US President Donald J Trump recently urged the European Union to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on India and China to ramp up pressure on Russia and help end the Ukraine war. On 13 September, Trump also wrote on his ‘Truth Social’ platform, “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA.”
These transpired concurrently at a time of heightened tensions between NATO countries and Russia, as Russian drones entered Polish and Romanian airspaces even as the Alaska Summit earlier managed to bring Trump and Putin to the negotiating table. The developments came when Trump showed a moment of thaw in India-US tensions and publicly praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi even as trade friction continued. Amid all these, a heightened chatter arose on the strategic ramifications of a Russia-India-China bonhomie at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, and a growing pressure on Trump to show some tangible results on his “peace” mission on the Ukraine war, as well as legal challenges at home on the tariff issues.
Meanwhile, Delhi and Brussels are also moving toward a stronger strategic partnership, including efforts to quickly strike a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and explore lucrative deals on defence trade. Global geopolitics and major powers’ strategies clearly stand at a flux hitherto unseen in recent history. While countries with lesser capabilities are traditionally known to play the balancing act and hedge their bets, the fissures between Washington and Brussels, and the growing importance of major economies like India in the rapidly shifting global order, have pushed the world’s only supranational institution, the European Union (EU), to search for its own strategic autonomy.
Trump’s shrinking traction
With each passing day, the Trump administration faces questions and domestic criticism on the tangible outcomes of his attempts to broker a peace deal and end the Ukraine war, despite the grand optics of his Alaska Summit. Over the months, Trump seems to be running short of cards to show on his Russia-Ukraine gambit, as primary and secondary sanctions, peace missions, or escalating tariffs on Russia’s energy deals fail to coerce any substantive change in Moscow’s actions on the ground. There is no end to the war, let alone a ceasefire between the warring parties or a peace talk.
Is Trump’s traction shrinking rapidly vis-à-vis Moscow, and more particularly, Putin? A poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos in August found that 54 per cent of Americans, including one in five Republicans, believe the president is too closely aligned with Russia. Moreover, with the campaign heat picking up for the mid-term elections in November next year, which has the potential to shake up policymaking in the American beltway, Trump is a man in a hurry to fulfil his campaign promises. These, among other things, include ending the war in Ukraine (well, the 24-hour deadline no longer holds, but ending the war remains a promise).
Moreover, President Trump is currently facing legal battles at home, with his authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), with a Supreme Court decision expected this November. Such a shrinking of Trump’s negotiating space has led the US President to attempt to coerce the EU into imposing tariffs that the latter is not willing to comply with completely.
As such, Trump has been putting his ‘foot on the pedal’ to pressure allies in Europe, and countries like India and China, even as Washington employs its own playbook with Delhi and Beijing. Throughout the Ukraine war, barring a few European countries like Hungary, Turkey, and Slovakia that maintain strong ties with Russia, all EU countries have been steadfastly supporting Kyiv while consistently imposing sanctions on Russia. The EU went ahead with its 18th package of sanctions on Russia in July, without the US. Meanwhile, an understanding had been reached to keep global oil prices stable and export Russian oil to European countries through Indian refineries.
However, in a quick and non-consultative turn of events, the Trump administration imposed skyrocketing tariffs and threatened secondary sanctions on India, targeting New Delhi’s import of oil and military items from Russia. Consequently, Brussels has shown evident intentions to rapidly scale down its dependence on Russian energy, focusing on renewables and stopping EU operators dealing with imports of Russian energy from making transactions. In July, the EU froze the assets of many Russian and international companies dealing through Russia’s shadow fleet, including a refinery in India.
Also read: Is India recalibrating Russian oil import strategy? Saudi Arabia discount offer is key
EU’s strategic rebirth
However, do these moves by the EU (to end its energy dependence on Russia) signal any intention to move along with Trump’s lobbying and impose 100 per cent tariffs on India and China? Despite the evident and imminent scars and fractures in Washington’s ties with the EU and the NATO alliance, the US remains one of the pre-eminent economic partners and a quintessential security partner of the European countries.
However, a question must be hovering in Brussels and many European capitals, as the EU and its member countries navigate an extremely uncertain and volatile regional and global landscape. To what extent and how long can European countries mortgage their security to decisions made in Washington and the vagaries of US domestic politics? And, can Washington dictate the terms and conditions of Brussels’ economic engagement with other major economies, including India?
New Delhi and Brussels are eager to sign an FTA soon, as the emerging geopolitical and geo-economic circumstances push this urgency in both sides. The frequency with which EU trade negotiators have landed in Delhi and the visit of a 28-member delegation of the EU’s Political and Security Committee ahead of the EU-India Summit next year showcase a new resolve in Brussels: to further enhance ties with Delhi. Recently, in a significant move, the European Commission and the High Representative adopted a Joint Communication, outlining a ‘New Strategic EU-India Agenda’—an initiative announced by President Ursula von der Leyen in her Political Guidelines for 2024-2029.
About 6,000 EU companies reportedly operate in India, and the EU is India’s largest trading partner in goods, with bilateral trade touching $135 billion in 2022-23 and almost doubling in the last decade. In the case of China, which is reportedly the third largest partner for EU exports of goods and the largest partner for EU imports of goods, Brussels plans to propose sanctions on more Chinese companies linked to Russia’s war efforts as part of the 19th sanctions package.
However, at the same time, Brussels fundamentally aims to balance its tightrope walk, keeping Washington on its side vis-à-vis Moscow while avoiding any drastic decoupling with a major economic partner like Beijing. Some sources point out that EU diplomats, speaking in anonymity and behind the scenes, consider slapping the kind of tariffs that Trump has proposed on India and China as a political and economic no-go zone.
Earlier during the NATO summit, Trump took credit for pushing European allies to increase defence spending to 5 per cent in the next decade, often dangling the threat of the US pulling the plug on the trans-Atlantic alliance. This new dynamic has pushed the EU to find its new strategic identity in the international system, and that of taking more onus for its security, which translates to a new dynamism in the European defence industrial complex.
This also amounts to a new framework in how Brussels sees its new choices of security partnerships, a sort of balancing act, not witnessed before. This might open up new opportunities given Delhi’s own propensity to diversify and reimagine new security and economic ties with the West. India aims to become self-reliant in defence production and become a major defence exporter, but Delhi will need reliable and stable partners. And, creating more synergy between the European and Indian defence ecosystems will create more stable defence supply chains.
The recent participation of India in the military exercises with Russia and Belarus had led to some unease and alarm bells ringing in the power corridors of Brussels, leading to Kaja Kallas, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Commission, to comment: “Ultimately, our partnership is not only about trade but also about defending the rules-based international order.” Such strategic divergences have to be managed and addressed as mature partners. Moreover, as Delhi and Brussels move toward forging a new strategic framework, they will need to engage in a no-holds-barred dialogue on the mutual perceptions and misperceptions of the “rules-based order” to navigate the new strategic realities of the fast-changing global economic and security environment.
Indrani Talukdar is a Fellow and Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant at the Chintan Research Foundation, New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)
Socialist India will shoot itself in the foot this time, too. After the shooting, it will say it has to save farmers and dairy.