The latest US sanctions against Russia, the first under the second Trump administration, are intended less as a weapon against the Russian economy and more as a means of weaponizing energy geopolitics to try to break apart BRICS, especially its Russia-India-China (RIC) core.
This assessment is based on India and China’s close trade ties with the US, despite tariffs of 50% and 30% respectively, their continued rivalry despite an incipient rapprochement and their triangulation with Russia.
India’s and China’s trade with the US is much larger than their trade with Russia, though Russia supplies a significant share of their energy. While neither wants to pay more for oil, the overall costs of the US raising tariffs on them as punishment for defying its latest sanctions – as well as the secondary ones that could be leveled against financial institutions that facilitate this trade – could be even higher. This might compel them to reconsider.
On the second point, being in better graces with the US than the other is with it serves their interests vis-à-vis one another, since neither wants to risk a scenario in which their rival teams up with the US against them, which could have major strategic implications.
They may therefore calculate that they have more to lose by defying the US in pursuit of lower oil prices and retaining closer ties with Russia if the other does not, making compliance the safer option. This amounts to a weaponization of the prisoner’s dilemma.
Each country may have calculated that its rival will not gain better ties with Russia at their expense if both informally comply – at least in part – with the US’s latest sanctions, even while publicly criticizing them.
In fact, both were already decreasing purchases of Russian oil even before the sanctions, with India’s dropping 14% from August to September and China’s 8.1% in the first nine months of the year.
No matter how compelling these points might seem, no one should assume that India and/or China will totally stop importing Russian energy, let alone immediately. There simply isn’t enough supply on the market for that.
Even if others ramp up production, both countries may only gradually wean themselves off Russian energy, which would then likely be sold at even steeper discounts to incentivize them to retain some purchases. Everything will therefore likely balance out.
Nevertheless, the US could highlight India’s and China’s reduced imports under duress (the former’s confirmed by its top buyer and the latter’s only reported) to debunk the BRICS myth that all members, especially RIC, are working in harmony against the US, which Trump has complained about previously.
It does not matter that such information warfare would have no tangible effect on global processes since all that’s important to Trump is the perception of the US having broken BRICS’ (and especially RIC’s) unity.
Even in a political fantasy where India and China completely stop importing Russian energy, Russia’s war in Ukraine would not be curtailed. The Kremlin has a large enough war chest to finance its side of the conflict for at least the next few years, though some opportunity costs may occur.
The takeaway is that the US is weaponizing energy geopolitics in a bid to break apart BRICS, which may succeed in terms of optics, but will not have substantive real-world effects.
This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.
