Their Land, Their People, Their Blood…

The post-World War 2 world order is in a state of upheaval. The catalyst and index for the same could be said to be the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine and a war being fought therein. This blog post is not about that war but how India may soon find itself in a much similar scenario. The current conflict in Europe may be one of the indicators that India may suffer a similar predicament in the future if matters are not addressed now.

The ostensible reason for the conflict in Ukraine is the desire of Russia to stop the inclusion of Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The discerning reader will at the very outset realise that the reasons are not so immediate but instead run much deeper. Russia considers the currently independent states which were in the erstwhile Soviet Union to be squarely in its sphere of influence. This is doubly true for the nation of Ukraine which was one of the most important erstwhile Soviet states other than Russia. Russia considers Ukraine moving closer to the United States of America and the US’s growing influence in the region to be insidious to Russia’s greater geostrategic interests.

Samuel P. Huntington’s concept of Civilizations and Core States as enunciated in his celebrated and controversial book Clash of Civilizations deserve a mention in this regard. Core states as explained by Huntington seek foremost to maintain and expand their influence. Taking Russia as the core state of the Eastern European culture, it will not be difficult to visualise why the increasing US interference in the areas which Russia has traditionally considered within its exclusive sphere of influence has forced Russia to the extreme step of engaging in a costly war with a near-peer militarised state.

India is rapidly emerging as one of the principal security partners of the US, with the US increasingly courting and deepening security ties with India, in the pursuance of the US’s mission of retaining the primary military and economic superpower status vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China which increasingly seems to be the next superpower. India also has the unenviable tag of being one of the Asian giants having a long and contentious non-delineated and non-demarcated border with the PRC. India cannot ignore the reality that she needs powerful allies if she is to stand against China’s expansionary policies in the Himalayan region.

The US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland in her recent visit to India has expressed the willingness of the US to become the major defence supplier for India. In light of this, Indian statesmen would be wise to remember The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed by the US with the Ukraine, which has stood for naught when the chips were down for Ukraine. Another moment well worth remembering is during the Kargil conflict of 1999 when the US had refused to supply laser-guided munitions to India which were to be used to dislodge the occupiers of the Himalayan heights occupied by Pakistani regulars posing as Mujahids. Many in the Indian political space partial to the US argue that India and US are natural allies as both are democracies. But the irrefutable fact that the US has had a long history of toppling or opposing democratically elected governments all over the world, a very pertinent example being the 1971 war for the liberation of Bangladesh, belies that argument too.

That the US cares for nothing other than maintaining its preeminent position in world affairs is evident from the words of George Kennan, chargé d’affaires of the US embassy in Moscow, made during the aftermath of World War 2 stating “… a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken…” while describing the Soviet Union. These words are in resonance with the frequent ultimatums of “with us or against us” that the US is in the habit of issuing to countries that take a stand which is at variance with the US geostrategic interests, and by doing which the US strong-arms these countries to toe the US dictated line. It will not be much far from the mark to say that the US sees the world in two colours, either with the US and subservient to it such as the UK or France, or against the US such as China and Russia, in light of the way the US has conducted itself in Cold War era and later.

Increased bonhomie with India is the US’s way of trying to use India as a counterweight and balance to China’s rise in world affairs. US’s preferred way of fighting wars is and has always been “Their Land, Their People, Their Blood…”. It won’t blink twice before sacrificing the lives of countless people whose only fault is that they are not US citizens. The casualty figures of the US soldiers in Afghanistan and Vietnam being approximately 2,400 and 65,000 respectively, reinforces this idea, both being wars that the US lost due to the reluctance of its establishment to prosecute further solely due to the reason that they started being unpopular due to their long-running nature and the death of US citizens. The deaths of the Americans in the quest to maintain the US’s preeminent position weigh much more on the US’s war-fighting appetite than that of the destruction of another nation and people and the deaths of tens of thousands. Unmatched force projection capabilities have existed with the US for decades now, but it is for the less privileged people the world over to die in countless wars in regions that American interference has left devoid of any semblance of stability and peace.

India and Indians must realise that they cannot rely on any other outside power to be the guarantor of the security of the Indian nation. China’s moves in Indian borders and the Indian Ocean region is something to be expected of a nation that seeks to be the next superpower. Our statesmen have in the past managed to steer the nation so as to avoid gross external interference in the pursuit of our strategic interests. We must be careful to do the same in the future and to continue our independent policy in world affairs. The war has for the people in Ukraine turned into “Our Land, Our People, Our Blood…”. India must take care it does not turn the same for us vis-à-vis China.