Western Pressure On India Over Russia Already Backfired Even If It Partially Complies
It’s reshaping Indian policymakers’ views of the West and breeding resentment of their governments among its society.
India’s former Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin recently published an informative opinion piece at NDTV titled “Tariff Blitz: Is India Becoming Collateral Damage In Someone Else's War?” The gist is that the West, via Trump’s threatened 100% sanctions on Russia’s trading partners upon the expiry of his deadline to Putin for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the EU via its new sanctions barring the import of processed Russian oil products from third countries, is putting undue pressure on India.
They can’t defeat Russia on the battlefield by proxy, nor will they risk World War III by taking it on directly, so they’re going after its foreign trade partners in the hopes of eventually bankrupting the Kremlin. This is counterproductive though since their threatened sanctions could torpedo bilateral ties, push India closer to China and Russia (thus possibly reviving the RIC core of BRICS and the SCO), and spike global oil prices, which hitherto remained manageable due to India’s massive imports from Russia.
Nevertheless, partial compliance is also possible due to the damage that Western sanctions could inflict on the Indian economy, so it can’t be ruled out that India might curtail its aforesaid imports and no longer export processed Russian oil products to the EU. Full compliance is unlikely though since India would risk ruining its ties with Russia, with all that could entail as was touched upon here, while reducing its economic growth rate through higher energy prices and thus offsetting its envisaged Great Power rise.
Even in the scenario of partial compliance, however, Western pressure on India over Russia already backfired. Their coercive threats and the very real consequences for no compliance whatsoever, presuming that exceptions can be made for partial compliance, are reshaping Indian policymakers’ views of the West and breeding resentment of their governments among its society. The “good ‘ole days” of naively assuming that the West operated in good faith and was India’s true friend will never return.
This is for the better from the perspective of India’s objective national interests since it’s more useful to have finally realized the truth than to keep having illusions about the West’s intentions and formulating policy based on that false perception. Conversely, this is for the worse from the perspective of the West’s hegemonic interests since their policymakers can no longer take for granted that India will naively go along with whatever they request and blindly trust its intentions. This new dynamic might lead to rivalry.
To be clear, India’s envisaged Great Power rise doesn’t pose a systemic challenge to the West like China’s superpower trajectory does, nor is it “disruptive” like the restoration of Russia’s Great Power status has been. India consistently sought to facilitate the global systemic transition to multipolarity by serving as a bridge between East and West, which complements the West’s objective interests, albeit while undermining its subjective hegemonic ones that are responsible for many of the Global South’s troubles.
Trying to subordinate India and then treating it as a rival when it doesn’t submit could therefore further destabilize this already chaotic transition, thus possibly leading to unforeseeable consequences that accelerate the decline of Western hegemony more than if the West treated India as an equal. Pressuring India even more and then punishing it for lack of full compliance with their demands will only hasten this outcome. It’s unlikely to succeed in getting India to submit to them so they should abandon this policy.
There is an old saying in China: it is the government that forces the people to rebel. In some rare situations, famines did cause rebellion and riots, but they did not last long. For the really bad ones, bad enough to shake or destroy dynasties, usually the government has to shoulder the bulk of the responsibility. I claim that many countries in the world had hoped for a prosperous and peaceful world after the end of the Cold War. The emerging economies were booming at incredible speeds. But starting from the NATO "intervention" in the former Yugoslavia, the elites that move the world have degraded themselves to the point that the Global South started to look for a way out. In China, Russia, and India, these smaller countries see hope.
I think the people of India and Iran really prefer to be neutral and quietly deal with their respective domestic problems. They have not fully appreciated the fact that their countries have been forced to the side of the cliff to make a binary decision: are you with us or not? Of course, there will always be dissidents. But I think the bulk of the people in these two countries will choose the BRICS side. In BRICS, there is no military alliance, only voluntary cooperation on economic and trade matters. I think the only common rule in BRICS is "no sanctions", and everything else is negotiable bilaterally. There is no "Russian Value" or "Chinese Exceptionalism" to deal with, no pressure on LGBTQX+?!#$ whatsoever.
Astonishing.
The fact that a country like India, so wildly and mercilessly colonized for centuries by a vicious master who played one against an other for ruling everybody, treated like a whore, which knew 2 millions death in an english organised famine in 1942, cut perversely in two separated lands ennemies in 1947, with 5 millions horrible death during partition, which is currently treated by West like a little bitch and the west industrial dump, the fact that folks in this land can think to the "good old time" of a kind and sincere West, let me without voice.
Are Indians completely dumb idiots, fool morons or masochists?
Or is Andrew talking only about some few oligarchs eager to gorge themselves even at the price of the slavery of their compatriots?, few thousands compradores and a population of 1,5 billons slaves.