Well we aren't in. Russia was in a position to leverage it's own heft to retain a role for India (if it is as you say and they know they can't trust Chi-Pak) but they didn't. Like I said, it's very possibly due to Moscow deciding that it wasn't worth it, that it needed China's support more badly in the medium-term (by the point of US exit from Afg they would have already been planning for the invasion).
From their perspective, they are perfectly justified in doing so. Their priority is to look after their interests first, not India's.
Question is what should be our priority, looking after ourselves or accommodating Russia?
Nope, attacks were on Armenia proper. Not in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh.
It was a US-led initiative.
Washington had spearheaded a Quad vaccine initiative that was meant to entail India producing jabs for south-east Asia with financial and logistical support from Washington, Canberra and Tokyo.
India’s Covid calamity exposes weakest link in US-led ‘Quad’ alliance
New Delhi virus response undermines its coalition with America, Japan and Australia to resist Chinawww.ft.com
The US has crafted a plan with Japan, India and Australia to provide 1bn doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine to south-east Asian nations in an effort to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
US and Asia allies launch major vaccine drive to counter China
The 1bn Covid jabs will be funded by US and Japan, made in India and distributed by Australia
Under the deal, the US and Japan will finance production of the vaccine in India, while Australia will help to distribute the jabs across south-east Asia.
India simply latched on to the plan by also offering their own.
FT playing up the State Dept as usual. The QUAD program was jointly announced at the first summit, but if you look at QUAD itself as US-led then sure.
But the fact is India was the pioneer of vaccine diplomacy - we had been donating vaccines months before the summit, when everyone else was busy hoarding them. The plan to use vaccines for diplomatic leverage was originally ours, which the US adopted through the multilateral platform.
It's being described as "US-led" because its the US that funded it when it comes to SEA.
The concessions are getting increasingly few & far between.
What you must realize is that there are very hard limits to how much we can support Russia. The Chinese are always capable of taking it much further because they actually share common enemies.
Our multi-alignment can only last as long as Russia doesn't take it too far. And right now they appear to be well on the way to doing exactly that.
Same goes for AMCA too. The Mk-1 is expected to have a proven 95-100kN engine which again the French don't have. For the Mk-2 we'll be needing a more powerful engine of 110-130kN. Preferably a new-generation design with variable cycles & everything. But if ToT proves sticky, the least we can hope for is more thrust & electrical output than the Mk-1. That would be non-negotiable otherwise whole Mk-2 program will fail.
That again puts GE at a more advantageous position. As the M88 core cannot be scaled to that level, in order match our requirements the French would need to share the absolute latest & greatest they have (FCAS engine), which is less likely to happen - especially because they might also need to get German approval for doing so. Whereas GE can offer tech that would be at least a generations out of date, but still able to meet the thrust requirements (F414 EPE). It would also promote commonality & cost-saving arguments as the same production facilities we build for 414-INS6 can be used for EPE as well.
When interests align, everything else falls into place.
That's what's happening now. We didn't sign anything that restricts what we do. We're not an official Ally and never will be.
No, and the US is quite realistic about that. There was a point when they were confident they could bring India around, but that period is over. The likes of Kurt Campbell & Jake Sullivan have a very clear-eyed & realistic view of India's aspirations to be independent.
Besides, a Mutual Defence pact is frankly impossible - not unless we are ready to renounce all official claims on occupied territories like PoK & Aksai Chin. That's never gonna happen. Best we can hope for is Ukraine-type support by supplying our weapons needs, and transferring assets like B-1B via lend-lease.
Nothing 1-2 Russian carriers can do out there against the USN. Or against PLAN for that matter. On the surface, against the USN they'd be a junior partner to PLAN anyway, they don't need to duplicate efforts when China is already on its way to build 6+ carriers. The Russians are better off focusing on the subsurface element where the Chinese lack technological superiority.
And I'm telling you - if indeed it's in Russia's interest to supply us as a counterweight to China, anything tactical we sell to Ukraine simply won't matter because they can't afford to let it get in the way! But of course the Russians will not tell you this, they'd say it's a red line, but up to you how timidly you want to approach the Russian relationship. At some point we have to learn to play hardball if we wish to get what we want.
Turkey supplied UCAVs & munitions to Ukraine, do you see the Russians ending support for their S400 systems? Or cutting relations? Or are they mindful of the fact that propping up Turkey against the West is in their interest and so must continue maintaining relations?
You say the Russians supply us because it's in their interest, but then you act like they're just doing it all as a favour and so can end it anytime they want without any consequences.
