Indian Defence Review

US President Joe Biden (left) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin; (Photos: AFP)

India is getting cheap Russian crude to ensure its manufacturing industry competes with China’s which sources energy at half the free market rate. Union Minister Hardeep Purialso told Parliament on March 15 that India will get oil from Venezuela as also from other countries under sanction. This is an excellent and bold move by the Modi Government instead of needlessly suffering inflation due to the US-Russia feud over the US-contrived war in Ukraine. China has always cared two hoots for American sanctions.

But White House press secretary Jen Psaki says India’s move to purchase Russian oil at discounted price would put the world’s largest democracy on the “wrong side of history”. Somebody should ask blinkered Psaki: as to“…on which side is Germany who continues to buy Russian oil? Why don’t you mention Germany? Are you scared Germany has seen through the American game to ‘misuse’ Europe for its own national interest and splintering of NATO is only a matter of time?

Moreover, when America is begging shamelessly for oil from Iran and Venezuela despite heavily sanctioning both countries for years, is it the gas within the Biden administration that is evoking such starkly ill-considered comments? Ever heard the term India’s National Interests?”

It is about time, India tells the Biden administration that who we trade with is none of America’s business, especially when the trade is not in dollars. Same goes for defence collaboration and defence imports with the aim of indigenization. If Bangladesh can put the US in its place by saying it will continue to trade with Russia despite sanctions on both Russia and Bangladesh, no reason we don’t do the same, the West needs to shed its imperiously possessive attitude, get off the high horse and learn that respect is a two-way street.

As it is, the Biden-Boris Johnson duo would be getting goose bumps wondering why Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi is visiting India next month -which certainly is not about the Galwan clash. Should the utterly unexpected happen that India and China arrive at a mutual border settlement, where will that leave the US? US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth admitted on March 15 that the next war that US fights could see hostilities erupt in the America home land.

Wormuth also said that the ‘human dimension’ of the military should not be undervalued and noted that the US military was coming fresh out of 20 years of combat experience and had superior training – Afghanistan! A war in which nukes come into play would be different. However, all the more reason the US should treat India on equal terms and quit needless bullying.

No doubt the humiliation in Afghanistan has hit the US hard, what with the rout, freezing Afghan money in the Central Bank of Afghanistan, releasing it gradually and now resurrecting the Taliban. The move to turn Ukraine into Afghanistan is even more dangerous with deliberate attempt to involve European countries though Joe Biden’s call “we will defend every inch of NATO territory” is more to keep European nations in line to further America’s own national interests. Moreover, doesn’t the network of 30 US-funded bio-labs in Ukraine researching and storing viruses make the US a bigger rogue than China?

Now even China has demanded full transparency of the activities of the American bio-labs, while Tulsi Gabbard wants all American bio-labs in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world should be shut down. Their existence in Ukraine, Algeria and Kazakhstan is already known but can Jen Psaki tell us which other corners of the globe these are functioning or being established – including Britain and Canada?

However, that is not all. Scott Ritter, former Marine Corps admiral and intelligence officer who served in the Persian Gulf has publicly stated that the CIA and MI-6 have been training neo-Nazis in Azov in Ukraine. Ritter’s loyalty is perhaps to the Constitution of America, unlike John F Kirby, press secretary of the US Department of Defense, who is also a veteran admiral in the US Navy but must toe the line of the Biden administration lest he is sacked.

Now Scott Ritter is being demonized by America’s deep state on social media asking all not to believe him – what a shame with Joe Biden saying “veterans are the backbone and the spine of this country – they’re the best of us” in his State of the Union address on March 1.

Republican Dan Truitt, who was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2010, writes: virtually no one in the US has got the truth about Ukraine right; US broke the promise given to Russia when the Soviet Union fell that NATO will not expand and has incorporated almost the entire Eastern Bloc into NATO; George Bush arbitrarily cancelling the 1972 ABM Treaty to develop new nuclear weapon technology and expand NATO to defeat terrorism – appears anoxym or on; Putin’s war is rightly a defensive war for Ukraine as a buffer with the West; in this historically rare period in which the leaders of 1.5 billion people (the West) are as leaders are feckless and misleading their people; Putin has no intention of reconstituting the Soviet Union – that’s a big fat lie; this war is the West’s fault, not Putin’s.

Truitt further writes: contrary to popular opinion, the Ukrainians are not making a heroic stand against the Russians; they’re getting their kicked, they’re hiding in population centers, and Russia, trying to get to them, is killing a lot of civilians as collateral damage; all Zelensky has to do is meet Putin and agree to Putin’s four demands: one, Ukraine cannot join NATO, two, NATO arms out of Eastern Europe (honoring American promise to Russia’s Gorbachev), three, ban on NATO missiles within striking distance, and four, autonomy for the two predominantly Russian provinces in east Ukraine.

Sane advice by Truitt but he will be demonized the same way as Scott Ritter because the POTUS Joe Biden wants to make Russia ineffective for next few decades, followed by the same treatment of China. However, in this madness he may end up with an Asian solidarity bloc as never seen before with plenty of devastation in Europe, the US, Britain and Canada.