India is livid with the American President Donald Trump. He says he is India’s friend, but has just declared our fast-growing economy “dead” and imposed a crippling 50 percent tariff on our exports to the United States. This is among the highest the US has levied on any country.
India’s response thus far is a confused mix of defiance, posturing, and talking to America’s rivals. There are reports that it might pause some purchases of US arms.
The time, however, has come for Indian leaders to decide whether to shed the country’s longstanding non-alignment policy and make common cause with the Americans.
Trump has given two reasons for his unfriendly acts: India doesn’t buy enough US products, and it buys Russian oil in huge quantities despite American sanctions. Imposing his first 25 percent tariff, Trump said, “India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us, but we don’t do business with them.” It was his second salvo of another 25 percent tariff “for buying Russian oil,” however, that warrants even closer attention.
The Coming Congressional Crackdown
Our leaders should know that while Trump’s treatment is harsh, it’s nothing compared to what might be coming soon from the US Congress. American lawmakers in the Senate are almost ready to pass a bill that would impose a 500 percent tariff on countries that buy Russian oil. That bill already has 80 co-sponsors in a house of 100 members and is expected to pass in September.
India’s support of Russia is thus the main reason for Trump’s ill-treatment of the country. He wants India on his side as he attempts to negotiate an end to the Russian-Ukrainian war. The Senate bill’s wide support indicates that the American people’s patience with his efforts to broker peace is running thin.
His chances of persuading Russia to end the conflict would improve if India and China, who together buy enough oil to pay for the entire $100 billion Russia spends on the war, reduce or stop their purchases.
By putting so much pressure on India, a “friend,” Trump is signalling to China and Russia that he is dead serious about using his trade policy to bring the war to an end. He is currently negotiating with both those nations and the discussions seem to be in their last stages.
India’s best hope is that Trump succeeds in ending the war and the crisis blows over. It is possible that the two sides are choreographing events to help Trump convey the message to Russia and China, which is why India’s punitive 25 percent tariff for buying Russian oil has been delayed for 21 days.
What Nehru’s Principles Say
But if the crisis persists, India stands at a crossroads and must pick a side. It has been reluctant to do so as it considers the Ukrainian war a European conflict. But the US policy, with or without Trump, is going to make sitting on the fence very difficult. India would face far reaching consequences that could range from economic sanctions to the US turning more toward Pakistan. Trump has already met with the chief of the Pakistani military and has committed US resources to developing that country’s oil reserves.
India’s 75-year-old non-alignment policy thus faces one of its toughest tests so far. If the Modi government stands strictly by the original definition of the policy outlined by Prime Minister Nehru in 1949, it would side with peace and thus Trump.
Nehru said India’s foreign objectives included “the pursuit of peace, not through alignment with any major power or group of powers, but through an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue.” Ending the Russia-Ukraine war is definitely a “pursuit of peace” and India would be in the right to take “an independent approach” by ending its support of Russia. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already stated that reducing Russian oil purchases would have little impact on inflation.
The non-alignment policy’s five basic principles (Panchsheel) don’t support India siding with Russia. These principles are:
Respect for territorial integrity
Non-aggression
Non-interference
Equality
Peaceful coexistence.
Russia violated all of these when it attacked Ukraine.
The Case for an American Alignment
India’s problem is that its non-alignment policy has become shorthand for opportunism.
Playing one superpower against the other may have given the nation some tactical advantage, but it has left us with no solid friends. Where was Russia when China openly sided with Pakistan in our most recent military conflict?
But PM Modi continues to pursue this policy of opportunism. The only change is that his External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar prefers to call it “multi-alignment.”
This policy’s failure was evident as early as 1962, when China attacked India. Nehru approached the United States, not Russia, seeking military assistance. President Kennedy provided significant military and logistical aid. India’s Ambassador to the United States, BK Nehru, wrote, “We continued to talk in terms of non-alignment but we had become in fact the allies of the US in their confrontation at least against China.”
The truth is that India needs the United States. There is no denying that China has encircled our nation, and that Russia will never side with India against China. India should ally with the United States also because of our shared values: democracy, individual rights, human rights, and free markets.
(Bhanu Dhamija is Founder and CEO of the Divya Himachal Group and author of ‘Why India Needs the Presidential System’. He can be reached @BhanuDhamija. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)