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retka's avatar

It's more honest to call a spade and spade and stop with the disingenuous language. India's self-styled "principled neutrality" is a euphemism for "Playing All Sides Against Each Other."

That is, India is essentially imitating the same game that Turkey is playing in the Middle East/Caucuses.

On the one hand, India plays America against China in order to extract concessions from China on the border dispute and other issues.

On the other hand, India plays Russia against America in order to extract concessions from America on economic and strategic issues.

And on the third hand, India is tacitly playing France, America, and Israel against even its closest ally of Russia in terms of arms sales.

One noteworthy issue is that India's importation of Russian arms has been significantly decreasing the past few years. From 2012-2016, Russian arms consisted of ~69% of all Indian imports. But from 2017-2021, Russian arms imports fell to 46%--the difference being supplanted by France, America, and Israel. That is, the Indians have been diversifying away from Russia towards these three other nations as a source of weapons.

India reduced arms imports from Russia, while China’s dependency increased

https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-india-reduced-arms-imports-from-russia-while-chinas-dependency-increased/article65248748.ece

Furthermore, on the United Nations resolution vote demanding that Russia pay war reparations to Ukraine for the current conflict there, India only abstained (while China voted no).

UN calls for Russia to pay reparations. How did countries vote?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/15/un-calls-for-russia-to-pay-reparations-how-did-countries-vote

It will be interesting to see how long India--like Turkey--can play this geopolitical game of playing each against all.

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Stu Turley's avatar

Interesting points and well documented.

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