Trump is trying to turn India against Russia. It won’t work.

4 comments

1. **From Daniel R. DePetris, fellow at Defense Priorities:**

   In between inspecting his golf courses in Scotland and meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, President Trump delivered another stern message to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week: the 50-day time frame the United States has given you to stop the war in Ukraine is now reduced to 10 to 12 days. “No reason in waiting,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We just don’t see any progress being made.”

   Those remarks come after weeks in which the Trump administration, and the president specifically, issued pointed barbs at the Russians for impeding the peace process between the two countries, which the White House has tried to facilitate. In addition to sanctions, the administration threatened to slap secondary tariffs on Russia’s trading partners, particularly those who buy Russian oil and gas, if no peace agreement is reached. There was widespread skepticism that Trump would actually go through with this, but Trump’s announcement Wednesday that India will be hit with an additional penalty for purchasing Russian oil suggests this concern was misplaced.

   Yet even as Trump seems to be getting increasingly tough on Putin for stonewalling peace talks, two questions are front of mind. First, will secondary tariffs affect Moscow’s ability to continue the war? And second, by sanctioning India, does Trump risk undermining a critical strategic relationship that every U.S. president since the turn of the century has sought to cultivate?

   Read more: [https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-tariffs-india-russia-ukraine-oil-gas-rcna221986](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-tariffs-india-russia-ukraine-oil-gas-rcna221986) 

2. Of course it won’t work.

   India doesn’t see US reliable and they refuse to be their colony. Russia comes largely with no strings attached relationship. I don’t think this was ever the intent of the US either, they understand India isn’t going to make an enemy in Russia. The idea was to reduce dependency which is largely happening anyway. India should probably also keep the dependency to US at a minimum.

3. As long as US is pro-Pakistan, it won’t work….

4. This is a very interesting move that may actually work. India is well known to be extremely neutral in its diplomacy. They deal with many different actors, but they keep all their various partners at a set distance away. The US has spent decades trying to build a strong relationship with India and that hasn’t produced much. However, the inverse may also be true. The US can take more hostile actions against India and it won’t drive India to the US’s adversaries.

   These tariffs may or may not work, but they appear to be extremely low risk. It’s unlikely India will deepen it’s relationship with Russia unless Russia provides more concessions. It’s unlikely Russia will go farther so it’s even more unlikely India will.

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