Clear example of when you will sell your soul and your country for money.
This in itself explains why the world is currently in a downward trend with everything going worse and worse.
I just hope that when the shit will hit the fan for India, then US, EU and related countries will remember to let India deal with it alone and not provide them assistance!
With the kind of history it has had, India knows it's futile and extremely moronic to keep faith in the West for any kind of help when, if ever, "shit hits the fan" for it. That's actually among the main reasons it has chosen to not squander its relationship with its one trusted ally.
The amount of aid Ukraine is receiving from the west, simply for being a victim is flabbergasting. If India rejects liberal international relations for realist ones, if India supports perpetrators, India can't expect help from the west when China comes knocking. How can a western government sell to their voters, assistance for a country that supported the unmerited killing of Ukrainian civilians?
Liberal international relations work on the same game theoretical principles as any group interaction with a prisoner's dilemma-type payoff matrix. The optimal strategy for any individual is to betray, to not do work on the group project and still receive good grades, to fake your credentials on your CV and still get the job, to subsidize the murder of Ukrainians and still receive economic benefits and international sympathy.
Of course, if everyone refuses to work on the group project, you receive a failing grade. If everyone fakes their credentials, the company fails due to lack of expertise, if every country prioritizes their own interests over avoiding conflict, the world goes back to the pre-WWII era of rampant warfare, colonialism and exploitation. The optimal strategy for groups is to zealously persecute defectors.
This is the reason why this decision is much more relevant to India's future than you think. It's the reason why the West seems like a vindictive in-group that doesn't tolerate dissent. It's the same old mechanism that instructed the first multicellular organism to destroy cancerous cells. The mechanism that makes guppies instinctively reject their own conspecifics if they don't participate in the dangerous inspection of predators. The mechanism that drives our conceptions of justice, vengeance and shame.
India will get hypothetical help from the West when China comes hypothetically knocking, if and only if it will benefit the West at that moment. Everything else is talk, and talk is cheap.
A country that went through partitioning and other West-induced "adventures" knows it.
>assistance for a country that supported the unmerited killing of Ukrainian civilians
Let me guess - you believe this is some kind of civil war, and Russia is the peacekeeping force. So - well, please do some reading. What it is, is an imperial war against Ukraine, intended to destroy Ukraine as a nation and grab their people and resources. Russians are razing entire cities to ground; they killed about hundred thousand people in Mariupol alone.
To compare, the victim count of the "civil war" in Donbas was ~hundreds. Hundreds people, not hundreds of thousands. And am unknown number of those were Russian operatives.
The amount of help other victimized countries get from the west is an indication that Ukraine it’s only getting help because it’s useful to help them, and even so, going by Zelensky, not really enough.
So while going with Putin might not be the right action, just betting on the west’s goodwill its certainly foolish.
China came a knocking several times, most recently 2022[1]. You know what "The West" has done? Its media doesn't even report on it while it trades with dictatorships like China and Saudia Arabia and Pakistan's military while constantly shitting on the biggest democratic nation in the world and its elected leaders. "The West" can go fsck itself, seriously.
It will many many decades, may be Centuries, before Ukrainian understand that tolerating Nazism is not a good plan and undermining the culture that gave Buddhu and Gandhi is immoral. It may take more time to realize that this war is completely manufactured outside of Europe.
I speak to Indian expat colleagues here in Germany and they are all against the anti-Russian politics, against the sanctions, pro-Modi in a very differentiated way.
I speak to Chinese and Taiwanese colleagues, also to South Korean colleagues. All are against the Western-led anti-Russia war.
We are in a bubble here. A huge bubble and we believe that we are the only right people with the only right opinion.
> All are against the Western-led anti-Russia war.
Do they support Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
What did Russia think Europe and the US were going to do? Russia seems to have gambled on the idea that Europe and the US would let the invasion happen unimpeded. It turns out Russia was wrong about that.
Russia also seems to have been wrong about the effectiveness of their own forces and the resistance they would face from Ukrainians.
