<p>At a time when there is a perceived sense of slight about Washington’s assertions that New Delhi has committed to reducing Russian oil imports in a lopsided trade deal, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar affirmed that India’s decisions on energy purchases will be made after considering “availability, cost and risks”. Strategic autonomy is a non-negotiable condition for the availability of strategic options in the interaction of states, and for India to conduct its international diplomatic negotiations, it needs to blend high-mindedness with toughness. Jaishankar is surely aware that the size of the economy, position in trade and technological networks, savings, wealth, and finance are the main sources of economic power, and their impact on strategic autonomy is considerable.</p>.<p>Part of the impression accounting for the sense of India’s capitulation to the US must be due to the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation in the Lok Sabha that the NDA government had compromised India’s energy security, data, and the future of its farmers by signing the Indo-US interim trade agreement. Going by Trump badmouthing India for the last couple of months and his disparaging tone vis-à-vis India’s stony silence and refusal to counter Trump further firmed up a perception of India’s tame gesture. Russian President Vladimir Putin told Washington last year not to try to strong-arm India and China with tariffs and sanctions, saying, “You cannot talk to India or China in that way.” Addressing the media after attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, Putin accused the Trump administration of using economic pressure as a tool to undermine two of Asia’s biggest powers. We would have loved our PM saying to Trump that when it comes to the energy security of a nation, India, like the US, must brook no nonsense.</p>.<p>Whether the core goals of Indian exceptionalism and prickly sovereignty of its global vision had been sustained was on trial during the US-India negotiations on the 2008 nuclear agreement and in some features of US-India defence sales. But this time, it is a bit hazy. Trump announced that a trade deal had been reached with India, claiming that New Delhi would stop buying Russian oil as part of the agreement. No comment from India has been forthcoming, and Russia said it has received no word from New Delhi about halting oil purchases. “We respect bilateral US-Indian relations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “But we attach no less importance to the development of an advanced strategic partnership between Russia and India”. Analysts are, however, wary that India will stop buying Russian oil completely due to the economic ramifications. As both the US and Russia consider India to be their natural ally, it would be unfortunate if India acts on American diktats.</p>.<p>The ironic part is that strategic autonomy is the intellectual descendant of non-alignment, as Nehru’s signature concept of Indian foreign policy draws on the drive to maintain Indian primacy in South Asia, envisioning a unique India that regards the nation primarily as the heir to a great civilisation. The drive to make India’s economy a real source of power has become a core foreign policy objective since 1990. The assertions from Washington that India committed to reducing oil imports (like Trump’s repeated assertion that he stopped a nuclear war from breaking out between India and Pakistan) from Russia sound audacious without a refutation from New Delhi, and the deliberate obfuscation about the Indo-US trade deal.</p>.<p>Alliance without alignment</p>.<p>India’s vote against the resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) condemning Iran for its ‘violent’ crackdown on peaceful protests and extending investigative mandates to probe the alleged violations must be read in the light of the US flexing its muscles in subverting India’s interests both in the cases of its relation to Russia and Iran, India’s need to not antagonise its Muslim population and its expediency to maintain its interests in the Chabahar port, and a slew of other factors. The US revoked the long-standing sanctions waiver <br>for Chabahar in September 2025, which exposed Indian operators to potential penalties. The US is trying to drag India into a test of friendship that overlooks the nuances of an established relationship.</p>.<p>India’s thriving bilateral relationships with Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – each having adversarial relations with the other – are essentially independent and non-parallel. India’s dealings with the countries locked in outstanding disputes have been the hallmark of its foreign policy behaviour since independence. For instance, since the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in 1992, India has sought to compartmentalise its ties with Israel and Iran, driven by an intent to pursue bilateral relations consistent with its interests and requirements, regardless of their conflicts. To make strategic autonomy work, India has, in the past, been able to muster a sophisticated and complex set of bilateral and multilateral relations.</p>.<p>It bears recall that since the late 1990s, there has been frequent speculation about the formation of a trilateral alliance consisting of Russia, China, and India, which, by the imperative of strategic autonomy, was a no-brainer mainly because the relationship of each of them with the US is more important than their relationship with each other. The American flair for unilateralism and interference in the internal affairs of other countries stands not only in violation of international law but also in the diktats of strategic autonomy. If the past is any guide, technology denial, sanctions, and arm-twisting continued to haunt India as far as the US is concerned, while Russia, on the other hand, had been consistently hospitable to Indian requirements. Energy and defence had been the bane of Indo-Russian ties even before the Ukraine war. The cold logic of the 21st-century global politics is to wear several hats.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on geopolitics, development and culture)</em></p>
