India’s Strategic Autonomy
under Trump’s Tariff Regime: Multipolar Equilibria and Indo–Russian
Continuities
Abstract
Introduction
Recent
claims surrounding a tariff adjustment between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
President Donald Trump have generated considerable speculation regarding
India’s strategic orientation. Trump’s assertion that India would curtail
Russian oil purchases in exchange for tariff reductions suggests an attempt to
convert trade diplomacy into an alignment mechanism. Yet India’s foreign policy
history reveals that sovereignty preservation, energy realism, and strategic
autonomy cannot be overridden by marginal transactional concessions.
This
article situates the Modi–Trump tariff episode within India’s deeper
geopolitical posture, demonstrating that multi-alignment remains India’s
dominant equilibrium strategy in an increasingly fragmented multipolar order.
The argument proceeds by locating tariff diplomacy within India’s historical
memory of Indo–Russian security guarantees, its contemporary energy
constraints, and the systemic pressures produced by great-power rivalry in
Eurasia.
Tariff diplomacy and coercive alignment
The
announcement of tariff reductions between Modi and Trump must be understood not
merely as a commercial adjustment, but as a significant moment in the evolving
geopolitical contest over India’s autonomy. Any suggestion that India might
exchange decades of strategic partnership with Russia for a
seven-percentage-point tariff concession requires contextualisation within the
deeper historical structure of Indo–Russian relations.
The
legacy of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War further reinforces India’s caution
toward American coercion. The deployment of the US Seventh Fleet toward the Bay
of Bengal was perceived as intimidation, while Soviet signalling served as
India’s strategic counterweight. These historical episodes are not merely
archival; they remain embedded within Indian strategic culture as reminders of
the conditional nature of American partnership.
The
tariff episode thus reflects a broader pattern: Washington seeks alignment
through conditional market access, while India seeks tactical economic gains
without surrendering strategic autonomy. The broader diplomatic context also
reveals the limits of spectacle-driven partnership, as symbolic events such as
the “Howdy Modi” rally and Ahmedabad summit optics failed to prevent repeated
US tariff defection, underscoring the transactional rather than reciprocal
nature of Trump-era engagement.
Strategic autonomy and repeated-game bargaining
The
Modi–Trump tariff episode can be formalised through the framework of repeated
strategic interaction, most usefully modelled as a variant of the repeated
prisoner’s dilemma under asymmetric leverage. In such settings, economic
rewards and coercive threats operate not as isolated events but as iterative
bargaining moves within a longer geopolitical game.
A more
rigorous representation of this interaction is provided by the 2×2 payoff
structure of the US–India tariff game, in which both actors may either
cooperate (maintaining open trade with low tariffs) or defect (escalating
tariffs or retaliating). Under mutual cooperation, the outcome is one of shared
gains. By contrast, persistent US defection while India continues cooperation
produces an asymmetric payoff in which India suffers economic loss while
Washington accrues leverage.
Table 1. U.S.–India Tariff Interaction Payoff
Structure (adapted from Deman 2026)
|
|
India
Cooperate |
India
Defects |
|
US
Cooperate |
(4, 4) |
(1, 5) |
|
US
Defects |
(5, 1) |
(2, 2) |
The
United States has repeatedly used tariffs as punishment mechanisms designed to
induce compliance. For India, however, cooperation must remain conditional,
since abandoning Russia or refusing retaliation represents an irreversible
weakening of its long-term strategic insurance position.
India
therefore pursues calibrated accommodation: signalling limited cooperation to
extract short-term trade benefit while retaining autonomy to resist escalation.
Russia’s presence as an alternative partner alters the payoff structure,
preventing Washington from enforcing monopolistic discipline.
As the
Folk Theorem suggests, sustained cooperation in repeated games is only stable
when credible punishment strategies exist. India’s relative passivity in the
2017–2020 tariff cycle weakened its bargaining leverage by allowing repeated US
defection without proportional countermeasures. In such a structure, strategic
autonomy requires not only rhetorical non-alignment but enforceable bargaining
credibility.
Multi-alignment as equilibrium under multipolarity
India’s
foreign policy posture is increasingly best conceptualised as equilibrium
behaviour within an emerging multipolar system. Full alignment with the United
States would intensify Chinese hostility and weaken Russian counterweight
insurance; full alignment with Russia would constrain access to Western
technology and capital.
India
thus occupies a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium: selective cooperation
distributed across competing poles to prevent domination by any single actor.
