Vishal Sharma

In the global political theatre of absurd of which the US president, Donald J Trump is the main lead, another character has joined him and performed a comical act to an epic proportion. He is none other than Mark Rutte, the current NATO chief. Mark Rutte recently threatened India, China, and Brazil over their continued business with Russia.

In his meeting with US senators recently, he asked the three countries to speak to Russian president, Vladimir Putin and ask him to accept the peace deal with Ukraine. “My encouragement to these three countries, particularly is, if you live now in Beijing, or in Delhi, or you are the president of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard,” Reuters quoted Rutte as saying to reporters.

Rutte is further reported to have added, “So please make the phone call to Vladimir Putin and tell him that he has to get serious about peace talks, because otherwise this will slam back on Brazil, on India and on China in a massive way.”

Rutte’s threat to impose sanctions on India, China and Brazil for buying Russian oil has taken many by surprise, coming as it did from a head of a military alliance. Countries are known to impose sanctions on other countries not treaty organizations.

But Rutte has been flying high these days. Especially after his meeting with President Trump in which he quite obsequiously labeled the latter as the ‘daddy’ for the way he reprimanded both Israel PM, Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian leadership for having reneged on ceasefire following 12 day Iran Israel war.

This meeting in which Rutte was quite clearly sucking up to President Trump was quite different to the one previously he had with him in which he found getting Trump to buy into his line of thinking a hard row to hoe. Since then Trump and Rutte has, however, got on well.

Rutte was not speaking offhand when he made the threats of sanction against the trio of India, Brazil and China. We now know that even before the echoes of his threats tailed off, the EU sanctioned a refinery in India, which has been refining crude oil imported from Russia. Clearly, Rutte was on the inside lane of the EU decision making.

EU sanctioned Nayara Energy’s Vadinar oil refinery in Gujarat, as it unveiled new punitive measures targeting the Russian energy sector. “Full-fledged sanctions target Russian and international companies managing shadow fleet vessels, traders of Russian crude oil and a major customer of the shadow fleet – a refinery in India with Rosneft as its main shareholder,” the EU was quoted by PTI as saying.

Within hours of EU’s sanction, however, India was quick to dismiss the EU’s action as nothing more than double standards.

“India does not subscribe to any unilateral sanction measures. We are a responsible actor and remain fully committed to our legal obligations,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

Russian oil is banned in Europe due to ongoing Russia Ukraine conflict. But there is no bar on European traders importing refined products made from Russian crude. According to a new study by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), the EU imported 13% of its seaborne cargoes of diesel and jet fuel from India during 2024.

“In the first three quarters of 2024, exports to the EU from the Jamnagar, Vadinar (in Gujarat) and new Mangalore refinery – which are increasingly reliant on Russian crude – saw a 58 percent year-on-year rise further,” CREA’s researchers reported.

If refined products from India made using Russian crude oil were banned in the EU, where will the EU meet its oil demands from? Commentators are speculating that the US wants the EU to buy oil from it. If it were to happen then the EU will be forced to fork up more money for oil purchases than it has been otherwise doing given that the US oil is costlier. But the EU can’t be trusted to do anything sensible these days. It is so beholden to the US on just about everything that it has lost its independence on all issues- foreign and fiscal.

Even on the issue of aid to Ukraine despite Europe’s desperate calls to do more, what is it that President Trump has decided that he will do? He announced that NATO will fund and send weapons to Kyiv. Trump is reported to have told NBC News: “We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, a hundred percent.”

“We’re going to be sending Patriots to NATO, and then NATO will distribute that,” he added. If this is the extent of the US’s commitment to Ukraine’s war effort, then Europe will be well advised to conceive a Russia policy independent of the US.

If all heavy lifting is to be done by Europe and all credit has to be appropriated by the US, then why on earth is Europe falling on its knees before the US in such a cringy manner. And if the EU has done the US’s bidding in proscribing an Indian refinery, then quite frankly, it needs to self introspect and reflect even more for it is no use being the US mistress without so much as a retainer.

The US is not even in a mood to heed the EU’s concerns on tariffs. The US- EU trade deal will happen only if the US finds that there is something in it for it. And in the process if EU is damned, so be it. The US under Trump is a different beast; it is not at all bothered about friends and foes; and it does not give a damn to geo-political and geo-economic imperatives if they don’t serve its interests.

The US is clear in its mind, it is the rest of world that has cobwebs in theirs. India and the US currently don’t seem to be getting on well. Reason: President Trump is angry that India has repudiated its role in bringing about ‘ceasefire’ in Indo-Pak hostilities.

India is clear that when President Trump had no role in it, where is the question of acknowledging it? But the petulant President Trump would have none of it. This has apparently also cast a shadow on the trade deal presently being negotiated between the two countries although no one on either side will say so. How long will the peppery President continue to throw his tantrums?

Well, no one knows. But India’s position is clear: there are redlines that India would not want any nation to cross – be it the US or the EU. While the State’s department and the Pentagon are reportedly sympathetic to India’s concerns, the Trump White House does not seem to be. And that is where the entire problem is. Given President Trump’s propensity to theatrics and penchant for treating governance as nothing more than a deal making, it’s not going to be easy for New Delhi to deal with the US – at least in the near term.