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By:

Rajiv Shah

22 September 2025 at 8:32:23 pm

New Alliances, New Pressures, New Fault Lines

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger...

New Alliances, New Pressures, New Fault Lines

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger geopolitical churn in which alliances, energy, trade, currencies and economic coercion are becoming interconnected. India finds itself almost at its centre. The emerging Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan security equation deserves particular attention. Saudi Arabia brings enormous financial and energy influence; Türkiye possesses considerable military strength, NATO experience and an expanding defence industry; Pakistan brings a large military establishment and nuclear capability with the open support of Washington. Any arrangement containing a collective-defence commitment naturally acquires significance beyond ordinary diplomatic cooperation. Alongside it, another strategic convergence has gradually developed among India, Israel and the UAE. It would be incorrect to describe this as a formal military alliance. Yet geopolitics does not operate through defence treaties alone. India's extensive defence and technology relationship with Israel, its rapidly expanding economic and strategic partnership with the UAE, and the UAE-Israel relationship following the Abraham Accords have created considerable common ground. I2U2—bringing together India, Israel, the UAE and the United States—added another institutional dimension. Thus, without necessarily becoming opposing military camps, two interesting strategic formations are visible across West Asia: Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan and the looser India–UAE–Israel convergence. Balancing Challenge India faces a similar balancing challenge. The Gulf is not a distant geopolitical theatre for New Delhi. Nearly nine million Indians live and work there. India's energy security, investments, trade and remittance flows are closely connected with the region. The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor also requires relative stability across this geography. Polarisation in West Asia can therefore rapidly become an Indian economic and strategic problem. There is another question Indian planners cannot ignore. If a future India-Pakistan confrontation escalates, how would any collective-defence commitment involving Pakistan be interpreted by Saudi Arabia and Türkiye? It would be alarmist to assume that either country would automatically enter a conflict against India. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has substantial economic and strategic interests in maintaining good relations with New Delhi. Nevertheless, defence planners are paid to examine possibilities before they become crises. While these equations develop in India's neighbourhood, economic pressure is emerging from Washington. The US Senate has voted 86–11 for legislation intended to increase pressure on Russia by targeting major purchasers of Russian energy. The measure could authorise tariffs reaching 100 per cent against goods from countries continuing large-scale purchases of Russian oil and gas, with India among those potentially exposed. China is powerful enough to shrug off similar challenges from the West." However this does not mean that America has already imposed a 100 per cent tariff on India. Further legislative steps remain necessary, and presidential waiver provisions are important. But the overwhelming Senate vote carries a political message that New Delhi cannot dismiss. Tariffs are no longer merely tools of trade protection; they have become instruments of geopolitical coercion. Washington's argument is understandable: revenues from Russian petroleum help sustain Moscow's economy during the Ukraine war, and reducing those revenues increases pressure on Russia. But in that case what about European countries who too were/are customers of Russian oil? India's question is equally legitimate: who should determine where India purchases the energy required by more than 1.4 billion people? If Russian crude remains commercially advantageous and helps contain domestic energy costs, New Delhi cannot reasonably be expected to make every energy decision according to another country's geopolitical priorities. Strategic partnership cannot become strategic obedience. This is where BRICS enters the larger picture. India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and will host its leaders at an unusually sensitive moment. BRICS is no longer merely the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its expansion has considerably increased its demographic, energy and geopolitical weight. More importantly, discussions around BRICS increasingly touch a sensitive nerve in Washington: alternative payment mechanisms, local-currency trade, development finance and the possibility of gradually reducing dependence upon the dollar-dominated international financial system. The BRICS Summit this time is poised to take some decisive steps which may affect western interests especially US. (The writer is an advocate, legal, geopolitical and public policy analyst. Views personal.)

Civic Homicide

Road accidents in India have become almost quotidian. They are so frequent that they barely register beyond a statistic or a fleeting headline. Yet, even by these numbing standards the death of 27-year-old software engineer Yuvraj Mehta, who died last week after his car skidded in dense fog in Greater Noida stands apart.


Mehta was driving home from work in Gurugram when his vehicle smashed through a low boundary and plunged into a deep, water-filled excavation pit on an adjoining commercial plot in Sector 150. The pit was unfenced, unmarked and unlit. There were no barricades, no reflectors and no warning signs in a city that prides itself on planned development.


But Mehta did not die on impact. Trapped in his partially submerged car, he managed to climb onto the roof and call his father. For a harrowing 90 minutes, he pleaded to be rescued. Police reached the site while he was still alive and crying for help. Yet no one entered the water. Unable to swim, he clung to the vehicle until exhaustion and cold overwhelmed him. When he was finally pulled out, he was dead.


The excavation pit existed because the Uttar Pradesh irrigation department and the Noida Authority failed to construct a rainwater regulator despite an agreement reached in 2023. Water mismanagement at the Hindon–Yamuna confluence allowed rainwater to accumulate unchecked in a dug-up plot, effectively converting it into an unfenced waterbody beside a public road. There was no drainage, no monitoring and no safety barrier. Following Mehta’s death, officials began playing the blame game in earnest.


The road design compounded the risk. The stretch features a sharp 90-degree turn that becomes especially hazardous in fog. It has no advance warning signage, no adequate lighting and no robust crash barriers. Local residents say accidents had occurred at the same spot earlier and that repeated requests for reflectors and barricades were ignored.


The rescue operation was the most damning chapter of all. It beggars belief that despite multiple agencies including the police, fire services, the State Disaster Response Force and the National Disaster Response Force arriving on the spot, no one was trained, equipped or apparently authorised to enter the water to rescue a dying man. Officials later explained that rescuers feared additional casualties. In plain terms, the State watched a man drown because it had not planned for the possibility that someone might need saving.


One can understand or perhaps even come to terms if the victim had been trapped in some remote ravine or a Himalayan gorge. But this was an urban rescue involving a conscious victim who held on for life for a full 90 minutes. And yet, the government authorities failed a basic duty.


Yuvraj Mehta’s death is no road accident. It is administrative failure with lethal consequences. His death is the sorry outcome of a form of governance that treats safety as optional and accountability as negotiable. 


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