Trump drives India into Moscow’s embrace

One of the less reported impacts of United States President Donald Trump’s mercurial romp across the world stage (at least in the Western media) is the confusion it has sown amongst Indian policymakers.

Until this year, New Delhi had been moving steadily away from its old ally, Russia and towards closer ties with Washington. Now, after months of wild inconsistency and policy-on-the-run from the White House there is a reluctant re-think.

There were many good reasons for the original diplomatic shift. While the Soviet Union had been the main supplier of defence material through much of India’s early history, its Russian successor had become an increasingly unreliable partner.

The most significant example of this was the purchase of the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya from Russia, originally negotiated in the mid-1990s.  The vessel was not delivered until 2012, then its planes, also purchased from Russia, were found to be plagued with defects.

With China’s increasingly aggressive stance on its borders, the penetration of the PLA Navy into the Indian Ocean, and Beijing’s increasing cosiness with traditional Indian foe Pakistan, New Delhi needed a more reliable friend.

With the 2014 election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unencumbered with Russian baggage, Washington, and to a lesser extent the European Union, were seen as the answer.

In a detailed survey of the Indo-US relationship for Future Directions International, Researcher Lindsay Hughes said the Administration of then US President Barack Obama was receptive to these overtures, to the point that the Pentagon set up an India-centric cell aimed at speeding defence ties and the co-production of military equipment.

“Between 2011 and 2014 the United States overtook Russia as India’s largest supplier of weapons systems,” Hughes notes.  

“It was expected that Obama’s presumed successor, Hillary Clinton, would continue to nurture US-India ties. The election of Donald Trump as President has, however, upset that calculous.”  

While Trump appears to have no love of Pakistan, which he has accused of harbouring terrorists, he has also made claims that India was trying to suck billions of dollars in foreign aid as its price of participation in the Paris Climate Change Agreement — a charge that New Delhi has angrily denied.

While arms deals will continue with American companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing — something the America First President will certainly not interfere with, it appears that any favourable sales terms at a government level are on the back burner.

All of which has pushed India back towards Moscow’s orbit, with a number of agreements signed in Modi’s recent visit to St Petersburg, during which Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that his country “would always support India in its fight against terrorism” — a not too veiled reference to New Delhi’s problems with Pakistan.

As Hughes sees it: “The present Indo-Russian relationship will continue for the foreseeable future.”

Simply because Washington under Trump is not the reliable partner India needs as it confronts the increasing activities of China in its own backyard.