Time To Get Real

India’s S-400 Triumf air defence missile system deal with Russia is sure to irk the US. Can we afford to imperil Indo-US ties by ignoring some obvious geoeconomic realities?

- Manish Kumar Jha

THE SIGNING of the S-400 air defence missile deal with Russia was not quite a proud moment. A joint statement issued after the talks between visiting Russian President, Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi confirmed the $5.4 billion deal, but barely outlined its contours. The threat of CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) looms large over India.

A day before Putin’s arrival in India, the United States had hinted of punitive sanctions and warned that S-400 was a “focus area” of secondary US sanctions against those who had made “significant” military hardware purchases from Russian establishments. The State Department said India’s decision to continue buying oil from Iran after November 4 and purchase the S-400 Triumf air defence system from Russia was “not helpful” and that the US was reviewing it “very carefully”.

But old school guards are back in business, celebrating the traditional bonhomie with Russia and cheering the independent stance taken by Emerging India. There is no going back on India’s relations with Russia now, but it is not a moment of triumph. We are doling out a couple of billion dollars to procure military hardware from Russia at the cost of losing out on trade exchanges with the US. With bilateral trade thriving at $126 billion in 2017, the United States is India’s top export market. In the April 2017 to March 2018 financial year, India’s exports to the US touched $47.9 billion, or 16 per cent of India’s total global trade.