Russia-Ukraine war: An Indian perspective

“An enemy’s enemy is a friend”. Since ancient times political and military alliances have been formed on the basis of this simple principle. It does not matter if you differ on a host of issues, a dispute with a long-term enemy can be set aside to deal with immediate threats of survival.
The formation of the Janata Party as a political party out of Jan Sangh in 1975 to counter Indira Gandhi’s Emergency is a prime Indian political example of this. Hence it is not surprising that they split in less than 3 years despite the great leadership of the late PM Morarji Desai. In 1980 Mrs Gandhi came back to power despite the atrocities committed during the 18 months of Emergency. At least the Janata government modified the Indian Constitution sufficiently to prevent any future Indian PM from declaring another Emergency, unless there is an internal violent apprising.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has let a cat loose amongst the pigeons by starting this offensive against Ukraine. This should hardly be surprising as he already annexed Crimea in 2014 which was part of Ukraine. Putin is fighting against the bullying of NATO, which is including Eastern European nations who were part of the USSR to get access to Russia’s border to try to make sure that Putin who grew up in the former Soviet Union is unsuccessful in his dream of re-uniting the failed state of USSR. Putin considers himself a patriot and a nationalist having grown up during the height of the Cold War in the 1980s. He held various roles in the Russian intelligence apparatus and went on to head the FSB in the late 1990s. FSB is the Russian intelligence agency that succeeded the KGB post the Cold War.
India has had a very close association with the USSR since Independence as we adopted a closed market policy mimicking the Russian model of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. This was supposed to bring about equality in a young country highly divided on caste and financial disparity. However, history has repeatedly shown the failure of this model.
During the Second World War, Hitler was determined to return Germany to its rightful state as a global power. This was largely driven by the treaty of Versailles, which humiliated Germany and blamed them for World War One. As part of this treaty Germany was imposed with heavy sanctions to prevent another world war. This had the exact opposite effect and Hitler rose to power on this humiliation of the German people on a nationalistic platform. Absolute power corrupted Hitler leading to war crimes never heard of before or since. As the Axis powers continued their expansion, Winston Churchill reached out to F.D. Roosevelt as London came under heavy aerial attack. FDR like Biden currently provided financial and military aid without committing to boots on the ground due to limited support of the war by the American masses who did not see this as their battle. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor flipped this mindset and the US entered the Second World War.
Joseph Stalin unsuccessfully tried to create an anti-Hitler alliance with the West in 1939 and ended by signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler which encouraged the German dictator to attack Poland and start the war. By mid-1941 Hitler attacked Soviet Union as part of his eastern expansion plans. Subsequently, the “Big Three”—Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill—met thrice to counter Hitler’s offensive. Post the war Germany was split as East and West Germany. West Germany following US and UK’s free market economy with East Germany aligning itself to its neighbour the Soviet Union’s socialist system.
Goldman Sachs’ Global Investment division in 2001 released a research paper and introduced the concept of BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which indicated countries that were supposed to be an attractive investment destination at that point. Hence the current BRICS political association is irrelevant in the current world order. To counter the BRICS’ influence the Americans recently envisaged the Quad, which includes US, India, Japan and Australia. Since its defeat in the Second World War at the hands of the US, Japan has been aligned to US’ stand on international events and Australia is a remote island with limited to no influence on global politics. Interestingly Australia recently unilaterally cancelled a large submarine deal with France under the guise of another association AUKUS, which guaranteed military security to Australia in return for purchasing US manufactured weapons boosting the US defence industry.
Last month, China’s foreign minister made a surprise arrival at New Delhi and met with India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar. Despite the public comments of opposing the war this visit could have been prompted by Russia, which finds itself increasingly isolated. Russia wants to make sure India continues its trade with them despite the sanctions imposed. To counter this, US Deputy NSA Daleep Singh visited India warning New Delhi against continuing its trade ties with Russia in violation of these sanctions. Russia upped its game by sending its foreign minister to India, who in addition to meeting Jaishankar also called on the Prime Minister later in the day. The optics of this clearly indicates where the administration aligns itself. Concerned with this stance and reports of India buying Russian crude at $35 discount, the US continued to warn India against increasing its import from Russia. However, Britain’s foreign minister Liz Truss said she respected India’s decision to buy discounted oil from Russia ever though she pushed for more sanctions against Russia. India is supposed to have bought at least 13 million barrels of the discounted oil post the Ukraine invasion compared to 16 million barrels for the whole of last year as per data compiled by Reuters.
Currently the most sanctioned nation in the world is the DPRK—Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Yes, North Korea is a democratic republic and conducts regular elections with the Kim family being the unopposed winners every time. The Kim family always considers South Korea as part of a United Korea and blames the US for dividing their country along the arbitrary 38th parallel. The border between North and South Korea more popularly called as the DMZ—De-Militarised Zone—is counter intuitive to its name and is the most heavily guarded international border with United States providing a bulk of the boots on the ground in support of South Korea.
In case of both Germany and Korea’s split, one adopted a market economy and the other free market based on whether they were supported by the Americans or Russians during the war. In a way, Putin’s demand for Ukraine might be dressed up in Russia in a manner no different than how India seeks its claim on Pakistan and China occupied Kashmir.
Riding on the wave of the recently concluded Assembly elections in key states like Uttar Pradesh, the incumbent PM should be feeling confident of his chances at a record third term in office in 2024. Will history remember one as a patriotic nationalist or a ruthless authoritarian only time will tell since history is always written by the winners.