When Donald Trump announced at the NATO summit in Ankara that he would lift the CAATSA sanctions on Turkey and consider selling F-35s to Ankara, he was doing more than repairing a relationship with a difficult ally. He was dismantling the single most effective tool Washington had for keeping countries away from Russian weapons.
The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by Trump himself in 2017. It created a secondary sanctions regime that allowed the president to punish any government, company, or individual engaging in “significant transactions” with Russia’s defense sector. The law was designed to force a stark choice: buy Russian arms, or maintain close security ties with the United States. Not both.
Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Turkey and signal openness to selling F-35s to a country that still operates the Russian S-400 air defense system tells every other Russian arms customer that the choice is no longer so stark.
The Indian Problem
India is the biggest beneficiary. New Delhi has never been formally exempted from CAATSA, but both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration chose not to enforce it against India to preserve the strategic partnership against China. India received another S-400 regiment last month and, after last year’s fighting with Pakistan, ordered five new S-400 regiments and deepened negotiations for the Russian Su-57 fifth-generation fighter.
Trump’s unpredictability still worries New Delhi. He has drawn closer to Pakistan, imposed tariffs on Indian purchases of Russian oil, and made no secret of his transactional approach to alliances. But the Turkey precedent gives India a powerful argument: if Turkey can own S-400s and still get F-35s, there is no legal or political barrier to India doing business with whoever it chooses.
Asia Takes Notice
Indonesia canceled a planned purchase of 11 Su-35 fighters in 2020, with concern about CAATSA punishment cited as the primary reason. Jakarta had lived through a US arms embargo before, the Clinton administration suspended all military ties in 1999 over violence in East Timor, and was not eager to repeat the experience. The Turkey exemption provides some confidence, though Washington’s policies can shift as quickly as the president’s mood.
Vietnam’s military has depended on Soviet and Russian arms since the Cold War. Hanoi has worked to diversify its suppliers, partly because of CAATSA concerns. Last year, Vietnam and Moscow devised a backdoor payment scheme using profits from joint oil and gas ventures to pay for defense contracts, keeping transactions out of Western visibility. The Turkey precedent should provide a sense of relief in Hanoi.
Malaysia operates Su-30 fighters and other Russian systems. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka fly MiG-29s, Mi-17 helicopters, and armored vehicles. All of them now have more confidence to continue business as usual with the Kremlin.
The Countries That Never Cared
China absorbed the 2018 CAATSA sanctions and deepened its strategic partnership with Moscow anyway. North Korea and Myanmar operate outside the system entirely. Laos remains heavily reliant on Soviet-era platforms with no intention to shift. For these countries, the question was never whether CAATSA mattered, it was already irrelevant.
What This Means
Russian arms exports have collapsed in recent years as the Kremlin diverts production to the battlefield in Ukraine and Ukrainian drones strike factories inside Russia. Trump’s permissive approach does not reverse that trend. But it removes one of the few remaining political obstacles to future Russian arms sales in the Indo-Pacific.
Derek Grossman, a former RAND analyst who wrote the Foreign Policy analysis, put it plainly: “CAATSA was intended to force countries to choose between Russian arms and closer security ties with the United States. Trump’s reversal on Turkey suggests that choice may no longer be so stark.”
Governments across Asia will now read CAATSA not as a fixed rule but as a policy instrument, something a president can switch on and off depending on who he is meeting that week. That perception, once established, is nearly impossible to reverse. Washington’s most potent instrument for constraining Russia’s global military reach has been quietly defanged, and every arms buyer in the region noticed.