India has a stake in the Alaska summit

INDIA has welcomed with alacrity and good timing the upcoming Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. It has done better by offering help for the success of the August 15 meeting.

Usually, such high-stakes, high-risk meetings are planned meticulously. They are prepared for success. This will be the first meeting between leaders of the US and Russia after the 2021 Geneva summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. That summit was meant to size each other up, particularly on Ukraine, and explore if a modus vivendi on this issue and the overall relationship could be found. Something, however, went horribly wrong. The summit failed, and Russia did the unthinkable by launching a military campaign against Ukraine a few months later in February 2022.

Since then, East-West relations have collapsed to their lowest ever since the 1950s. The world has been transfixed, like a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching truck, unable to sidestep the impending disaster. It has been witness to and the victim of an ugly and brutal war - a war whose battlefield has straddled the vast plains of the Donbass and Kursk and the digital world of international banking and financial flows. All instruments of warfare have been deployed, and countries have been asked to make clear-cut choices. The world, in effect, stumbled from the Covid crisis to the Ukraine crisis, in what is now a five-year cycle of global upheaval starting from 2020.

All countries have a stake in the success of the Alaska meeting. This is self-evident for the parties and regions directly concerned, but is equally true for a non-party like India. India has had to walk a thin line between two opposing sides with whom it managed to build significant relations through painstaking effort, straining every sinew in the bone.

After the conflict began, India jumpstarted its relations with the US and Europe, and fought a rearguard battle to keep its Russia ties alive. India has been under the scanner for what were normal ties with Russia for decades. It has paid a heavy price due to crippling Western sanctions against Moscow, and is now itself the target of these sanctions.

It is in India’s interest that the Ukraine war ends and tensions ease. India is at a stage of development where it needs relationships with all major powers — the US, EU, Russia and China, besides key partners such as Japan, Australia, South Korea and the Global South. One example of how India’s domestic and external needs fuse and affect policy is the energy sector. The issue of contention is India’s oil imports from Russia. In an atmosphere of sensationalism, it is important to keep facts straight.

India is not a traditional importer of Russian oil. It is Europe that helped Russia monetise its oil and gas wealth for the past many decades. Prior to 2022, India’s trade with Russia hovered around $15 billion or even less, of which oil imports was an insignificant fraction. Russian oil was not a sanctioned item after the war broke out, but only subject to a price cap. India entered the Russian oil market to protect its economy from high energy prices when there was a surge in European demand from non-Russian sources. Indian companies bought Russian oil at discounted prices offered to them amidst the many other headwinds facing the economy. Some of this was for domestic consumption and the rest was refined and exported, including to Europe. This prevented overheating of the global energy market. The decision of Indian companies was commercial, not political.

As markets stabilise and price differentials reduce, Indian oil and gas imports will begin to diversify and find other options, including the US. India’s imports are going to grow and it will always be in search of affordable and reliable sources of energy.

Apart from energy, Russia possesses other resources and raw materials which India needs for its development. These are just as critical for India’s growth and economic security as are export markets for its goods and services and sources for technology. China has already secured a lot of its needs from Russia that fuel its economy. Any Indian government will have to think long term to ensure it maintains access to these resources. The first step in ensuring such access is to maintain good political relations with Moscow.

India’s relations with Russia are not aimed at hurting its ties with other friendly countries. Among other things, they prevent Russia from retreating and being sucked completely into the Chinese embrace. There is a geopolitical logic behind India’s Russia relationship, just as there is a compelling logic for Moscow to keep its channels open with New Delhi because it too wants to maintain its strategic independence.

The imposition of 25 per cent penalty tariff on India by the US for buying Russian oil is a stiff punishment for an activity that has been the subject of intense discussion with the US and Europe over the past three years, and at a time when the US is itself in discussion with Russia to normalise relations.

There will not be many bright spots left in the global economy if even the Indian economy were to be hit. India has, of course, been doing its part to counsel Russia to pursue diplomacy. The US will find India to be much less of a spoiler for President Trump’s peace efforts than many of his European allies.

It is significant that President Putin called PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the run-up to the Alaska summit, and it is in the backdrop of this most promising peace effort since 2022 that an India-Russia summit is expected later this year in India — for the first time since 2021.

Pankaj Saran is former Ambassador and Deputy National Security Adviser.