This equilibrium reflects the strategic logic of autonomy maximisation under
multipolar constraints.
Participation
in BRICS and rupee-denominated trade mechanisms reflects institutional
diversification aimed at reducing vulnerability to dollar-based sanction
architectures. The Modi–Trump tariff episode represents one bargaining round
within this broader equilibrium process rather than a decisive pivot.
Energy security and sanctions resistance
Indo–Russian
continuity is increasingly anchored in energy realism. India is one of the
world’s largest oil importers, and energy security is inseparable from national
security. Energy dependence imposes structural constraints that cannot be
displaced through short-term trade concessions.
Western
sanction regimes seek to weaponise interdependence by transforming access to
financial and settlement systems into coercive tools. India’s refusal to
subordinate its energy needs to Western priorities reflects the limits of such
coercion when applied to major emerging powers.
Russian
crude offers price competitiveness, reliability, and transactional
flexibility—including partial rupee-based settlement arrangements. Tariff
concessions cannot compensate for the structural imperatives of energy
survival. Oil therefore functions as structural ballast stabilising
Indo–Russian relations against episodic US economic pressure.
Kashmir, sovereignty, and Russian diplomatic
insurance
The
Kashmir dispute remains central to India’s sovereignty consciousness. Soviet
vetoes at the UN Security Council prevented Western-backed internationalisation
efforts, preserving India’s preferred bilateral framing. Sovereignty
preservation has therefore remained an existential organising principle of
Indian diplomacy.
By
contrast, America’s historic alignment with Pakistan produced enduring Indian
scepticism regarding US neutrality on sovereignty questions. Kashmir thus
serves as a reminder that Indo–Russian ties rest on institutional reassurance,
not ideology.
India
cannot rationally exchange such diplomatic insurance for marginal tariff
relief. Sovereignty preservation ensures that Indo–Russian continuity remains a
durable component of India’s equilibrium strategy.
BRICS expansion and the decline of Western economic
discipline
The
endurance of India’s multi-alignment strategy must also be situated within the
broader systemic transformation represented by BRICS expansion and the gradual
erosion of Western economic monopoly. As emerging powers develop alternative
financial architectures, the capacity of the United States to enforce
compliance through tariffs, sanctions, or dollar-centric coercion becomes
increasingly constrained.
India’s
participation in BRICS is not merely symbolic but reflects an institutional
hedge against Western disciplinary mechanisms. De-dollarisation initiatives,
alternative development banks, and energy settlement diversification all
contribute to an emerging multipolar economic order.
Thus, the
Modi–Trump tariff episode should be read as one tactical episode within a much
larger historical transition: the declining capacity of Western economic
statecraft to determine the strategic choices of major civilisational powers.
Conclusion: India’s autonomy in the multipolar
order
The
Modi–Trump tariff episode does not represent a decisive pivot away from Russia.
Rather, it illustrates the limits of transactional economic statecraft when
confronted with historical memory, structural energy dependence, and
sovereignty imperatives.
India’s
dominant strategy remains multi-alignment: cooperation where beneficial,
resistance where necessary, and diversification across power centres to
maximise autonomy. In an emerging multipolar order defined by competitive
interdependence, India’s foreign policy is best understood not as ideological
non-alignment but as rational equilibrium behaviour.
Policy implications: strategic autonomy under
tariff coercion
For
India, the central lesson of the Trump tariff episode is that strategic
autonomy requires more than balancing rhetoric: it requires credible bargaining
enforcement. In repeated games of economic coercion, cooperation is only stable
when punishment strategies exist.
First,
India must develop credible retaliatory trade instruments—whether through
WTO-compatible countermeasures or regional trade diversification—to prevent
asymmetric tariff exploitation.
Second,
India should institutionalise energy sovereignty by expanding settlement
diversification, including rupee-based mechanisms, to reduce vulnerability to
sanctions coercion.
Third,
New Delhi must avoid over-investing in spectacle diplomacy. Symbolic summits
cannot substitute for enforceable reciprocity in trade relations.
Finally,
BRICS and other multipolar forums should be leveraged not as ideological blocs
but as strategic hedges that widen India’s autonomy space under conditions of
systemic Western decline.
India’s
long-term equilibrium lies not in exclusive alignment with Washington or
Moscow, but in sustained multi-vector autonomy as the defining strategy of a
post-hegemonic international order.
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