Isn't the simple solution here for Russia withdraw from Ukraine, pay reparations, help with the extradition of those soldiers who have committed war crimes, and work on restoring international relations?
Russia invaded neighboring sovereign nation with the goal of annexing the territory. Dichotomy is simple: If you want to live in a world where this is okay, you can support Russia.
neutrality is judged pretty severely by history, and is often considered as cooperating with the aggressor. I'd be very cautious if i were india..
Now, the hypocrisy is that europe is probably happy India is buying ressources from russia, and then sell them back to them, since they don't really have alternatives.
> neutrality is judged pretty severely by history, ...
Does anyone hold it against Sweden and Switzerland that they sat out WW II? I've read, over the years, a complaint or two about particular policies, but I don't think they really affected the countries' image.
Nor do I see a compelling reason for India to align with either side.
But the west is not doing anything other than supplying an endless supply of weapons. This is not anti-war. It's pro war on the side of Ukraine. At this point it looks like it will go on indefinitely. Where will we be in 10 in years?
Anti-war is to do everything to stop the war specifically diplomacy and talking to the enemy. Making deals, even if the enemy is an absolute psychopath.
Could you describe what the west should do instead, a little more specifically?
There isn't a war, according to one of the combatants, so "ending the war" is a too vague. What does "end the war" mean when one of the combatants claims that there is no war? I think it's better to discuss how to end one the nasty results, and I chose the deportations of children. Not for any particular reason, just because it's of the concrete things we all want to stop.
The Russians have deported a staggering number of children (almost as many children as live in Berlin), both from areas near the frontline and areas far from it. Could you describe what the west might to do to stop those deportations? Something more effective than delivering weapons?
Deported children? You mean the same children that Saddam has killed back then and that the US used as a reason to bomb millions into oblivion... and that was a fake in the end? :)
No thanks, American lies and propaganda must be banned + people spreading it must be punished.
He is likely talking about the genocide that Russian regularly commits against Ukraine. Russia has forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia and that includes a large number of children.
How else do you expect to convince Russia to leave Ukraine's territory and pay reparations?
Or are you suggesting that we should just allow Russia to invade other countries with impunity and give it parts of Ukraine as a ransom? We've already done that the previous time, we know how it ended: in Russia invading again.
Do you really think Russia will ever pay reperations?
Sadly the situation is not simple nor is is black and white. This isn't some small state that invaded another one that can be forced to do something it doesn't want to.
It would be like arming the Iraqis and sanctioning the US to get them to leave. The only way the US would leave is when they want to, no matter what anyone else says and it's very similar with Russia. A large majority of Russians justify this invasion just as the US population supported the troops at all cost. The Russians are feed lies in their media and the US had embedded journalists white washing the horrors of war. There was even a period in the US where the media was forbidden from showing returning cofins of dead US soilders. [1]
Thinking this can be resolved by more sanctions and endless weapons is a fools aron and won't ever end this until either Putin retires or dies from old age. That can be another 20 years and even then it is a big if because his successor may continue with the conflict.
The difference is, Russia is not USA. It’s not even USSR; Russia’s economy is (or was) comparable with that of Italy. Russia already lost about half of its tank forces. They can’t start mobilization, because they are running out of officer cadre. They are losing this war.
What worries me more is what happens next. Crumbling Russia will become an useful asset to China; they will probably try to balance that with India - otherwise USA will make sure they cease to be useful as an asset.
And yes, I can easily see Russia paying out reparations in, say, electricity, over the next couple of decides. They are good at building nuclear power plants, and have a lot of land to place them.
Have you considered your colleagues are going to agree with their colleague's obviously strong political views just to avoid any hassle?
I do think Chinese and Indian media are largely pushing the same narratives as you and Russia, but polling colleagues about politics isn't going to be very accurate
I just hope that when the shit will hit the fan for India, then US, EU and related countries will remember to let India deal with it alone and not provide them assistance!