When the leaders of the EU set out their new strategy to engage India last month, they hoped it would result in a few favorable headlines about the new partnership. They did indeed read multiple India-related headlines in the next days — but about its participation in “strategic” military exercises with Russia and Belarus.
Brussels, which has been pushing for more concessions, must have felt like someone had set out to humiliate them. That was not the intent, of course, and officials in New Delhi were surprised and puzzled by the anger in Europe.
Clearly, both sides struggle to understand each other. At the moment, though, it does look like the Europeans are trying harder than the Indians. They have stopped complaining about New Delhi’s continuing engagement with Moscow, learned to look the other way while Russian oil is refined and resold, and even put up with photographs of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) embracing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a summit in China.
Illustration: Tania Chou
India needs to reciprocate. Nobody expects the military to end its long-standing relationship with Russia in the foreseeable future — that cannot happen, if only because they need to maintain supply chains and repair networks for almost all their weapons platforms. However, own-goals such as the Zapad exercises are quite unnecessary. At a time when drones are testing the eastern borders of NATO, it is unclear what utility the Indian military would get out of training with its counterparts from Iran, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali.
The official defense — that the army deputed only a few soldiers to the exercise, while simultaneously sending far more to US-led war games in Alaska, and had participated in previous iterations of Zapad — did not cut any ice in Europe. India is looking for Europe to invest in its future, and anyone seeking investment knows that your primary job is to figure out what your investors’ red lines are and try not to cross them before anything is signed.
It is only a matter of a few months before an agreement is due to be reached. Earlier this year, Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen surprised their officials by saying that a free trade deal would be closed by the end of the year. However, the two sides still have to overcome a series of sticking points on agriculture, cars and car parts, as well as wine and spirits — plus the contentious issue of India’s quality control regime that unpredictably and irrationally interferes with trade. New Delhi’s bureaucracy might be distracted putting out fires lit by the White House, but from a longer-term perspective, the EU deal is even more important.
If the leaders’ deadline is missed, it might never happen. US President Donald Trump certainly does not want Europe to extend a lifeline to New Delhi. He has demanded that, instead of freer trade, the EU put 100 percent tariffs on India and China to punish them for buying Russian oil. While his European counterparts politely ignored the pictures of Modi, Xi and Putin, Trump said that it meant the South Asian nation was “lost” to “deepest, darkest China.”
New Delhi should recognize that there is a limited amount of time available to lock the Europeans in before pressure from the US would begin to tell. Even within the EU, political consensus might fracture, as more populists are elected that are friendlier to China and Russia, and suspicious of any new deals with countries such as India.
India needs a bit more empathy for European concerns about its own security. It has always surrounded its collaboration with the US, including through the Quad, with messaging that it is not working against China. At the very least, any further engagement with Russia should be accompanied by similar signals. Europe’s leaders would not give special treatment to a country that they also fear would line up with Moscow against the continent. Meanwhile, the Europeans need to be more flexible on their trade requirements. India has signed multiple agreements in the past few years, but they contained far fewer demands than what Brussels expects. The European Commission’s bureaucrats would need to give up some of their precious regulatory barriers if they want to get an agreement over the line this year.
The Indians should merely ensure they look like a reliable, long-term partner. A country struggling with a China that expects complete submission and a US that has imposed 50 percent tariffs on its goods is running out of partners and options. There is political will in Europe right now for a deal with India that includes trade, investment and defense. Modi should seize the moment — before Trump and Xi ensure that it is no longer on offer.
Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, he is author of Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy.
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