<p>At a time when there is a perceived sense of slight about Washington’s assertions that New Delhi has committed to reducing Russian oil imports in a lopsided trade deal, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar affirmed that India’s decisions on energy purchases will be made after considering “availability, cost and risks”. Strategic autonomy is a non-negotiable condition for the availability of strategic options in the interaction of states, and for India to conduct its international diplomatic negotiations, it needs to blend high-mindedness with toughness. Jaishankar is surely aware that the size of the economy, position in trade and technological networks, savings, wealth, and finance are the main sources of economic power, and their impact on strategic autonomy is considerable.</p>.<p>Part of the impression accounting for the sense of India’s capitulation to the US must be due to the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation in the Lok Sabha that the NDA government had compromised India’s energy security, data, and the future of its farmers by signing the Indo-US interim trade agreement. Going by Trump badmouthing India for the last couple of months and his disparaging tone vis-à-vis India’s stony silence and refusal to counter Trump further firmed up a perception of India’s tame gesture. Russian President Vladimir Putin told Washington last year not to try to strong-arm India and China with tariffs and sanctions, saying, “You cannot talk to India or China in that way.” Addressing the media after attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, Putin accused the Trump administration of using economic pressure as a tool to undermine two of Asia’s biggest powers. We would have loved our PM saying to Trump that when it comes to the energy security of a nation, India, like the US, must brook no nonsense.</p>.<p>Whether the core goals of Indian exceptionalism and prickly sovereignty of its global vision had been sustained was on trial during the US-India negotiations on the 2008 nuclear agreement and in some features of US-India defence sales. But this time, it is a bit hazy. Trump announced that a trade deal had been reached with India, claiming that New Delhi would stop buying Russian oil as part of the agreement. No comment from India has been forthcoming, and Russia said it has received no word from New Delhi about halting oil purchases. “We respect bilateral US-Indian relations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “But we attach no less importance to the development of an advanced strategic partnership between Russia and India”. Analysts are, however, wary that India will stop buying Russian oil completely due to the economic ramifications. As both the US and Russia consider India to be their natural ally, it would be unfortunate if India acts on American diktats.</p>.<p>The ironic part is that strategic autonomy is the intellectual descendant of non-alignment, as Nehru’s signature concept of Indian foreign policy draws on the drive to maintain Indian primacy in South Asia, envisioning a unique India that regards the nation primarily as the heir to a great civilisation. The drive to make India’s economy a real source of power has become a core foreign policy objective since 1990. The assertions from Washington that India committed to reducing oil imports (like Trump’s repeated assertion that he stopped a nuclear war from breaking out between India and Pakistan) from Russia sound audacious without a refutation from New Delhi, and the deliberate obfuscation about the Indo-US trade deal.</p>.<p>Alliance without alignment</p>.<p>India’s vote against the resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) condemning Iran for its ‘violent’ crackdown on peaceful protests and extending investigative mandates to probe the alleged violations must be read in the light of the US flexing its muscles in subverting India’s interests both in the cases of its relation to Russia and Iran, India’s need to not antagonise its Muslim population and its expediency to maintain its interests in the Chabahar port, and a slew of other factors. The US revoked the long-standing sanctions waiver <br>for Chabahar in September 2025, which exposed Indian operators to potential penalties. The US is trying to drag India into a test of friendship that overlooks the nuances of an established relationship.</p>.<p>India’s thriving bilateral relationships with Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – each having adversarial relations with the other – are essentially independent and non-parallel. India’s dealings with the countries locked in outstanding disputes have been the hallmark of its foreign policy behaviour since independence. For instance, since the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in 1992, India has sought to compartmentalise its ties with Israel and Iran, driven by an intent to pursue bilateral relations consistent with its interests and requirements, regardless of their conflicts. To make strategic autonomy work, India has, in the past, been able to muster a sophisticated and complex set of bilateral and multilateral relations.</p>.<p>It bears recall that since the late 1990s, there has been frequent speculation about the formation of a trilateral alliance consisting of Russia, China, and India, which, by the imperative of strategic autonomy, was a no-brainer mainly because the relationship of each of them with the US is more important than their relationship with each other. The American flair for unilateralism and interference in the internal affairs of other countries stands not only in violation of international law but also in the diktats of strategic autonomy. If the past is any guide, technology denial, sanctions, and arm-twisting continued to haunt India as far as the US is concerned, while Russia, on the other hand, had been consistently hospitable to Indian requirements. Energy and defence had been the bane of Indo-Russian ties even before the Ukraine war. The cold logic of the 21st-century global politics is to wear several hats.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on geopolitics, development and culture)</em></p>
