Turkey has moved closer to Russia and China and is planning to acquire more S-400 systems. Turkey’s rocky relationship with the US was triggered by the failed military coup in 2016 against President Erdogan that Ankara blamed on Washington and the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen who lives in exile in America. America also blocked sale of the fifth generation fighter aircraft for which Turkey had made advance payment. These sanctions include denials of export licences, loans and credits by American financial institutions to the importing Turkish entity and visa to its personnel and blocking of their assets in the US. Turkey, a NATO ally, has come under CAATSA sanctions for the purchase of the S-400 system. The US has targeted Russia’s defence exports and the oil and gas sectors because together, they contribute a major chunk to that nation’s exports. CAATSA seeks to undermine Russia’s defence and intelligence sectors and deny Moscow her share of the international military hardware market. America wanted to punish Russia for the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the alleged interference in the American presidential election in 2016. One aspect of CAATSA is that it targets countries that buy major defence systems from Russia. India’s decision to acquire the S-400 was a prescient one, in the light of bloody clashes between Indian and Chinese forces along the LAC in Ladakh and the subsequent aggressive military build-up by China along it. Moreover, India has had a long-term defence relationship with Russia, though she has diversified her foreign defence procurement in the last two decades, including buying around $20 billion worth of defence equipment from the US. China has deployed a few S-400 systems in Tibet.
India had honed in on the S-400 because China too had acquired the same system, the most advanced in this category of anti-aircraft defence systems. India has always rejected jurisdiction of a third country’s domestic law and predictably, ignored the American warning. The India-Russia deal for five S-400 systems worth around $5.5 billion had elicited a warning from the Trump administration that New Delhi would attract sanctions under CAATSA. This law was an outcome of partisan American domestic politics and the growing downslide in ties between the US and Russia, and also with Iran and North Korea. US President Joe Biden’s administration has to now decide whether or not to impose sanctions on India under the American domestic legislation that goes by the acronym CAATSA or “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act”. The S-400 shipments will arrive before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India. With the Russian announcement that deliveries of its advanced S-400 surface-to-air anti-aircraft defence system to India are to begin shortly, the die has been cast for a major challenge to India-US bilateral ties.