It is and I hope india is able to develop.

> The more developed and economically successful the world’s largest democracy is, the better for the world in general.

Who cares whether india is a democracy or not? It's so odd people parrot the propaganda so religiously. Every post about india inevitably mentions something about india being the largest democracy. Who cares? If india wasn't a democracy, should we hope 1.4 billion indians revel in poverty?

> The US, Europe, and allies should be doing whatever we can to support this.

We will support as long as india is poor and unsuccessful. As soon as they get rich and strong, we'll attack them just like we did to japan in the 80s and china today. The largest geographical democracy is russia and boy we surely don't support them. And we sanctioned india when they developed nukes in 90s, even though they were a democracy.

How about we support india lifting hundreds of millions of humans being out of poverty and worry less about democracy which has kept them in poverty for nearly years after independence?

Every human being on the planet who doesn't want to live in a dictatorship subject to the whims of one or few strongmen, or to be disappeared with no legal recourse for saying or thinking the wrong thing, or to have the valuable things they've built stolen by the unaccountable powerful.

There was a brief interregnum to history after the fall of the USSR, where we all thought authoritarianism would disappear if we just all get rich together, and that the culmination of human social evolution was liberal democracy and free markets.

Unfortunately none of that is true, and authoritarianism is on the rise again. You can pretend not to see it or that it doesn't matter if you wish, but that won't change the reality.

And Russia is no longer a democracy, the US has never attacked Japan post-WWII, and US has been extremely generous to China until Xi Jinping took over and began his campaign of regional and world domination.

How exactly does a democracy prevent any of that? Democracy gave us Hitler. Democracy gave us Putin.

> There was a brief interregnum to history after the fall of the USSR, where we all thought authoritarianism would disappear if we just all get rich together, and that the culmination of human social evolution was liberal democracy and free markets.

There was a brief time after the soviet collapse where the clever sold the lie to the naive. But no serious person ever believed "it was the end of history".

> Unfortunately none of that is true, and authoritarianism is on the rise again. You can pretend not to see it or that it doesn't matter if you wish, but that won't change the reality.

My point is that india suffered immensely for 80 years as a democracy. It has hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. Hundreds of millions of people without electricity. Not a very good endorsement of democracy. My point is that india needs competent leadership who can develop india. Not necessarily democracy.

> And Russia is no longer a democracy

Democracy must have sucked then.

> the US has never attacked Japan post-WWII

Other than the attacks on japan during the 80s.

> and US has been extremely generous to China

I'd say it is china that has been extremely generous. You might want to read up on some Sino-America history. It's a pretty ugly affair.

> until Xi Jinping took over and began his campaign of regional and world domination.

It isn't china that colonized and occupied asian countries. It is the US. We are the ones occupying taiwan, philippines, korea, japan, etc.

The monster in the pacific isn't china. It's the US. The country causing strife in the pacific is the US, not china. But then again, we cause strife everywhere in the world from south america to africa and everywhere in between.

Anybody who wants to do business. Democracies have stable, predictable rule of law. Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?

Really? Russia? Venezuela? They are democracies. Also, do you realize that many of the world's poorest and unstable countries are democracies? India has been a democracy for nearly 80 years. Nobody wants to do business with them. Everyone wants to do business with china. Go figure.

> Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?

You mean like how britain, EU, etc are taking russia's assets? Or how we stole japanese american assets during ww2? Or mexican american assets in the 1930s. Or the native american's lands since the very beginning?

There's nothing inherently good, stable or lawful about democracies. If you didn't have blinders on, you'd be shocked at how terrible democracies have been. The country with the most poverty in the world is a democracy - india. The countries that have waged the most wars around the world in the past 20 years have been democracies - US, Russia, EU, etc. The countries that have committed the greatest genocides have been democracies.

What a nation needs is competent leaders, not democracies. Instead of blinding accepting propaganda, just look at the reality.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Last I know all major nations and big corporations of the world are queuing up to invest in India.

Isn't that the fault of democracy then? How can democracy be so great if it can't even help develop basic civil society? So now you are moving the goalpost from political government to civil society? So it's civil society that's important not democracy?

> I'd much rather be in one of those flawed democracies than, say, in North Korea. '

And most people would rather live in china or vietnam than many of those flawed democracies.

> Democracy, liberal/bourgeois values, civil society, proper rewards for merit...

