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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.)

Voice of bankers deserts left, joins Congress

Mumbai: Well-known banker-cum-trade unionist Vishwas R. Utagi – who is credited with exposing several banking-insurance-financial frauds in India – has joined the Congress.

 

A popular go-to-name for banks-finance related matters even among mediapersons, Utagi, 70, retired from the Bank of Maharashtra after 40 years’ service, capped with his appointment as the Employee-Director (2000-2003) on its board.

 

He was among those instrumental in exposing the infamous 1992 scam by the late Big Bull and stockbroker Harshad Mehta that shook the country’s banking-political sectors.

 

“Those were very exciting days… I was called by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) formed that year to probe the stock-markets scam and its huge economic-political ramifications,” said Utagi, in a detailed chat with ‘The Perfect Voice’.

 

In his new role for the Congress, Utagi hopes to organize the SME sector – the backbone of Indian economy – “which is in dire straits since the past few years”, to become the party’s ‘economic face’, raise issued of finance, banking and commerce, that directly affect the common man daily.

 

“The Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre and state have failed abysmally on the economic front. The government has become increasingly arbitrary, with growing interference in the working of banks. Many rich capitalists have defrauded banks of massive amounts and fled the country. But no action is taken against them,” said Utagi.

 

In the early 1990s, Utagi called on 60 MPs plus the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh – who later became Prime Minister (2004-2014) to resolve the imbroglio of the crisis-hit Bank of Karad, along with a senior party leader, Prithviraj Chavan, who subsequently became a union minister and also served as Maharashtra CM.

 

At one point, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and certain other agencies utilized Utagi’s expertise to crack various financial frauds including the stock-markets and more banking scams involving liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamantaire uncle-nephew of Mehul Choksi-Nirav Modi.

 

Utagi's deep concern for masses

 A banker with a Leftist inclination, he worked passionately for the success of the banks’ nationalization policy implemented (1969 and 1980), expansion of the public sector banks’ network to the remotest corners of the country, highlighting or exposing the flaws in the banking systems, and safeguarding the interests of the bank employees both in the public and private domain, not to forget the customers.

 

With lofty aims in mind, Utagi was involved in various capacities with the Investors Action Forum Charitable Trust, Bank Depositors’ Protection & Welfare Society, Chairman of Indian Institute of Banking & Finance Employees/Officers Association, several other national-level banking trade unions, plus All Trade Unions Co-Convener and Trade Unions Joint Action Committee.

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