India’s De-Dollarization Of Its Trade With Russia Will Inspire The Whole Global South

Nobody should doubt for a second that the US would prefer for the entire Global South to capitulate to its hegemonic demands and thus become this declining unipolar power’s vassal states, but since it’s powerless to impose its will upon every one of them, it’ll ultimately have to settle for accepting their balanced relations between all New Cold War protagonists per the model that India has pioneered.

Reuters reported that India is rapidly de-dollarizing its trade with Russia by employing a range of Asian currencies instead, especially China’s and the UAE’s. While mostly used at this moment in time for purchasing resources like coal, it should be taken for granted that this will set a new trend for the gamut of their trade in order to avoid any pretext for prompting so-called “secondary sanctions” threats from the US. That’ll in turn inspire the whole Global South to follow in Delhi’s footsteps.

This optimistic prediction is predicated on a solid basis. India, unlike China, aspires to carefully balance between the US and Russia. The People’s Republic has already been under immense pressure from America since former US President Trump’s trade war so it was to be expected that Beijing wouldn’t ditch Moscow under Washington’s pressure. Delhi, by contrast, had been cultivating equally strategic ties with both New Cold War protagonists so it was unclear whether it would choose between them.

The US imposed immense pressure upon India to condemn and subsequently sanction Russia, yet Delhi proudly refused since its multipolar leadership won’t ever unilaterally concede on any issues of objective national interest. India’s policy of principled neutrality isn’t unique since the entire Global South also practices it as evidenced by those countries similarly refusing to sanction Russia, but Delhi went one pivotal step further by doubling down on the Eurasian dimension of its grand strategy.

Far from retaining the status quo ante bellum of its special and privileged strategic partnership with Russia, India comprehensively expanded it to the point that Delhi became Moscow’s irreplaceable valve from Western pressure and thus preemptively averted its partner’s potentially disproportionate dependence on Beijing due to those difficult economic circumstances that it suddenly found itself in. This decision wasn’t driven by “opportunism” like some Western critics claim, but shrewd geostrategy.

India and Russia aspire to jointly assemble a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”) together with their shared Iranian strategic partner in order to create a third pole of influence in the present bi-multipolar intermediary phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. To that end, India’s objective national interests are best served by continuing to expand relations with Russia across all domains, which explains its recent employment of Asian currencies to de-dollarize their mutual trade.

All Global South states can learn from India’s example. They too stand to gain by de-dollarizing trade, whether with Russia or whoever else. Furthermore, those countries saw how India successfully balances between the US and Russia, which is precisely what they want to do as well. None of them want to be coerced into unilaterally conceding on their objective national interests in the New Cold War. To prevent that from happening, they must first ensure that they’re immune from “secondary sanctions” threats.

No other country can inspire the Global South in this way like India can. That’s because this South Asian civilization-state isn’t partial in the New Cold War, which to remind everyone, is just as much about the Russian-Western competition as it is about the Chinese-Western one. Since Beijing is also a protagonist in this global struggle, it naturally follows that the US-led West will seek to pressure those Global South states that are considered “too close” to it and/or move away from the West “too quickly”.

Therein lies the importance of emulating India’s principled neutrality with respect to balancing ties between all New Cold War protagonists as best as one can, which can only be achieved upon obtaining genuine sovereignty. The prerequisite for such is to preemptively immunize oneself from economic-financial pressures, ergo the urgent need for de-dollarization. India showed that this can be pulled off without risking a worsening of one’s relations with the US if it’s done properly.

That said, nobody should doubt for a second that the US would prefer for the entire Global South to capitulate to its hegemonic demands and thus become this declining unipolar power’s vassal states, but since it’s powerless to impose its will upon every one of them, it’ll ultimately have to settle for accepting their balanced relations between all New Cold War protagonists per the model that India has pioneered. Each country’s path towards this goal will be different, but they’ll all be inspired by Delhi to an extent.