Choosing the right side will be critical for India, and under the seasoned leadership of PM Modi, this is what the country can expect.
A world war does not get initiated just by gunfire and the clash of militaries and newspaper and television headlines conveying the news of the start of war. It begins silently, almost creeping higher and higher stealthily, and it takes a while before the world understands the nature of the conflict. World War I (so named) and World War II (so named) were not world wars but European wars, soon afterwards involving the other side of the Atlantic later, which was always on the winning side as a consequence. Not because of fortune or happenstance but because the US had and has the capacity to make the difference between defeat and victory. Even in the world of high commerce, such is the case. True, during the period when these world wars were fought, much of the world was under the control of one or the other European powers. Willy nilly, they were dragged into the conflict and endured even worse suffering than the colonised people previously had. However, they cannot legitimately get counted in the column of those countries willingly at war, for the countries were forced into the wars by their colonial masters. Only a free country counts in such a reckoning, which is why what has been initiated is not World War III but World War
I. Only the now outdated view of themselves that some European countries still have makes them label the conflicts of 1914-18 and 1939-45 as World Wars rather than the Euro-Atlantic wars they were. Choosing the right side will be critical for India, and under the seasoned leadership of PM Modi, this is what the country can expect.
A business dynasty in India illustrates the point about choosing sides well. One brother took the path of linking with China, while the other plumped for the US. The first failed dismally, while the other prospered. The process of success or failure of a major business dynasty does not simply involve the principals but hundreds of thousands of shareholders. In the case of the first, they suffered financial costs which were unbearable for many of them, especially investors in an energy project. In the case of the other sibling, shareholders prospered. Shareholder losses have a dampening effect on demand and hence on the overall economic growth of a country, while shareholder gains give buoyancy to the economy of the country.
Rewind back to President Donald J. Trump admonishing the European powers in their presence at the G7 Summit hosted by Canada. Getting Russia into the G7 and making it the G8 in 2007 was a correct move, which was terminated in 2014 as a consequence of the pique demonstrated by the other members of the G8 at the partition of Ukraine into an autonomous Russian-speaking part including parts of Crimea and the rest of the country. Had that step not been taken, Russia would have been on the side of the democracies as the new World War begins, rather than get pushed into the arms of China. A forced (on the Russian side) embrace of China could still be undone, were the counsel of President Trump and Prime Minister Modi about Russia to, albeit belatedly, get listened to by the hitherto obstinate Euro-focussed European powers. Such obstinacy landed the Europeans into what they call World War I and World War II (but which in actuality are Euro-Atlantic and not world wars, the pair of them). The lessons of the past need to be learned and the wisdom seen behind the counsel of President Trump to accept an armistice in the Ukraine-Russia war rather than continue to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Were the Europeans and the Canadians to opt for the latter course in Ukraine, they should be termed the G6, as the US under Trump would not be in the same tent as the others on Ukraine. Japan has already moved away, with its resumption of oil purchases from Russia, thereby affirming the identity of the country as an Asian, Indo-Pacific power rather than a European, Atlantic power.
In wartime, a hedging strategy of what is called balancing power equations leads to loss of balance and a subsequent fall. President Trump is acting correctly in helping Israel to remove the Khomeinist regime in Iran, which is an existential enemy of Israel and an enemy of the democracies. Worldwide, he is clearing chokepoints carefully assembled by China in the knowledge that a kinetic war with the US and its partners has become practically inevitable. The Quad should ensure the Malacca Straits get swept of Chinese efforts at domination. As for Moscow, the interests of the Russian Federation mandate not joining the war on the side of China but at the least neutrality. Somehow, those European powers whose leaders remain nailed to the cross of the fiction that Russia can be made through the Ukraine war to fall apart 1991-style, need to be cajoled into acceptance of the fact that the strategy of President Trump of seeking to distance Moscow from Beijing is the correct path for them as well to follow, In case Moscow desists from anymore joining Beijing in supplying assets of war to Teheran, it would help President Trump convince others in the G7 that Russia should no longer be sanctioned, but welcomed as at the least a neutral until it becomes a full partner of the democracies, as it was on course to do during the starting years of the Putin Presidency.
If the World War is to be more swiftly and comprehensively won by the partner democracies, not just India as a full partner but Russia as a neutral is needed. President Trump showed his contempt with the antiquated thinking of some European leaders when he flew out (rather than walked out as before) of the meeting of the G7. Long ago, when picturesque Bonn was the capital of the western part of the still divided Germany, this columnist was invited to the Auswaertiges Amt (or Foreign Ministry). He travelled in an antiquated lift that had no stops, so visitors and staff had to jump out the instant their floor was reached. The lift was symbolic of the antiquated mindset of the officials in the ministry now in the matter of Ukraine, and it is time for a change in thinking, not only in Germany but in France as well. In the UK, Prime Minister Starmer has been ridiculed for picking up a page that had fallen to the floor from the hands of Trump. The ridicule made those doing so ridiculous, for not just was Starmer being civilised to a much older person, but endearing himself in the process to President Trump. It is now time for Starmer to lead a European exit from the Ukraine war. The longer it gets prolonged, the greater the human suffering on both sides and closer the adhesion of Russia with China at a time when Moscow needs to be neutral at the least in the onrush of a war between China and the partner countries on the other side, not excluding Iran under the clerics.
