's latest anti-India policies run counter to the US' self-declaration as a champion of democracy.
In retrospect, India's cosying up to the US may have been too premature. Delhi is of little importance to Washington - whatever India does can't have much economic or military consequence for the US. India-US trade accounts for only 2.4% of the total US trade in goods. Militarily, India's defence budget is less than 10% of that of the US, and is around only half of Pentagon's R&D budget. Neither is India willing to play second fiddle to the US.
Washington's attack on India for importing Russian oil is also inchoate. The argument that if it weren't for Nato's eastward expansion, there would have been no Ukrainian crisis, is persuasive. The West ignored the counsel of foreign policy pundits like George F Kennan, 'father' of the containment policy, who asserted that it would be a 'fateful error' to expand Nato, and former US NSA Henry Kissinger to desist from expanding the military alliance.
Many would argue that when the US unwaveringly embraces its Monroe Doctrine to preserve US dominance in the Western hemisphere, and the Bush Doctrine, unilaterally asserting the US right to wage pre-emptive war, there can be little justification for punishing a third country that imports oil from Russia and is following a similar policy as the US. Trump's attack dogs against India, like senator Lindsey Graham and trade adviser Peter Navarro, could do well with a few lessons in history, whether the US war in Vietnam or current conflict in Yemen, which would not have happened without US support.
When the UN has not banned oil imports from Russia, there is little reason for India not to buy oil at the cheapest rate. Surely, a nation whose per-capita income is 33x that of India, and violates international law when its own economic interests are at stake, can't call for India to halt importing oil from Russia.
US discrimination against India is nothing new. The US had condemned India's Nehruvian 'non-alignment' as immoral. The tariffs will hurt India, whose exports to the US are 18% of its total. But it would make sense to heed the words of Deng Xiaoping, 'Bide your time.' The pivot in the 21st c. points to the east, which has been made even more clear with the latest US actions.
The writer is a security analyst
Trump's selective targeting of India is as irrational as his slamming a similar tariff on Brazil, ostensibly because his friend and former president Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest. It's equally irrational that China, whose oil imports from Russia are expected to be around 133% higher this year than India's, was excluded from Trump tariffs - because of the US fearing geopolitical reprisals and disruption of global supply chains.
In meting out 'special treatment' for India, Trump has reversed gains of nearly three decades of efforts to integrate India more closely with the West in general, and with the US in particular. He has also brought the US once again closer to its Cold War ally, Pakistan. Not many have missed the link between Trump's sudden fondness for Pakistan and his family-owned World Liberty Financial's, a crypto and decentralised finance company, connection with Pakistan's Crypto Council. Or, for that matter, Islamabad nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
India, a fellow democracy and the world's most populous country, supports a rules-based international order that the West touts as the reason for its supposed fight against authoritarian regimes. This alone should have qualified it for closer ties. But Washington's latest anti-India policies run counter to the US' self-declaration as a champion of democracy.
In retrospect, India's cosying up to the US may have been too premature. Delhi is of little importance to Washington - whatever India does can't have much economic or military consequence for the US. India-US trade accounts for only 2.4% of the total US trade in goods. Militarily, India's defence budget is less than 10% of that of the US, and is around only half of Pentagon's R&D budget. Neither is India willing to play second fiddle to the US.
Washington's attack on India for importing Russian oil is also inchoate. The argument that if it weren't for Nato's eastward expansion, there would have been no Ukrainian crisis, is persuasive. The West ignored the counsel of foreign policy pundits like George F Kennan, 'father' of the containment policy, who asserted that it would be a 'fateful error' to expand Nato, and former US NSA Henry Kissinger to desist from expanding the military alliance.
Many would argue that when the US unwaveringly embraces its Monroe Doctrine to preserve US dominance in the Western hemisphere, and the Bush Doctrine, unilaterally asserting the US right to wage pre-emptive war, there can be little justification for punishing a third country that imports oil from Russia and is following a similar policy as the US. Trump's attack dogs against India, like senator Lindsey Graham and trade adviser Peter Navarro, could do well with a few lessons in history, whether the US war in Vietnam or current conflict in Yemen, which would not have happened without US support.
When the UN has not banned oil imports from Russia, there is little reason for India not to buy oil at the cheapest rate. Surely, a nation whose per-capita income is 33x that of India, and violates international law when its own economic interests are at stake, can't call for India to halt importing oil from Russia.
US discrimination against India is nothing new. The US had condemned India's Nehruvian 'non-alignment' as immoral. The tariffs will hurt India, whose exports to the US are 18% of its total. But it would make sense to heed the words of Deng Xiaoping, 'Bide your time.' The pivot in the 21st c. points to the east, which has been made even more clear with the latest US actions.
The writer is a security analyst
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