After weeks of worrying rhetoric, the US is sending over one of its top diplomats in an effort to calm the nerves of policymakers in New Delhi and provide an assurance that India will not face sanctions over its business and military ties to Russia, sources in the know told Moneycontrol.
US assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs Donald Lu will be in India on Tuesday on a one-day visit. Lu’s visit gains significance against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, which has seen India and the US take opposing diplomatic stances. Incidentally, Lu is the same US official who had been in the news for saying earlier this month that India’s defence deals with Russia remain plausible ground for sanctions and that US President Joe Biden was still considering his options.
India has faced flak from US lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, for choosing to abstain from multiple votes at the United Nations condemning Russia’s unilateral attack on Ukraine. The Biden administration has also been irked by India’s refusal to stop trade with Russia nearly a month after the invasion began.
Speaking at the Business Roundtable’s CEO Quarterly Meeting at the White House on March 21, Biden said that while some members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) like Japan and Australia have responded to Russia’s aggression strongly, India has been “somewhat shaky” on some of the issues, ANI reported.
Gentle nudge
However, multiple diplomatic sources said Lu is expected to convey to the ministry of external affairs (MEA) that the bilateral strategic partnership and business ties between the US and India trump other diplomatic positions.
“There has been a lot of mudslinging between New Delhi and Washington, DC, with politicians making unwarranted comments. The leaders have been restrained till now but they are also beholden to the political mood at home. We feel a clean break is in order at this point,” a senior US diplomat said.
Lu had told members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counter-terrorism on March 9 that it was for Biden to decide whether to apply or waive sanctions on India. He had also stressed that while the Biden administration will fully follow and implement the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) law, India remained an extremely important security partner of the US.
“Lu is expected to repeat the same in Delhi. However, the US has continued to ask all partners, including India, to reduce ties with Russia, while India has maintained it will take independent decisions based on national security,” an MEA official said.
CAATSA scare
Signed by President Donald Trump in 2017, CAATSA “seeks to counter Russian influence in Europe and curb Iran’s ballistic missile program and targets the rogue regime in North Korea”, according to the US Congress. While it has been a major force in diplomatic negotiations, the legislation has not been used till now against any other country.
However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen calls from the US Congress to tighten CAATSA further and cut off Russia’s ability to export its weapons. Beyond this, Washington, DC, is now making sure that it becomes very hard for any country to buy major weapons systems from Russia as a result of the sanctions in place on Russian banks.
Significantly for India, CAATSA has provisions to impose economic and financial sanctions against countries that engage in significant transactions with Russia’s defence and intelligence sectors.
Enacted in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections, it authorises the US administration to impose sanctions on countries that purchase major defence hardware from Russia.
India has repeatedly run afoul of the rule owing to its existing deep defence ties with Russia but the US has not gone beyond the occasional rebuke, choosing to settle matters in private.
After CAATSA kicked in, India inked a $5.43-billion deal with Russia to procure four S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile defence systems in October 2018.
The same year, it also purchased significant amounts of crude oil from Iran. However, after being prodded by the US, the government has since moved away from Iranian crude. After reaching a high of $12.3 billion worth of imports in 2018-19, the import of crude oil from Iran plummeted to $1 billion in 2019-20 and completely stopped thereafter.
With regards to Indian defence acquisitions from Russia, Lu had also told the US Congress that India had cancelled large orders of MiG-29 fighter jets, Russian helicopters and anti-tank weapons. India has, however, not officially confirmed this. “The government is studying whether the fighter jets order can be redirected to domestic players in the spirit of Make in India. No further decision has been taken,” a senior official said.
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