Opening up the possibility of supplying weapons to the Ukrainians gives us leverage. Against the West, we can use it to obtain both finances & additional technology transfers to help local industries grow. Against Russia the LEAST we should aim for is to get them to cease any & all supply of weapons & systems to Pakistan (including RD93s) and to get into an agreement that they'll never do so in the future, or at least that they'll only sell items after we approve it. And that if they don't agree to it, we'll supply further weapons to Ukraine.
Once leverage is obtained by the initial sales (MILANs or anything else we have on hand), we can do an assessment of all options and choose accordingly.
You are approaching our foreign policy as though we are still in the 70s or 80s. We have to make moves commensurate with our stature in order to use opportunities as they arise to better our own position! We are now at a much more powerful position vis-a-vis Russia (not only because we are a 3x times bigger economy but also because we now buy about half their oil) than at any point in history.
How does it help us to let the moment pass us by? Unless you think that somehow the Russians will remember how good we were to them and come to our rescue, even against their greater national interest, at some point in the future? I'm sorry but it doesn't work like that.
What's our half? The solid motor? I don't see why that should take a decade.
The most important part is the SCRAMJET combustion & the materials needed to make it. We've already tested ~Mach 6 scramjets of our own and as per some, the technology-demonstration component of HSTDV program is now over and development of a tactical solution (an actual HCM) has already begun.
I'm pushing us to act in our interest. To open the doors to acquire further technology inputs, and to play our cards such that Pakistan loses a source of affordable weapons for the short-medium term.
And you can be assured, that when the time comes, we'll do the same to the US as well. But their time hasn't come yet.
I don't presume to know about wants. However I do take note of what they can actually do in a given scenario, by assessing their abilities & how much diplomatic room they have. That's what interests are based on.
There's not much even the US can do in today's world purely on basis of what they want. You can ask anyone in the Pentagon, they were up to their necks in hatred for Islamabad & the ISI throughout the war in Afghanistan because they knew how they were backstabbing them. What the US wanted was to remove the Pakistani establishment and install someone that actually supported their mission, but they remained cognizant of the realities - there was no way the US could get into another war, against a nuclear power, at that time. And even in the future, they will not have the freedom to act against Pakistan for past transgressions because they will realize that it's in their interest that Pakistan remains as a card that can potentially be used against India in the event of our interests diverging in the future.
That's how foreign policy works. In short, it doesn't matter what they want. It matters what they have the freedom to do, given their geopolitical circumstances at the time. And in the foreseeable future, Russia will not have the freedom to do much of anything that Beijing wouldn't approve of.
Like I said, if that were true why would we bother to develop NaVIC, and eventually GINS?
If we have true alignment and see no possibility of divergence, why waste money?
Truth is, we are aligned with Russia on some matters. And with the West on others. Depending on our situation, we increase or decrease our alignment. The Russians do the same.
Problem is, the foreseeable future contains a lot of decreasing due to a variety of factors.
That's good - we get to make a lot of money. It's not going to last though.
We will brave Western sanctions, throttle our own economy, and buy oil from Russia so that we can sell it to Pakistan?
Are you hearing yourself?
Refining capacity & consumption are two different metrics. Consumption is driven by demand - refining is a profit-making business that need not necessarily care about domestic demand.
As of numbers, the fact is we essentially added a Iraq/KSA-equivalent supplier out of nowhere, while the reduction from our traditional suppliers only reduced by marginal amounts (~10%). We added about 1 mbpd of import out of nowhere - and that's not because we wanted to rush to Russia's aid, that's purely because of the discount & the lax sanctions regime.
Once those conditions change (which they will) we will no longer be buying Russian oil. Not just because we'll lose the European customer, but because we'll face secondary sanctions just for buying the oil in the first place. So no Russian oil even for domestic consumption will remain.
At that point you can be assured our oil import map will go back to looking exactly like how it did pre-2022 i.e. with MidEast supplying ~90% of the demand, the US filling the gaps, and the Russians as a non-factor.
Well Japan isn't looking to change any status quos within the next half-century so it doesn't hurt their plans - they've found a way to live with total economic stagnation. And they're already halfway through their demographic bust, in the next few decades (once the older generations die off) it can only get better for Japan.
As of supplying Russia, I don't buy that they don't need it. They are importing everything they can from whoever is ready to sell (i.e. countries already under sanctions) like Iran & NoKo. Besides, they can never have the scale China has - they just don't have enough working-age people or enough factories. This isn't the USSR of WW2.
Right now they're having to spin up every single factory they have to supply the Ukraine war. If and when they get into a war with all of NATO they are hopelessly outmatched. No choice but to rely on China for supplies.
