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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.)

Crude Hypocrisy

If there is one thing more exhausting than Donald Trump’s tantrums, it is America’s staggering capacity for hypocrisy. In slapping a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports ostensibly for continuing to buy discounted Russian oil amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Trump is not merely bullying a democratic ally but betraying the very principles America claims to stand for. This is not a defence of free markets or global order. It is economic hooliganism dressed in the rags of nationalist theatre.

 

The claim that India deserves punishment for doing while dozens of countries including EU countries, the US and China continue to trade with Russia is laughable. The United States remains a steady buyer of Russian fertilisers, uranium and palladium, to the tune of over $24 billion since 2022.

 

India, meanwhile, has shown spine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s defiant stand that India will never compromise on the interests of its farmers and fishermen is a reminder that India’s agricultural backbone, which feeds 1.4 billion people and employs half the workforce, will not be sacrificed at the altar of American agro-industrial bullying. US agriculture enjoys massive state support and scale-driven cost advantages that make competition lopsided. India’s refusal to open its farm markets to such imports is not protectionism but food sovereignty.

 

Modi’s response has been statesmanlike. He has neither descended to Trump’s bluster nor allowed strategic ties with Washington to blind him to national interest.

 

Contrast that with Rahul Gandhi, who chose this moment to echo Trump’s bizarre remark that the Indian economy is “dead.” Gandhi, like Trump, has a flair for soundbites divorced from data. That he chose to parrot a foreign leader attacking India is not just poor politics but sabotage masquerading as dissent.

 

Modi’s planned visit to China for the SCO Summit offers a chance to deepen BRICS unity against Trump’s economic coercion. Brazil’s President Lula has already hinted at a coordinated response. If anything, Trump’s belligerence may succeed only in accelerating the de-dollarisation of global trade and the rise of alternate economic platforms that include China, India and Brazil. India must pursue a multipolar order in which the rules are not rewritten every four years to suit the whims of American presidents.

 

The more Washington bullies, the more New Delhi must double down on self-reliance and diversify its global alignments. As for Trump, his scattershot trade wars have historically backfired. In the past, he crippled American farmers with tariffs on China, turned allies into adversaries, and nearly gutted the WTO. His renewed campaign of tariff madness is less about policy and more about peacocking before his domestic base. It should be ignored with the contempt it deserves.

 

India is no longer the easy target it once was. It does not need to appease loudmouth populists to be taken seriously. The country’s economic rise is real. Its confidence is growing. And its farmers and workers deserve a world where trade is fair and not weaponised. Let America huff and puff. India will not bend.


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