That's not what honest look at political history shows. We're told hitler was the worst thing in history and democracy gave us hitler.

> All of these things ultimately foster competence.

I'd say it fosters corruption rather than competence. And everyone from the founding fathers to the ancient greeks would have agreed.

There are merits to all forms of governance. Nothing magical about democracy as I've shown. What you need is competence. Doesn't matter the form of government.

The grandparent’s point was that Russia is technically a democracy and look how it’s doing. If there’s enough corruption is it really still a democracy? And if it isn’t, why does it matter if India is a paper democracy or not when considering whether it needs our support.

India has massive dependency on Russian military hardware and spare parts. So what should it do, just break off with Russia over a war in the Europe and get screwed itself when China-Pak nexus comes knocking on the border? No country in the world would do that, none-zero-zilch…

Moreover, Europe itself is buying Russian oil and gas, and wants India to stop - that reeks of double standards..

International politics is much murkier than national politics, so nothing is ever black or white.

Choices.

BTW. Regarding the oil and gas, India started buying when it didn't need to . EU is dependent on that oil and gas (Eastern Europe was forced on that dependency, Westerners stupidly joined) - e.g. cars will stop on streets, people will freeze in houses (ok, maybe not now, fortunately Spring is coming, but we still have 0-8 Celcius here, not fun to be in unheated house in that temperature). And we try to stop it, e.g. in Poland we worked on that and hopefully by the end of the year we can stop importing gas from Russia.

There is a difference: you don’t have a choice, Russia is the enemy as well as from where where you’d sourced hardware. Moreover, per my understanding, a lot of hardware and spares are manufactured in E. Eu, due to Soviet era, so things are slightly better due to that.

India is different, the enemy is China-Pak nexus. Russia has never been India’s enemy, rather has been friendly as a counter against US which for decades was more friendly towards Pak and even China. Kissinger hated India for some reason. Also, India doesn’t manufacture a lot of spares for military hardware. India is trying to reduce dependency on Russian crap by buying from West, note the Rafale deal. So it will happen, it will just take time. Note: India has the 2nd largest army in the world, so things take time.

> India started buying when it didn't need to

India started buying exactly when it needed to, when the price went over $100 a barrel which has a huge economic impact. Just like Eu is still buying Russian oil and gas. It’s not fair to express your own reasons while not understanding the other’s.

No one in India is doing this out of love for Russia, the history is in the past, but out of strategic reasons - which is what countries do.

You are free and rich enough to do this, be my guest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD_6L_ktkM8

Do you think it's only Europe that has cars?

Do you think Indians move around on donkeys and bullock carts?

If the US oil prices match Russian oil prices, then sure, buying oil from US can be considered. [1]

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/Swaminomics/if-us-...

It’s pretty obvious that the 2 would have different responses.

Also, if dependence is irrelevant, then why is the EU a continuing to buy Russian gas? To the tune of $35bn since Russia invaded Ukraine, compared to the $1bn they’ve given Ukraine?

I don’t blame them for it. I can understand that it’s pretty much impossible to unravel those decades of dependence in months, and trying to do that immediately will likely be counterproductive.

And India recognizes the same about its own Russian policy. They know they need to move away, but they also recognize the dangers of doing so in a thoughtless and rushed manner.

Further, unlike your conveniently specific black and white thinking, other countries like those in the EU (which haven’t said anything to India), the US (which has tried diplomatic persuasion but has not threatened any negative consequences), Australia, Japan, etc, all understand where India is coming from. And even though it is their duty to at least try to persuade India to shift its stance, they know it’s not gonna happen and understand why it won’t happen at such short notice, which is why they’ve been neutral to supportive.

There is absolutely no reason India shouldn’t buy Russian oil. Especially when the EU continues to do so.

The only country that has any standing complaining about Indian purchases of Russian oil is the US. And they haven’t complained about it because they recognize the hypocrisy of criticizing India buying a few millions worth of oil while not saying anything to Europe buying a few billions worth of oil.

Do you know that Europe is _still_ buying from Russia??

Do you know that the US is also _still_ buying from Russia??

India does about $8Bn/year of trade with Russia. That's peanuts.

And nearly 50% of the tankers carrying Russian oil are Greek; and yet you don't hear a word about Greece.

I didn't know about Greece, I was wondering how in the world was Russia transporting that oil and wheat.

