MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Russia and India have made tangible progress in talks on plans to jointly produce military equipment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, after talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Moscow.
I’m always surprised to read the news and see India preferring the Russian partnership over that of the West.
It’s Modi. Many consider him to be essentially the Indian version of Trump, with all that implies. Including the suspicious Russia ties.
I don’t think it’s prefer one over the other. For India world is not binary. There is a reason it’s called third world country, Russian partnership doesn’t meant distance from West and western partnership doesn’t mean distance from Russia. India doesn’t have the luxury to pick sides. It has to keep engaging all global partners.
I think it also means that all countries keep it at arms distance. Playing Switzerland has advantages and disadvantages.
West has not been a dependable partner to any country in Asia or Africa.
Russia though is a bully, is a local bully and has bloodied his nose in his bullying rather than other way round. One thing that has never happened is that it has never vanished.
Your off the mark on this one. India (it’s government at least) is more aligned with Russia ideologically. They want to be the powerful bully and they want to oppress minorities. The west has movements similar to this, but they aren’t so entrenched and the path against them is much clearer.
India isn’t aligned with the West. They also don’t want to align with the West. Any current cooperation is much like the west being allies with the Soviet Union during world war 2. It’s based on immediate convenience. Largely against china. Despite this India is actively hostile against the west in numerous ways, most recently political assignations in Canada and attempts in USA.
I think this confusion arises because India’s recent history is tied to Britain. So we associate India with western alignment. However, being colonised is going to create resentment and mistrust with the colonisers and their associates.
You are also ignoring the US support to Pakistan against India, support to China.
Disregard to the allies when their job is done, vis-a-vis Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq.
US is not innocent of the same crime it blames Russia of. Waging war on false pretenses or do we disregard the Iraq war.
There is some speculation that those assassinations were a small group of extremists within India. The assassins didn’t really fit the part of assassins and they were so easily foiled in the US.
It’s one thing to take pot shots at US allies. It’s entirely different to assassinate US citizens on US soil. Not even the USSR at the height of the Cold War considered doing that.
Biden made this issue a top priority and has spoken directly with Modi at the G20 summit. More than likely the Indians will quietly offer the ringleaders up for extradition and trial in the US/Canada and the issue will go away. The Indians still want Western tech and investments, assassinating leaders of groups who haven’t been influential for 20 or more years seems very short sighted.
If the Indians continue down this path then I think relations will probably change significantly.
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First there are the basics of linguistics since the British and India have a bit of shared history but that has certainly helped India to integrate itself into the western business environment. There are now huge numbers of western countries leveraging outsourcing for business resources and if India keeps distancing itself from the West, those integrations will start to look more like liabilities to western businesses. Next, I can’t imagine that the business opportunities with Russia can rival North American plus the EU so it seems odd to align with Russia when it could jeopardize a very beneficial relationship for India. Finally, due to immigration, there are large populations from India across the entire western hemisphere, I would think that would drive solidarity with the west. I know little about India so maybe those points are not accurate but those are my interpretations.
India is not distancing itself from West, but geopolitics are different for India. West has not been a reliable trading partner in last 8 decades, last decade West has been reliable but that’s mostly because now they want to counter China. USSR/Russia has been more reliable.
But if you take a subset of defense trading partner, West has been very unreliable period. If you look at all the corruption scandals in Indian Defense history you’d realise almost all are with the west, France, Sweden, Italy.
Now going back to broader business and economic development, your argument is probably valid, but from the point of view of India, it is in position of most relative strength in geopolitics than it has ever been, if India can play both sides, it will and it must.
If any dealings with Russia were followed by sanction from the west, I think that’s when you’d see who does India favor more. But west won’t do it, because West needs India to be strong to counter China and if the cost is delayed fall of Putin, I think west is willing to take that risk, since Russia is no longer the threat it was to the west 3 decades ago.
So, from Indian’s point of view if it can both have a cake and eat it too, why would it not?