Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin share the latter’s limo to have a 50-minute conversation en route to the venue of their bilateral meeting, Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025
India found itself in an uncomfortable situation like a cat on a hot roof at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation event in Tianjin, China, with the Western media hyping up its unlikely role in a troika with Russia and China to chariot the world order toward a brave new era of multipolarity.
The plain truth is, the real obsession of the Western media was to vilify the US President Donald Trump for having “lost” India by caricaturing a three-way Moscow-Delhi-Beijing partnership as an attempt to conspire against the United States. The target was Trump’s insecure ego, and the intention to call out his punitive trade tariffs that caused mayhem in the US-Indian relationship. Prime Minister Narendra Modi savoured momentarily in Tianjin the role of a key player at the high table, which plays well before his domestic audience of hardcore nationalists, but a confrontation with the US was the last thing on his mind.
In Tianjin, Modi took a hour-long limo ride in Putin’s custom-made armoured vehicle that converted a misperception that the two strongmen were up to something really sinister big. The extravagant display of “Russia collusion” Modi could have done without.
To be fair to Putin, he later made ample amends (after Modi returned to Delhi Tianjin) to make sure Trump was not put out. In front of camera, when asked about an acerbic aside by Trump in a Truth Social post on September 3 wondering whether Putin was “conspiring against the United States of America,” Putin gave this extraordinary explanation:
“The President of the United States has a sense of humour. It is clear, and everyone is well aware of it. I get along very well with him. We are on a first name basis.
“I can tell you and I hope he will hear me, too: as strange as it may appear, but during these four days, during the most diverse talks in informal and formal settings, no one has ever expressed any negative judgment about the current US administration.
“Second, all of my dialogue partners without exception – I want to emphasise this – all of them were supportive of the meeting in Anchorage. Every single one of them. And all of them expressed hope that the position of President Trump and the position of Russia and other participants in the negotiations will put an end to the armed conflict. I am saying this in all seriousness without irony.
“Since I am saying this publicly, the whole world will see it and hear it, and this is the best guarantee that I am telling the truth. Why? Because the people whom I have spoken with for four days will hear it, and they will definitely say, “Yes, this is true.” I would have never said this if it were not so, because then I would have put myself in an awkward position in front of my friends, allies and strategic partners. Everything was exactly the way I said it.”
Modi has something to learn from Putin. But instead, no sooner than Modi returned to Delhi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had lined up the most hawkish anti-Russia gang of European politicians to consort with in an ostentatious display of distancing from the Russia-India-China troika.
In the entire collective West, there is no country today to beat Germany in its hostility toward Russia. All the pent-up hatred toward Russia for inflicting the crushing defeat on Nazi Germany that has been lying dormant for decades in the German subconscious has welled up in the most recent years.
The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently said Putin “might be one of the worst war criminals of our era. That is now plain to see. We must be clear on how to deal with war criminals. There is no room for leniency.”
Merz whose family was associated with Hitler’s Nazi party, has been repeatedly flagging that a war between Germany and Russia is inevitable. He is threatening to hand over long-range Taurus missiles to Ukrainian military to hit deep inside Russia.
But all this anti-Russian record of Germany didn’t deter Jaishankar from inviting Merz’s foreign minister Johann Wadephul to come to India on a 3-day visit on Monday. Wadephul seized the opportunity to rubbish both Russia and China. He was particularly harsh on China during his joint press conference with Jaishankar.
Wadephul said in Jaishankar’s presence, “We agree with India and many other countries that we need to defend the international rules-based order, and that we also have to defend it against China. At least that is our clear analysis… But we also see China as a systemic rival. We don’t want that rivalry. We increasingly note that the number of areas is increasing where China has chosen this approach.”
Wadephul flouted protocol norms and violated diplomatic decorum by making such harsh remarks from Indian soil so soon after Modi and Xi decided to stop viewing each other as adversaries and instead work in partnership. But Jaishankar didn’t seem to mind and Modi received the outspoken German diplomat.
The sequence of events suggest that Delhi is in panic that Modi went overboard in Tianjin. Trump’s close aide Peter Navarro actually used a crude metaphor that Modi “got into bed” with Putin and Xi in Tianjin. Apparently, the poisoned arrow went home.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to pile pressure on Modi to terminate oil trade with Russia and has threatened that a third and fourth tranche of secondary level tariffs could be expected. He is also putting pressure on the European Union to move in tandem to bring India down on its knees.
Possibly, Wadephul carried some message from Brussels. At any rate, after receiving Wadephul, Modi made a joint call with the President of the European Council Antonio Costa and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday to emphasise his government’s neutrality in the Ukraine conflict.
Jaishankar himself called his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybih also to discuss “our bilateral cooperation as well as the Ukraine conflict.”
Dumping the “Tianjin spirit” so soon is a huge loss of face for India. But the blowback from the West unnerves the government. The point is, the future is still being written. The Global South whose mantle of leadership India claims is also watching. Governments in Asia, Europe and elsewhere still have choices to make, and those will be shaped by India’s actions as much as China’s.
Why is India’s diplomacy so clumsy-footed? In medical parlance, such clumsiness and foot drop could actually be a nerve condition. So it could be in the practice of strategic autonomy where nerves of steel are required. Modi government freely interprets national interests to suit the exigencies of politics. And it takes ambivalent attitudes without conviction or due deliberation that are unsustainable over a period of time.
The Indian policymakers do not seem to have the foggiest idea where exactly the country’s long-term interests lie at the present juncture when an epochal transition is under way in the world order, as five centuries of western hegemony are drawing to a close. The great lesson of history for us is that resolve brings peace and order, and vacillation invites chaos and conflict.