In other words, Europe continues to buy from Russia so as to not to inconvenience its own citizens (need gas to heat people’s homes). But India shouldn’t buy from Russia to keep a check on fuel prices in a poor country.

Seems like you don’t care as long as someone else is inconvenienced.

And Europe is not filled with rich countries.

NATO will loose its purpose when Russia disappears.

Ukrainians have the right to decide what they want to do and what, if anything, to give up.

But that doesn't change much. The US intervened in Vietnam and Afghanistan and because the locals didn't want them, the US still lost.

Foreign contributions in Ukraine pale in comparison to Vietnam and Afghanistan yet Ukraine is resisting. And this a full blown Russian invasion, not just a Ukrainian civil war, yet Ukraine might even win this war.

That's strictly the merit of the Ukrainians. You can gift weapons, but not the will to fight.

Not yet, apparently, but they are fighting for it.

Ukraine becoming a more successful county like all the other countries that have joined the EU would have made Russians wonder if Putin was holding them back given their closeness to Ukraine and more advantageous starting point.

Yes but this furthers the goals of Western Europe and The USA, regardless of how Ukraine behaves. It just so happens to be an aligned interest with Ukraine. If Ukraine wants to fight off Russia it certainly has the right to, but asking China/India to sanction Russia is like telling them to pay and actively contribute to the war. Maybe they should do that, but that payment is at their cost, for the benefit of Ukraine and NATO.

I'm sure there are plenty of civil wars and atrocities such that the US probably should have interfered more, such as in Myanmar, so one has to wonder why in certain cases (Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine) that the US decides to intervene slightly more.

I'm not saying that's what they should be doing or not be doing, I'm just helping laypeople rationalize why the self-interested approach of certain countries is rational... for their self interest. But then countries aren't people, but they are beholden to the interests of their own people first. The US just so happens to be aligned with the interests of Ukraine, but our interference definitely has self interest motivations too. We just can't go around pretending like China and India not "helping" for our self-interests as some kind of atrocity.

Or that Europe would in anyway want to give up on its Russian gas and oil, while pointing fingers at India which buys less than 1%.

In fact they fear it might go the same way as the sanctions on Iran, where India had to go through Germany banks to pay its Iranian dues, where Indian banks were expected to abide by sanctions while German banks were not.

There's always a double standard at play. For EU, buying oil is a necessary evil. For India, it's "supporting" the enemy.

India received Lawrow recently, he is not allowed in any EU country.

But there is a difference in long dependency and completely new buy. India is not dependent on Russian oil, Germany is (I mean, if they stop, cars will stop, people will freeze in houses because of lack of gas to heat their houses).

And? Your point? Speaking to diplomats is suddenly taboo?

> India is not dependent on Russian oil

No. But, it is dependent on oil and gas being cheap enough to make basic inputs with. It is a region and country on the brink of poverty in many ways. What did you expect?

You can speak on phone, receiving one from countries killing civilians on purpose is making a statement. If you make a statement you will be heard, and I don't think many EU countries will be happy. Not to mention, you know humanitarian aspects - you can buy your oil without blood.

And, why hasn't the EU shut off all oil and gas purchases from Russia immediately?

Why should a poor country support this sanctions regime and then witness massive internal disruption?

Most of the countries and populations of the world have in fact NOT imposed sanctions.

Because they let themselves get too dependent on foreign energy, so doing so would have meant letting their own people freeze.

You are free and rich enough to do this, be my guest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD_6L_ktkM8

Is oil the only thing a country can be dependent on?

Also, what are you? Some Eastern European, who has some emotional ties to the region? 99% of Indians have never heard of Ukraine, and yet, Indians should sacrifice their one steady ally who has stood with India all these decades?

I assume India politicians heard what Russia targets in Ukraine (and it is not military). Bucha is just one example.

Would India buy cheap soap from Germany during WWII (of course if it wasn't under Britains rule)?

Do you really understand or know more about these concerns?

Not for India’s economy and defense. Surely, you recognize they are not a rich country and in an unstable region?

India isn't a colony, and India is capable of and willing to be a mediator to bring peace, the west isn't or won't.

What regime changes, what orchestration?

They literally hosted Russia Foreign Minister week or two ago. They abstained in votes against Russia for that invasion in UN. US warned them no to go in bed with Russia. Do you think EU or US will look kindly to support India now?

This country needs to be cleaned from the head, just like Germany after WWII. If not it will always be a danger to world peace.