The import of Russian oil is only a microscopic piece that several players, including Europeans and even Nato countries, have moved on a chequerboard of energy sources
In the geopolitical puzzle that the world has become since January 20, India finds in the US President a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. What does one make of a realty mogul who becomes an accidental politician and who finds nothing strange in living sometimes in an alternate reality? Donald Trump may have established his claims as a global peacemaker, but his persona is such that he has never desisted from uttering half-truths and falsehoods or wrapping facts in bravado.
The import of Russian oil is only a microscopic piece that several players, including Europeans and even Nato countries, have moved on a chequerboard of energy sources. And yet, only India has faced “Tariff” Trump in all his fury but couched in the language of “love” and “friendship”. The one lesson that India may have learned already is that it is best to let the US President have his say until he finds the key to getting Vladimir Putin to the table for negotiating an end to the Ukraine war.
The Ukraine war is the key to the puzzle in stopping which the world may move back to nearer a post-pandemic normality. It is best that Mr Trump’s peace moves over Ukraine lead the way rather than replay his 50 claims on stopping India’s nuclear neighbours from stepping up their conflict into a full-scale war. In the Trump playbook, repetition is often a way of establishing any claim as a fact, much like his four-year-long rant that the 2020 US elections were stolen from under his nose.
The India-US trade negotiations may be resuming to try and unravel the knots, but India can never assume that stepping down purchase of Russian oil or stopping it altogether will lead to peaceful trade because other US demands like buying their corn and their dairy products are likely to crop up. The tariff is a pawn that Mr Trump has used as a weapon of war. Curiously, while he “fights” to stop wars and conflicts, he is also sustaining a trade war against China even though no tariff has been imposed on China because it is Russian oil’s biggest customer.
There is no Nobel Prize for stopping trade wars, which means there may be a lot more of Trump swagger about tariffs ironing out the world’s problems. India has seen its exporters lose a not-insubstantial business since the US tariffs came into play, but India cannot sacrifice millions of its dairy and food grain farmers for a few dollars. It has chosen a path of not acquiescing to US demands much as China has done, and Brazil.
Apart from asserting that its energy security may include the option of continuing to buy Russian oil, while selling goods that Vladimir Putin has promised to get his people to buy to address the trade surplus, there is little for India to do towards ameliorating the effects of Mr Trump’s theatrics, certainly not when he threatens to wreck the career of a Prime Minister democratically elected by the people.
As Mr Trump alternates between friendly overtures and threats, India may at least tell him that the country has had only three Prime Ministers in the last 26 years in which time the US has had Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and now Mr Trump in his second term. The numbers would suggest India is as stable a democracy as the oldest.
