Modi’s ASEAN Miss and the Cost of Balancing Trump and BRICS

When President Donald Trump announced that India had decided to stop buying oil from Moscow after the US imposed sanctions on Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, no one disbelieved him. This is unlike the time when the voluble POTUS claimed to have stopped the 'war' between India and Pakistan earlier this year in May. What appeared even more worrying for India was that if it did wilt under Washington's pressure and discontinue import of oil from Russia, from whom it has been buying 40 percent of its oil needs, what would happen to the relations between the two allies?What about the fate of BRICS, the five-member body which has grown to 10 members now and emerging as an anti-West alliance, contributing to nearly 40 percent of the global GDP and population? Irrespective of its response to the US, India needs to assure that it will remain in BRICS and stick to the agendas that have been hammered out in the last 12 years. Besides, it will need to further assure the member nations it will the host the next summit. This would be a big test for India, at a time when the world order is under relentless pressure from the belligerent, 79-year-old Trump. But reading by its recent actions, India appears to be shrinking from using regional influence to pressure Trump.India Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to not attend the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur—wherein the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar represented India—has been questioned by many. An editorial in a leading daily called it a "missed opportunity".The PM decided to skip the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit on the specious plea to his Malaysian counterpart's request to attend the meeting, claiming he was busy with the Hindu festival of Diwali. The excuse, for want of a better word, came three days after every cracker had gone up in smoke. There are whispers that the PM did not attend because he did not want to face Trump, who flew into Malaysia for the summit. Other leaders struggling with Trump’s trade policy looked him in the eye. China, by attending the summit, got a favourable deal and also a summit meeting between the two leaders in Seoul, South Korea. Ducking the ASEAN meet was definitely not helpful when it came to sorting out India’s issues with its neighbours and the US. Modi's mere presence at the summit would have made a difference. With PM Modi Likely To Skip ASEAN, Diwali Diplomacy Won't Lead to a Trump MeetRegional geopolitical churns are real worries that are finding resonance with editorial writers globally. Some see it from the US perspective and fear that the swing states—India and Brazil—will leave the US, leading to a hardening of their stance towards Washington. Such misgivings surfaced after the US imposed absurdly high tariffs on both nations. Brazil was punished for the conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is a close friend of Trump. The imposition of tariffs on India, similarly, seem to have a host of complicated reasons behind it.Punishing New Delhi for the purchase of Russian oil, when it is involved in asymmetrical war with Ukraine, seemed to have global acceptance. But the reasons for Trump were too diverse, including how Indian oligarchs prevented foreign companies from entering the domestic market.Here, Trump was hinting at magnates like the Adanis and Ambanis who are known to reportedly wield influence over policy-making. Maybe these reasons will show up when Trump realises he has a hold over Indian decision makers if he tastes success in preventing India from buying oil from Russia.For a while, New Delhi came in for high praise from Trump detractors when it refused to succumb to his pressure after he imposed absurd tariffs on India. Clearly, Trump wanted to inflict pain on India, which could be in the form of gargantuan job and financial losses in textile, gem and jewellery industries and the export of shrimps. There were some reports in the media about these fallouts but the government in Delhi resorted to blocking reports of the adverse impact of these tariffs on the sectors that relied on US exports. The endeavour was to show that India’s economy was diverse enough to survive this onslaught from Washington. The stock market did not tank as was expected, but gingerly moved on.When the US decided to impose sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil—a sort of betrayal for New Delhi, as it had started purchasing from them at the behest of the US to keep the fuel market stable during the Ukraine war amid sanctions on Russian oil and gas—it was apparent that it would destroy the Indian economy if prompt replacement was not organised. No, EAM S Jaishankar Didn’t Say ‘Russian Oil Will Continue to Flow Into India’The admission that India was buying cheap Russian oil was given to a wire news service by the former US Ambassador Eric Garcetti, an appointee of the earlier Biden administration. India had signed a deal with the US on 13 February this year when PM Modi had made an ill-conceived visit to Washington.At that time, there was a commitment was to buy oil from US following Trump’s policy to 'dig-dig-dig'. Another commitment that India made was to raise its total trade to $500 billion in the next five or so years. The big question that is being discussed is, what went wrong between 25 February and now that led India into American crosshairs? The shift not only hurts the Indian economy, it also jeopardises our membership of the BRICS. The jury is still out on ascertaining the causes.While US think tanks, mostly with democratic party moorings, trash the Trump administration for pushing "pro-West" countries away from the US and into the tight embrace of China and Russia, the disturbing truth is that US President is doing what he promised—he is breaking BRICS. When Jim O Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the phrase BRIC countries in the belief that these countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, will drive world growth after the global slowdown of 2008, it was believed that the world order was changing. It did not change fast enough. BRIC was eventually expanded to include South Africa.Russia is believed to have realised that it needed India to counter balance China. Later it realised that China was using multilateral bodies to enhance its own interest and in the process growing rapidly. Since the last summit, it has added five more after original five members. Except Iran, most of the members are pro-US, but they do not want to be weighed down by American pressure from time to time.What worries the BRICS nations most are the sanctions that have steeled the resolve of countries like Russia, China that are trying to only survive but even prosper, despite all the sanctions that have been imposed on them.Persuaded by China, BRICS has set up the New Development Bank (NDB) and is creating parallel structures to the one built by the Western nations. The most significant addition is the alternative created by BRICS that one integrates all the domestic payment systems with an overarching network. India’s UPI is part of it. China is also encouraging member countries to trade with each other in their national currency. This rankles US, which fears countries drifting away from the dollar.This is the reason Trump calls the members "anti-US" and wishes the BRICS to go away. India does not want the BRICS nations to deepen this impression and wants the de-dollarisation as a policy to be jettisoned. China and Russia are keen advocates of this policy and have made light of Washington’s objections.India, which will host the next BRICS summit in Delhi, is in dithers about the anti-West noise emanating from this 11 member bloc. Ideally it would like to tone it down, lest it attracts hostile reaction from the US. This strategy is misconstrued by some members as being a lackey of the West. During the Rio Summit in July 2025, a Brazilian economist called India as a Trojan Horse or an “outlier”, a country that cannot be trusted. This is a slap on the wrist, in many ways, but in a world where suspicion overwhelms sanity, Trump would want such anti-US groupings to crack up under his pressure. The big question remains: will India successfully host the BRICS summit in 2026? And will it attended by all heads of states or a truncated version? Much will depend on how India resolves Russian oil crisis.(Sanjay Kapoor is a veteran journalist and founder of Hardnews Magazine. He is a foreign policy specialist focused on India and its neighbours, and West Asia. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)Trading Barrels for Balance: India's Russian Oil Bet Faces Diminishing Return

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After Skipping ASEAN, Can Modi Still Leverage BRICS Against Trump?

Reading by its recent actions, India appears to be shrinking from using regional influence to pressure Trump.

The ASEAN Miss

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Topics: Narendra Modi BRICS donald trump