{"id":6115,"date":"2023-04-07T23:31:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T23:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/?p=6115"},"modified":"2023-04-07T23:32:53","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T23:32:53","slug":"is-a-new-russia-china-india-bloc-forming-in-the-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/is-a-new-russia-china-india-bloc-forming-in-the-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a New Russia-China-India Bloc Forming in the East?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mohamed Zeeshan

Last week, a potentially consequential meeting in New Delhi went conspicuously unnoticed in much of the West. On the sidelines of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia\u2019s powerful Security Council,\u00a0met<\/a>\u00a0India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a private interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Details about what was discussed are notoriously skimpy<\/a> in the public domain, but getting a meeting with Modi is no easy task and the conversation certainly had a compelling context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since the Ukraine war began, Russia\u2019s economy has relied heavily on trade ties with India and China to keep its war effort going. The unprecedented extent of the West\u2019s sanctions on Moscow meant that Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin had to essentially build a parallel economy to sidestep dollar transactions and keep those ties going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just so, in the aftermath of the invasion, Russia\u2019s trade with China in the Chinese yuan multiplied by an extraordinary 80 times<\/a>. At a meeting with China\u2019s President Xi Jinping last month, Putin spoke of a longer-term plan<\/a> to rely on the yuan as its currency of choice. \u201cWe are in favor of using the Chinese yuan for settlements between Russia and the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That plan will also have to include India at some point. Owing to accelerated oil purchases since the invasion, India\u2019s imports from Russia have multiplied by a whopping 400 percent<\/a> over this past fiscal year. Russia is now India\u2019s fourth-largest<\/a> trade partner and still surging (it was the seventh-largest<\/a> only in October). It\u2019s no surprise then that Patrushev had been accompanied on his trip by the chairman of Rosneft, Russia\u2019s state-owned oil company, who signed an agreement<\/a> with the Indian Oil Corporation to increase supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in a separate meeting in New Delhi, the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma \u2014 the lower house of Russia\u2019s parliament \u2014 floated<\/a> a common digital currency led by India, China and Russia. And last week, Russia\u2019s latest foreign policy concept note mentioned<\/a> India and China as its closest allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that sounds quite sensible from Moscow\u2019s point of view. The problem for Putin, however, is that India still views China suspiciously, owing to lengthy clashes on the border, and it\u2019s highly unlikely just yet that New Delhi would be willing to work with Beijing to build a parallel economy free from the dollar. After deadly border clashes broke out in 2020, India cracked down<\/a> on sundry Chinese smartphone apps and investors. Last year, it launched<\/a> various tax evasion probes against Chinese businesses. That general trend of economic decoupling also owes at least in part to Modi\u2019s protectionist zeal in building domestic manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, none of this is to say that India doesn\u2019t want to challenge the dollar\u2019s global dominance. Concerns over Western hegemony are a bigger part of India\u2019s strategic culture than most in Washington might think, and the West\u2019s sweeping use of economic sanctions has unsettled many in New Delhi over the years. Last year, India\u2019s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, permitted rupee trade<\/a>, thereby facilitating stronger ties with countries under Western sanctions.ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if Putin is to use this convergence of interests to keep his parallel economy going, he will have to find a way to ease tensions between Beijing and New Delhi on their Himalayan border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many are skeptical that Putin can prevail on Xi to do that; the balance of power in that lopsided alliance is well and truly with the Chinese. Yet, the border with India is also increasingly becoming a footnote in China\u2019s own strategic priorities as it sets its eyes on bigger prizes on the global stage. Over the last several months, China has been positioning itself<\/a> as a strategic alternative to the U.S., everywhere from Ukraine to the Pacific and the Middle East. As tensions heat up around Taiwan, Beijing is increasingly shifting its focus to building resilience against potential economic blowback from the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Putin is able to appeal to those larger ambitions when he likely meets Modi and Xi<\/a> at the SCO and perhaps the G-20 later this year, a new bloc may be forming in the East. That\u2019s a trend that everyone in Washington should be following far more closely.

(Source: The Diplomat)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mohamed ZeeshanLast week, a potentially consequential meeting in New Delhi went conspicuously unnoticed in much of the West. On the sidelines of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia\u2019s powerful Security Council,\u00a0met\u00a0India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a private interaction. Details about what was discussed are notoriously skimpy in the public …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,183,218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-172","category-asian-issues","category-reports-and-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6119,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions\/6119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}