At that point if China demands they share the technology of the Akula-II, what can the Russians do but oblige? Someone in Moscow will point out that they still have better tech (Yasen) so all's not lost, we can give Akula to them.
Yeah China wants Russia weaker, but more importantly they want as much of the West's resources tied up in Europe as possible so the less capacity they have of intervening in INDOPAC, which is what is really important for PRC. Russia's war is a useful tool of making that happen.
Russians never planned to fight a war this scale in the first place so their plans for what happens after are sketchy at best.
Russians had no intention of moving anything to India - that was our initiative to localize most of the stuff, and we paid quite the premiums for that. Despite the fact Russia still hadn't delivered on several ToT obligations (like with T-90).
Weapons supplied to Pakistan & China are to swat flies? I sure don't recall TTP having much of an armoured force to warrant Kornets.
What difference does it make when they supply weapons before the war starts? Soldiers die all the same.
Hell, having stocks of weapons is what emboldens aggressors to start wars in the first place.
As of history, I keep saying that the alignment of interests change. Just because something was a certain way for ~50 years doesn't mean it will always be the same.
What they said is that QUAD is designed to contain China. But they don't acknowledge why even a traditionally non-aligned state like India felt compelled to join. They don't acknowledge that China is the aggressor. They didn't do that even after Galwan.
Because their view on the Pacific is now completely aligned with China's.
The question is what will Russia do if they are in a direct or indirect war with NATO and China is in a war with India and US is supporting India. Can you count on the Russians to stand shoulder to shoulder with their adversaries in the European theatre (US) in helping India against the only potential ally they have in their own war against NATO?
If you do, I must say your views are extremely unrealistic.
Regarding China's designs on the Russian far-east, what you need to realize is that when it comes to Russia, the Chinese are in no hurry whatsoever. Yes, they are sitting on a demographic time bomb, but so are the Russians. Russia will run out of young people much much before China does. They aren't even a 1/10th of China's population.
The Chinese don't see any merit in fighting over something they can acquire anyway. With Western sanctions in place, Russia's European core will be busy looking after itself, already China is the only hope for investments in their far-east. Why invade when you're getting almost monopolistic access to the region's markets & resources? They have enough enemies in the Himalayas & the Pacific, they don't need to open another theatre.
Sooner or later, the Chinese can realistically hope for a Alaska purchase-type deal for Russia's far-east at a price Beijing will decide.
Vis-a-vis China? The only track record they have during any India-China conflict was to encourage both sides to resolve their differences peacefully. And that would be the extent of what we can expect from them in the event of any future conflict as well. ESPECIALLY in any future conflict because the USSR of old was a very different beast compared to modern Russia.
As I said above, it depends on what you think their interests are.
Turkey did the same and continues to have relations & access to top of the line stuff like S400. Pakistan did the same and continues to have access to oil (they can't afford anything else so there's that).
Like I said, you are approaching this too timidly. Instead you need to make a more realistic assessment of what the Russians' compulsions are.
I gave you two.
Just to remind you:
1) Use the offer of sales to get tech transfers & investments from West in items we deem are critical in a war with China. Cuz in case West decides not to support us in a war with PRC, we need to be able to rely on ourselves.
2) Use the threat of further sales to get Russia to either end strategic relations with Pakistan, or at the least only trade in items that we approve of. It's even a realistic demand - Pakistan is a terror-exporting state that caused great harm to Russia in times past, and in case they really need to work with them in Afg, they can get favours done via China. They don't even earn much money selling to them - their only real utility is in being used as a tool to pressurize India with. We are well within our rights to take that away from them.
Only thing unrealistic is to think that Russia will have the wherewithal to help us against China in the event of a war.
As of Western tech, firstly the possibility of tech inputs from France is much higher than US (especially in the strategic sphere) so all of West cannot be seen under the same light. That said, what I spoke about above are tactical stuff and the means of producing them. That's nothing too important that anyone will have much of a problem transferring.
As of exotic stuff - I didn't say that we were assured of getting inputs from West. What I said was that in the long term, the only countries even capable of helping us are in the West and not Russia - because Russia does not have access to a lot of those techs, like an electric drive for nuclear submarines for example.
Even if Russia were to develop such techs going forward, they'd be far more apprehensive of giving it to us because it would still be the latest & greatest they have. Whereas the US/French equivalents by that point would already be one or two generations out of date - so much more likely to be shared.
It's the same as happening with F414 now. Even the latest Russian engines cannot hope to match 414 in terms of reliability, longevity, turn around times, sortie rates, time between failure, time between overhaul etc.
But US/France are comfortable in giving us a lot of that tech because for them, the F414/M88 are already out of date technologies. But for us, they make a world of difference.
