‘Self-inflicted wound’: Brahma Chellaney says Trump’s punitive steps are eroding India’s trust

US President Donald Trump’s ‘punitive’ steps are eroding the very trust on which the strategic partnership of New Delhi-Washington lays, said geostrategist and commentator Brahma Chellaney in an opinion piece.

He said Trump’s decision to impose secondary sanctions on India for importing Russian oil while also imposing 50 per cent tariffs is “more than a trade dispute”. In an opinion piece for The Hill, Chellaney said, “It is a self-inflicted wound to America’s most vital strategic partnership in Asia, and it comes at a time when China is flexing its military muscle throughout the region.”

To Beijing’s delight Trump’s punitive steps against India are “eroding the very trust on which strategic alignment rests”, he added. India has long been the bulwark against expansionist China, and also a critical pillar of the US' ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy.

Chellaney says if the mutual trust that was built painstakingly over years is lost, it will be hard to rebuild. Even with a trade deal, the trust might be difficult to re-establish.

“Targeting India over Russian oil purchases smacks of selective enforcement. The European Union’s large imports of Russian energy products, especially liquefied natural gas, have been left untouched. Such European imports not only contribute more to Russia’s coffers than India’s purchases, but Europe spends more on Russian energy than on assisting Ukraine,” he said, highlighting that Trump has “spared” the world’s largest buyer of Russian oil and gas – China.

“But India, the very country Washington has spent years courting as an Asian counterweight, has become the first victim of his secondary sanctions. This suggests Trump’s tactics are less about punishing Moscow than about pressuring New Delhi,” he said, adding that Russian oil is just a pretext to strong-arm India. He also pointed out that Indian exports of gas, diesel and jet fuel to the US, which are made from Russian oil, remain exempt from the tariffs. He said Trump is not troubled by the fact that his own administration is helping fund Russia’s war.

Chellaney said New Delhi’s Russian oil purchases are just a “crude bargaining tactic” for Trump to secure a bilateral trade of his own choosing.

India, on its part will hedge between the US, Russia and others to secure as well as diversify its economic and security interests. “America is effectively handing China an opening to court a disillusioned India,” he said.

Trump’s moves may have done India a favour by “exposing the strategic reality of America’s unreliability”, he said, adding that Washington can no longer be counted on. “Sacrificing a linchpin of Indo-Pacific stability for a fleeting win in a tariff war is not tough bargaining. It is strategic recklessness — and a gift to China,” said Chellaney.