It's the contrary.
Such a huge country as India can't be aligned. You need to be free.
We are already a swing state but non-alignment doesn't pay any dividends. Let's see we have the Americans,Western Europe ,Japanese and Saudi Arabia on one side all with much more influence,then we have China which is a clear geopolitically rival and has allies like Pakistan and NoKo and other failed states in Africa. Also we have the Russians but Russians play it solo and there is a limit on how long we can maintain their loyalty towards us considering the Chinese are increasing there influence and making Russia closer to China. A place we can't really compete with. Then there is the nutcase Iran. Let's compare we have Israel on one side that is extremely pro India and has no bad blood with us and Iran which basically treats us like a condom and itself is useless. The Iranians don't have any good technology the oil is there only leverage which can be switched to Saudi oil.
There are places where we can cooperate and even interoperate. There is the foreign office, intelligence and even space. But definitely not the military.
Intelligence and foreign office and space cooperation are just jumlas. We have been doing that with the Americans since the 60's. The Americans send U2 spy planes during the 62 war on the begging of nehru. It's only when we operate with the Americans do we start entering modern warfare. And the backing of the Americans make any countries influence jump magnitudes in proportion. Look at Israel,South Korea even Taiwan to an extent. They do have much more influence due to American backing.
Where on earth did you get that?
Simply look at our armed forces. We are under-equipped. We are atleast a generation behind all western forces. Just look at poland JW Grom. It looked like a rag tag special forces before Afghanistan after that they have basically become one of the most elite spec ops unit in Europe. The 27th Feb showed us some deficiencies in our arsenal like lack of secured data link and radios. It was because of impressive training that IAF pilots managed to handle the whole fiasco but it also showed how lack of awareness our forces had. There is no integrated battlefield awareness. It's basic stuff like this which shows we are not a modern warfighting force. I have no love for Pravin Sawhney but there is a reason he cries buzzwords like interoperability,"6th gen AI war" for a reason. He has been calling out the deficiencies of our armed forces for decades. His twitter career is just a new ISI funded drama but he has got a lot things right about what plagues our armed forces. The only saving grace is that we are fighting forces that our inferior to us or just a little better. Otherwise I would love to see how would IA fare against a modern military. The Pakistanis are much more pragmatic and even with budget issues have much better equipment standardisation. They are technologically inferior to us and their tactics are questionable but the Pakistanis do have their basics clear on how to take on us.
Haven't you noticed how much they keep pressing us to buy their F-16 or their THAAD/Patriot?
Well because they want to ally with us. They want better interoperability with us. Do you really think we will be fighting against an American ally in the near future? All our enemies are also against the Americans. Americans have literally given us a red carpet and want us to join them it's us who are suffering the nehruvian schizophrenia of non-alignment. And CAATSA isn't stopping us with some diplomatic negotiations we can handle the Americans while buying Russian hardware while at the same time be in the American orbit. Also Americans love money and they thrive on defense deals so why won't they be forcing us. All countries do that the French,Russians and even the Swedes do that, does that make them nefarious? Why do people think that allying with a more powerful country will result in us losing sovereignty? If anything it has shown after the galwan drama that we need the Americans as much as they need us.
The Americans only treat those who are truly autonomous as autonomous. Do you see the Americans press the French to buy their weapons?
Because the French have their own defense industry ours is still at a nascent stage. And they don't give out tenders for MMRCAs that go out for 20 years at the end of which their government scraps the deals because the original tender was not "well made". And the Americans forced the Germans to buy the F 18 superhornet even though they had their own defense industry and are autonomous to some extent.
And if autonomy is such a strong argument why is that every American ally is basically free to do anything and only thing the Americans do is reprimand them. The Israelis do whatever they want and the Jewish lobby in America manages the Senate so no serious calling out ever occurs. The Saudis are pretty much murdering yemenis and also Khasoggi what did the Americans do another reprimand. Similarly Pakistan has been backing Taliban since forever and what do the Americans do absolutely nothing. Same for the Chinese. The Americans allow autonomy as long as you don't go against American interests. And as an indian I know that our geopolitical ambitions are regional at best not global. So there is literally no loss we will experience going with the Americans. The Russians are like Israel an arms dealer with decent geopolitically clout but that's it. Even getting closer with the French is a better idea because of the Gucci tech they have.
Still A french/Russian/Israeli alliance still won't have as much weight as an Indo-American alliance will have.
www.financialexpress.com
