The uneasy geometry of US-China-India-Russia relations
The just-concluded Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, held in Tianjin, China from August 31 to September 1, was crafted as a spectacle. Chinese President Xi Jinping, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sent a clear message that Beijing intends to redefine the balance of global power. Xi's call for "true multilateralism" and a "Global Governance Initiative" was an unmistakable swipe at Washington and its post-World War II dominance. The setting and choreography echoed an old ambition: to create a counterweight to US influence by deepening ties across Eurasia and the Global South. Yet, beneath the theatre, the summit only reinforced a reality highlighted by decades of history and scholarship: great powers cooperate where convenient but hedge relentlessly, and every relationship is laced with tension (and obviously, complexity).
The SCO has grown quietly since its founding by China, Russia, and Central Asian states over two decades ago, with India's accession in 2017 giving it additional credibility. Beijing used the summit to roll out proposals that could redraw parts of the global order, including an SCO development bank, AI research hubs, and new financial assistance packages. Xi invited member-states to join China's lunar exploration efforts and promised over $1.6 billion in combined loans and grants. These initiatives underline Beijing's intent to construct parallel systems—finance, technology, and space partnerships—that give states options outside US-centric frameworks. Russia and India, both managing Western pressure in different ways, see these alternatives as leverage rather than loyalty pledges.
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Still, the SCO's rising profile does not make it a cohesive bloc. History cautions against reading too much unity into summit photographs. Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History and Henry Kissinger's World Order show how triangular diplomacy—from Richard Nixon's opening to China in 1971 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907—was always about balance, not alliance. The Tianjin meeting fits this tradition: a forum where powers that often distrust one another explore cooperation under pressure, much like how the US and UK abruptly realigned financial leverage during the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Tianjin summit offered both symbolism and substance, but neither changed the competitive undertones shaping the participants' strategies.
Energy is the core of today's geopolitical geometry. Russian oil, discounted since the Ukraine war, has become a crucial piece of India's economic puzzle. Despite temporary disruptions caused by sanctions compliance and narrowing discounts, Russian crude still accounts for roughly a third of India's energy imports. Indian refiners exploit market arbitrage, blending Russian supplies to manage domestic prices without breaching sanctions outright. This trade relies on shadow fleets, reflagged tankers, and insurance arrangements routed through Dubai and Hong Kong—systems that thrive in legal grey zones. The set-up shows how politics and markets are interconnected: Washington can tighten sanctions, raising risk premiums, but energy flows rarely stop; they simply reroute.
Overlaying this is Washington's tariff and tech-control strategy, which has evolved into an informal industrial policy. In 2024, the US raised Section 301 tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, semiconductors, and renewable energy products, and by mid-2025, similar tools were being used to discourage Russian energy dealings. These moves don't completely sever trade but force companies and governments to calculate the political cost of every shipment. Each deal now comes with a compliance surcharge, illustrating Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard in a new form: supply chains and financial systems, rather than military bases, are the contested terrain.
India's posture is central to this geometry. As Ashley J Tellis argued in "India as a Leading Power," New Delhi is determined to be neither an ally nor a junior partner, but a "leading power" in its own right. India simultaneously buys Russian oil, strengthens its defence ties with Washington, and hardens its technological base against China—all while keeping border tensions manageable, till the tariff hits hard. Tanvi Madan's Fateful Triangle highlights how India's strategic culture prizes autonomy, yet autonomy becomes harder to sustain when sanctions, tariffs, and export controls raise the costs of hedging. India's challenge is to ensure that the benefits of multi-alignment outweigh its risks, particularly in critical areas like semiconductors and telecommunications, especially IT, where US influence remains overwhelming.
The Sino-Russian partnership, while closer than at any point since the Cold War, is asymmetrical. Alexander Lukin's China and Russia: The New Rapprochement explains how this dynamic was accelerating even before the Ukraine war: Moscow has leaned heavily on China for capital, technology, and diplomatic cover, and that dependence deepens with every pipeline and yuan-settled transaction. Beijing, meanwhile, calibrates its support carefully, avoiding steps that might provoke a devastating Western sanctions campaign. Graham Allison's Destined for War offers context here: even rising powers willing to challenge the status quo often act cautiously to avoid triggering uncontrollable escalation.
These dynamics make the idea of a China-India-Russia "trilateral" misleading. While the SCO and BRICS create opportunities for coordination, none of these powers is willing to trade autonomy for alignment. Even Moscow, once the primary advocate for the RIC (Russia-India-China) format, now relies more on Beijing than on multilateral structures. New Delhi, scarred by its 2020 border clash with China, sees limited strategic upside in a bloc that could constrain its options. Practical cooperation is therefore limited to opportunistic deals—oil, fertilisers, payments corridors—rather than a cohesive strategy.
The US, for its part, is not aiming to sever every tie between these powers, but to control key chokepoints in finance, supply chains, and technology standards. By combining tariffs, export restrictions, and "friend-shoring" partnerships with Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, Washington is building resilience in sectors that Beijing could weaponise. The US strategy is not about crushing rivals outright, but about sustaining a favourable balance of power long enough to shape global rules.
Therefore, three scenarios illustrate the possible future paths. The first is "managed transactionalism," where oil trades, payment systems, and diplomatic coordination persist without formal alliance commitments. The second is "tariff-tech bifurcation," where intensified US sanctions and controls force India to reduce Russian energy dependence, accelerate supply chain splits, and raise costs globally. The third is "crisis compression," triggered by a border skirmish or Taiwan incident, which would sharply polarise choices and push Moscow closer to Beijing while disrupting global markets. Historical precedents from Kissinger's diplomacy to Westad's Cold War analysis remind us how quickly crises can redraw alignments and understandings.
What Tianjin revealed most clearly is that 21st century geopolitics is shaped less by ideological blocs and more by overlapping bargains. India's energy imports will shift only when discounts no longer offset risks. China will keep Moscow afloat, but on terms that reinforce Beijing's leverage. Russia will trade pride for survival if necessary, while the US will tolerate some trade flows as long as it controls key technologies and financial arteries. Sanctions increasingly resemble tariffs. Tariffs act like standards, and standards decide who reaps future profits.
Far from a united anti-US front, this is a world of transactional diplomacy where every major power maintains quiet understandings with Washington, even as they challenge it. The SCO summit was a vivid reminder that summitry can project power but cannot erase the structural interdependence at the heart of global politics.
Syed Raiyan Amir is senior research associate at The KRF Center for Bangladesh and Global Affairs (CBGA). He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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