Western pressure no deterrent to India-Russia ties
AUSTRIAN Chancellor Klemens von Metternich said two centuries ago: “When France sneezes, the rest of Europe catches a cold.” The prolonged Russia-Ukraine conflict has made the whole of Europe catch a cold. Does the West now expect even faraway neutral countries like India and other non-partisan, non-Western nations to follow suit? Else, why should the democracy-championing West betray an imperialistic impulse to forcibly draw sovereign nations into Europe’s conflict? Why do these countries need to toe the line and pay obeisance to the West?
The message was loud and clear in a recent Financial Times report claiming that Russia had built a covert trade channel with India. The report said: “Russia has been secretly acquiring sensitive goods in India and explored building facilities in the country to secure components for its war effort.” Elaborating on the modus operandi, the story obviously tried to show India’s ‘wrongdoing’, thereby implying that it was damaging the ‘just cause’ of Western support to Ukraine against Russia. It was obvious that India was expected to mend its ways and do what the West wanted it to do.
The report, which implied that India and Russia had formed an ‘unholy nexus’, looked like an open threat with dire consequences for New Delhi. India is being painted as a villain for doing business with Moscow at a time when, in the eyes of the West, Russia is a pariah state. Hence, India is expected to choose between the US-led West and Russia. It is “my way or the highway”. And the West wants India to discard Moscow.
This is a bizarre and childish mindset, especially if one recalls the statement made by US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo in July, when he wrote to three of India’s top business organisations, warning them that “any foreign financial institution that does business with Russia’s military industrial base risks being sanctioned itself.” Perhaps the White House fails to see the irreparable damage being inflicted on America’s global interests and the implacable hatred and hostility being generated towards Washington. This reckless business of sanctions will not lead US very far. It is instantly turning even a traditional friend into a potential foe. It smacks of unacceptable duplicity, hateful hypocrisy and inherent insincerity of the US of yore; the post-World War II Washington of Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan — the mastermind and financier for the reconstruction of Europe.
How would US arms company General Dynamics (the original maker of F-16 fighter aircraft from the 1970s) and the supplier of Patton tanks have reacted if they had got an ‘open threat’ from India with regard to defence contractors doing business with military dictators of Pakistan?
One wonders how the US or Europe could not be aware that over the past seven decades, the Moscow-Delhi defence partnership has flourished in the best and worst of times. Logically, therefore, if India keeps buying defence equipment from Russia, what stops Moscow from purchasing military hardware from Delhi? Is India party to the Russia-Ukraine conflict? Is Delhi instigating and playing one against another? Can India’s bona fide bilateral economic, commercial and military transactions with a friendly Russia be scuttled by the US, which is also a friend of Delhi?
The Joe Biden administration must not forget the catastrophic damage done by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to the India-US ties in the 1970s and beyond. Let the sordid past remain buried in the annals of history. Do not reopen it. Mutual trust and respect are a must. It took several years to heal the wounds of humiliation — the American duo had used abusive language while referring to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — and revive robust relations between two great democracies.
True, the ongoing conflict in Europe is a matter of grave concern for the world. But the primary responsibility to stop the bloodshed lies with the nations that are members of NATO and/or EU, and not with distant neutral nations. It again boils down to the fundamental folly being repeated by the West. Sanctions are proving to be the prime cause for the decimation of a globalised economy and the interlinked chain of economics assiduously built over five decades through the ‘free trade’ theory.
The US should remember that globalisation and sanctions are contradictory and mutually self-defeating. The former is a boon, the latter a bane. It will be most damaging for the globalised dollar and the universally accepted Belgium-based bank transaction system SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication). Yet, the US treasury “routinely orders banks to freeze wire transfers that look suspicious or in breach of sanctions,” resulting in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prescient 2018 statement: “We are not aiming to ditch the dollar. The dollar is ditching us.” Thus arises the need to skirt the greenback. Either way, time will reveal the repercussions of the story that could be anything but positive for ‘the dollar that once was’. In the long term, the US is fairly and squarely creating a self-goal scenario.
Today, SWIFT handles 40 per cent of its payments in USD. Yet, it has to follow the diktats of America, thereby disrupting its business. The “business of the US threat” to India is also a bad omen. New Delhi is a friend of Washington. And Russia does not object to India’s bonhomie with the US. Did Moscow express displeasure when India opted for Boeing, Lockheed or the Raytheon weapon system? Why, then, does the US employ archaic gunboat diplomacy of threats, sanctions and boycott of allies? Is America going against its own interests? Is the arm-twisting era of Kissinger back to hunt and haunt India?
