The Duran Podcast - Trump White House brings India and China closer

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Trump White House brings India and China closer

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the meetings taking place between India and China, and let's talk about the reprashmone between these two countries, which do have a long-running dispute, two of the core BRICS members, which are now being brought together, interestingly enough, being brought together by the United States, by the threats from the United States on placing sanctions and, and tariffs 100% secondary sanctions or tariffs and 500% secondary sanctions or tariffs. So all of this is now leading to a unification of bricks, of the core, of bricks. And that means India and China.

So if these two countries can resolve whatever issues they have going on, which is tricky. It's a difficult situation between India and China, but perhaps with Russian mediation, India and China can resolve these issues. and then we're going to see a much stronger and a much more unified bricks. Once again, all because of the threats from the United States. That's why this is occurring. Or at least that's what's speeding this up, speeding up this process. So your thoughts on India and China.

Absolutely. I think this is indeed exactly what's happening. Now, I think it's fair to say, and I think this is a point that I would just make, which is that India and China obviously have had a very, very tense relationship since the early 1960s. They fought a war over the border at that time, which destroyed what had previously been, a rather friendly relationship that China and India had had in the 1950s. But there was a dispute about the border. There was a dispute about the status of Tibet, by the way.

That led to border clashes, which escalated into an all-like war. India was defeated. China was left in occupation of an awful lot of territory in the Himalayas. some of which China considers its own, some of which China has at various times suggested it might be willing to return to India. But things have never really resolved themselves. There's been a strong antagonism towards China in India. And I think beyond that, the fact that from the 1990s, the Chinese economy massively took off making China, a much more powerful country and a much richer country than India, which up to that time had been a sort of

equal economic footing with China, obviously has made the Indians much more nervous and much more concerned about the enormous imbalance of power between themselves and China. Now, subsequently, what has happened is that India and China both became part of the bricks. The Indian economy has been rapidly, that has gradually increased Indian self-confidence, but there have often been tensions. And within India itself, it must be said, there has always been a very, very vocal section, especially of the business community, which has supported closer links with the United States as opposed to the links in China and indeed Russia. So that's where we've been until a few months ago.

Now, this process of rapprochement, or of detent, if you like, between India and China, that we're now seeing the latest iteration of this, because there's been many attempts to get this going, it basically started in Kazan at the Brick Summit meeting there. You talked about Russian mediation. Putin, Russians worked very, very hard to get both Modi and Cee to Kazan. Both men came. Both men had their first meeting in quite a long time. They both agreed to move forward with their discussions and their agreements to see

whether they could patch up their relationship. And then months passed and it didn't seem that very much was happening. and then a whole set of things began to happen, and they did originate exactly, as he said, with the United States. Firstly, as we know, there was a border clash and fighting between Pakistan and India. And the Americans, Trump himself, claimed that they'd brokered a ceasefire. Now, I don't know whether that is true or not, but the Indians were furious. and they said that the Americans did not broker a ceasefire. Because from an Indian point of view,

what they want the world to believe and what they say, and they may very well be right, is that India was gaining the advantage in the fighting and that Pakistan, as a result, contacted India and asked for a ceasefire. Trump said that he mediated a ceasefire, cut against that Indian narrative, which by the way may be true. I mean, I'm not saying it's not true.

But the point was that the Indians were extremely angry about all of that. And then they were made more angry still when Lindsay Graham came along with his bone-crushing sanctions and his demands that the United States start to impose massive sanctions. against Russian energy exports, including Russian oil exports to India. And Trump, as we've discussed in many programs, went along with that. And eventually, he did impose tariffs on India because India is importing Russian oil. The Indians were absolutely furious about this. they said that the only reason they were importing Russian oil is because the EU's decision to stop importing Russian oil and to start buying oil from the Gulf was creating an oil shortage.

And that it was the Biden administration who told the Indians, go ahead and buy Russian oil. Because by buying Russian oil, you're going to stabilize the oil market and you're going to stop oil, the oil price from exploding. So India's decision to start buying Russian oil was done at American instigation, and it stabilized the oil price. And it also enabled India to buy cheap oil, which has been good for India's economy, and it has kept inflation rates in India under control. Now the Americans are saying don't buy Russian oil and compete with the Europeans for Gulf oil and for India, that is unaffordable. And when the Indians said, no, the Americans slapped tariffs upon them, 25% tariffs initially, 50% tariffs later.

And the Americans have now been criticizing India, continue to criticize India for buying Russian oil. And one of the people, they've been criticizing the Indian oil industry, which is run by precisely those business interests, including by the way, India's richest man, who up to now have been the most vocal supporters of India's alignment with the United States. So the United States is in effect criticizing those precise people in India who have been America's friends. Anyway, the result is that the Indians and the Chinese, the Indians are now turning to China. They're going deeper into bricks. The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has just conducted a very successful visit to India.

