Slick diplomacy: Trump’s crude u-turn on Russia sanctions bails out India

Russian President Putin and US President Trump

TOI correspondent from Washington: For months, MAGA supremo Donald Trump and his minions threatened to “crush” India’s economy for New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil. The economics has now caught up with the rhetoric.

Faced with soaring fuel prices at home and a widely forecast rout in the mid-term elections, the US President has reversed course and put most of the Russia sanctions on ice, effectively leaving India off the hook for now.The presidential U-turn, announced in an executive order issued on Friday evening (when governments typically drop bad/embarrassing news), invokes the president’s authority to waive provisions of the Graham Act passed last month “in the national interests of the United States.”

Among them: 500% tariffs on Russian goods; 100% tariffs on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas (which would include India); and 100% tariffs on the top facilitators of Russian sanctions evasion.The waiver follows Trump's surprise announcement of a deal with Vladimir Putin to buy Russian diesel fuel, even as his administration has turned on Ukraine to end a war that began with Russia's invasion. The deadline to implement the sanctions was to expire on Sunday, one month from the day the bill was passed.

This does not mean sanctions threat has disappeared. The executive order leaves the administration room to reverse course if Trump or designated officials later decide that further action is appropriate. In theory, the president retains leverage; in practice though, a threat that is announced, legislated, signed and then shelved risks becoming less an instrument of coercion than a negotiating prop.For India, which faced the prospect of tariffs as high as 100 per cent on goods entering the American market under the legislation, the reprieve is welcome -- and well may it send a bill to Washington for economic advice rendered.

New Delhi repeatedly insisted that its energy purchases are governed by market conditions, supply security and affordability -- the very argument now being made by Washington. It also maintained steadfastly that its energy decisions cannot simply be dictated by the political preferences of Western capitals.While the presidential order is admirably concise about the legal manoeuvre, it is considerably less forthcoming about the political embarrassment and diplomatic debacle -- arising mainly from the vituperative hectoring the bill’s authors subjected India to.

“If you keep buying cheap Russian oil… we will tariff the hell out of you and we're going to crush your economy,” raged the late Senator Lindsay Graham, who piloted the legislation, warning of tariffs up to 500 per cent.

India survived; Graham did not, passing away on July 11 at 71.Graham’s Democratic co-sponsor Richard Blumenthal was scarcely more restrained. “To China and India: You better clean up your act. Buy your oil and gas somewhere else.

Appeasement is not a strategy,” he declared. On Friday, Blumenthal was left fuming at Trump’s appeasement, accusing him of standing “on the side of a bloodthirsty thug and the enablers of Russia’s war machine.”Forgotten amid the hand-wringing: The Biden administration tacitly encouraged--and explicitly permitted -- India to purchase Russian oil to stabilize global energy supply so long as those purchases adhered to the price cap mechanism.

Now, with Graham gone but his legislation very much alive, Trump has discovered that appeasement may not be a strategy either -- but neither is making American motorists pay a premium for geopolitical virtue.For India, the reprieve is reason enough for a quiet celebration. It was not exactly a Taco Tuesday, but it was certainly a Samosa Saturday in New Delhi: the country Trump threatened to crush for buying cheap Russian oil has been let off the hook by a president who has now discovered the virtues of affordable energy. The oil hasn’t changed, nor has the argument. Only Washington’s position has.