The vote is not just about Moscow’s crude – it is a warning that Washington’s coercive toolkit can be turned on New Delhi whenever interests diverge
The US Senate has voted 86 to 12 in favor of legislation to impose 100% tariffs on India, as well as other nations, for buying Russian oil. When the Senate reconvenes in September, the bill is expected to pass, after which it will go to the House for a vote. The House, too, is likely to clear it. The late Senator Lindsey Graham had been one of the main advocates of this legislation, alongside Senator Blumenthal, another persistent critic of India. Blumenthal has now emerged as the driving force behind the bill, seemingly determined to carry it forward as a final tribute to his departed colleague.
A few observations are in order.
First, all the talk of a bipartisan consensus in the US Congress in favor of strong ties with India has proved exaggerated. The Senate vote backing this punitive legislation was itself bipartisan. Senator Blumenthal has made it clear that the real targets of the bill are China and India, the two largest buyers of Russian oil. When India-US ties were on an upward trajectory, Congress supported them. Now that the relationship is moving in the opposite direction, Congress is offering no resistance. New Delhi should draw a political lesson from this.
Second, reviving the issue of India’s purchases of Russian oil shows how short-term and ad hoc the US approach to policymaking can be. During the Biden administration, Washington had in fact encouraged India to keep buying Russian oil in order to prevent a sharp rise in global prices. The logic was simple: if Russian crude had been pushed out of the international market completely, no other supplier would have been able to fully make up the shortfall.
Trump tried to wean away India from buying Russian discounted oil by imposing an extra 25% penalty tariffs on us for such purchases. India, however, continued to buy Russian oil in large quantities. Not only that, the refined products made by Indian refineries from the Russian crude were exported to Europe to meet its energy requirements.
Read more What does India have to do with the Arctic and why is it a test for BRICSIndia’s purchases of Russian oil continue even today, demonstrating that this weapon used by the US has not worked. New Delhi has maintained its position that its oil purchases will be guided by affordability, availability and national energy security rather than geopolitical considerations. Why then use a blunted weapon, the wielding of which will only further alienate India?
Third, the Senate is brazen about subscribing to double standards in shaping the legislation. The legislation has been drafted to exclude US allies from the purview of the 100% tariffs that would be imposed on India, China, Hungary, Slovakia and Azerbaijan. European states including Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Austria continue to buy Russian energy, as do Turkey and Japan, yet they have been shielded through openly selective carve-outs. In other words, discrimination has been written into the legislation with little concern for either political consistency or moral credibility. All the past rhetoric about the US-India partnership being “defining” for the 21st century, and about the two countries being “natural allies,” is now being jettisoned.
Fourth, the legislation gives the US president waiver authority, allowing him to suspend tariffs or sanctions if this is deemed necessary in the US national interest. This reflects a cynical game played by both Congress and the White House at times: creating a punitive instrument that can then be selectively wielded as leverage to force targeted countries into compliance with US demands.
Such countries would then be expected to approach the White House in search of a waiver, which the US administration could use to extract concessions on other unresolved issues where it had previously failed to get its way. Even if a waiver is not granted, and the sanctions provided for under the legislation are not immediately enforced, the sword of Damocles would still hang over the targeted country.
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India has experience of this under the CAATSA legislation passed during Trump’s first term on the issue of buying major defense equipment from Russia. We had then argued that our contract for S-400 air defense systems with Moscow pre-dated CAATSA and therefore this legislation should not be applied retroactively.
India has not received any waiver under CAATSA, yet no sanctions have been imposed on it either – no doubt in part because India has also purchased more than $20 billion worth of US defense equipment. American defense companies would hardly want to jeopardize future opportunities in the Indian market, especially when they are already concerned about losing contracts to the French.
In the case of Chabahar port, we have already seen the invidious position in which the US can place India by granting and then withdrawing waivers for its participation in the project, entirely on the basis of shifting American policies in the region rather than India’s interests.
Read more US strike that killed Indian mariners tests US-India trustFifth, for a global power like the United States – and given the role the Senate plays in shaping US foreign policy – it is striking how detached from reality some of its initiatives can be, as though lawmakers and policymakers have learned no lessons at all.
The threat of tariffs has not worked against China, which has retaliated with coercive steps of its own in the areas of exports of critical raw materials and products, forcing the US to back down. If President Xi’s visit to the US takes place in September as planned, this would hardly be the right time to threaten China with 100% tariffs for buying Russian oil. Does the US expect China to close the pipelines delivering Russian oil and gas to it? The US has such a sense of impunity that it believes it can act arbitrarily without cost.
In promoting the legislation, Senator Blumenthal argued that China and India “are doing us no favors anywhere else in the world.” One could just as easily turn the question around and ask what favors the US has done for India “anywhere else in the world.” If New Delhi and Washington have built a strong relationship over the past two decades, it has been grounded in their respective national interests and, of course, mutual benefit. The irony is that US has long viewed India as a key partner in building maritime deterrence against China – hence the history of naval exercises, later expanded across all three services, the signing of foundational defense agreements, the the emergence of the Quad, and the broader Indo-Pacific construct.
The US now sees China – not India – as the principal challenge to its global primacy, including in the technology race. Yet driven by his own anti-Russian fixation and the prevailing mood in Congress, as well as by Washington’s frustration at failing to force Russia into submission through sanctions and a proxy war in Ukraine, Senator Blumenthal has advanced legislation that without good reason turns India into a scapegoat. Traditionally strong India-Russia ties remain a bugbear for American policy makers.
It is deeply galling for India, a massive energy importer, to be dictated to by the US where it may or may not source its supplies. This is fundamentally a sovereign trade decision that India alone should make.
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