He met Modi himself. He said that India and China should not be adversaries. They should be friends and partners. There has been work apparently done on sorting out these border issues and apparently significant progress has been made. Now, we've heard that in the past. I attended to what extent this is true, but quite possibly this time it is. Modi himself is going to go to Beijing for the first time in many years to attend the Shanghai

Co-cooperation Organization Summit meeting there. Putin, of course, will also be there. Xi Jinping will be there. We'll have been meeting between Xi Jinping and Modi, obviously. And Modi has sent his national security advisor to Moscow, who's had a meeting with Putin. Modi's had several telephone calls with Putin himself over the last couple of days. He's lavished praise upon Putin. The word is that Putin is going to be traveling to India within the next few weeks. So it's quite likely that we will be having Putin coming to India, Putin and Modi then going on to Beijing. And we could see that the bricks unity has been cemented.

as a result of these egregious mistakes that the United States has been making. This is what comes if you listen to the neocons, if you go along with people like Lindsey Graham. It's achieving the exact opposite effect to the one that Lindsey Graham predicted. Yeah, but they're starting up again, the Trump White House. Bessett was giving an interview to Fox News. And once again, he started talking about how it's not right that India is buying this Russian oil at such a discount and making so much money. This capitalism is not good. He said the arbitrage that benefits India is not good.

And Besson, once again, was on the attack against India. So, I mean, they're uniting bricks, but they don't stop. No. They don't walk it back. They don't reverse gear. They don't reverse course. They don't try to stop the unification, the cementing of bricks. They just keep going forward with the aggressive rhetoric, which will have the effect that we're seeing right now.

It will speed up. It will speed up the effect that we're seeing right now. Absolutely. Peter Navarro, who is one of Trump's tariff people, also wrote a very aggressive article about India. in the Financial Times in which he accused India of financing Russia's war machine. And he claimed quite unrued, quite forcefully, that India exports goods to the United States, which it has done. And it uses the hard currency proceeds to buy oil from Russia.

And that keeps the Russian war machine growing. I understand that actually India pays for Russian oil in rupees, in Indian currency, which, given that the rupee is non-convertible, means that the Russians are building up big surpluses in rupees, which they are looking to invest in the Indian economy. So I understand that is the real dynamic of this trade. Maybe things have changed since I last heard that. But anyway, I mean, as you rightly said, the Americans, instead of backtracking on this, seem to be throwing a tantrum and are just going ahead. And you could see that this is turning out to be completely counterproductive. And that brings us back to this fundamental question. Or why does Lindsay Graham have this extraordinary influence over American foreign policy? Why is he able always to divert U.S. foreign policy onto these disastrously counterproductive paths?

Yeah, so Bloomberg is reporting that India and China, actually, I think they said both countries are going to resume their trade with Russia and their purchasing of Russian energy and Russian oil. They're not going to stop. And actually, they're going to ramp it up. I think that's what Bloomberg said. They're going to ramp up the energy trade with Russia. So, I mean, you're getting your answer from China and India to all of this. To wrap up the video, what does the U.S. do now? What should they do?

What are they going to do, the Trump administration? What they should do is back off. The tariffs were a mistake. They should back off. Modi and Trump were good friends. there's been a major American effort over the last 20 years to build up a good relationship with India. There's a belief that was a belief in the United States that India could be used as a counter against China. There is a thing called the quad, which is a kind of very loose

military relationship that exists between the United States, India and I think two other countries. I think it's Australia and Japan from memory, but I might be wrong about this. So the United States has worked very hard to bring India on side. It's also talked at times about India replacing China as a source of, you know, cheap, good production. You know, Apple was supposed to transfer its production, part of its production of iPhones and things from China to India. All of that is now in jeopardy. And I should say this has come after a period of time when the Indians themselves, people in India, have been complaining that their expectations of massive American investment in the Indian economy, which is what led to the original warming of relations between India and the United States in the first place, that that has not really been fulfilled and that the Chinese have been making much more. impressive and generous

offers to them. So the Americans should back off. They should rethink what they are doing. They are alienating a friend. But of course they won't back off because as I said many times,

as we have said many times in program after program that we have on this, on the Duran, the neocons have no reverse They're now going to come after Modi. They're going to start, I suspect, before long, interfering in Indian domestic politics, which will be a massive mistake. I can imagine them starting to do things with Congress. We're going to see all kinds of foolish and reckless things being done.

They don't understand India very well. They don't understand the dynamics very well. but you're going to see that the neocons will demand a further escalation against India. And isn't that ultimately what Besant and Navarro are talking about? Yeah. They're going to piss off a lot of people in India and India is not going to back down. That's obvious that they're not going to back down. No. That's the way it looks.

Anyway, we'll wrap up this video. V. durand. dot locals.com. We are on X. We are on Telegram. We're also on Rumble and go to the Durant Shop. Pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. There is a link in the description box down below. Take care.