RIC: Ukraine crisis and three power centres-The Kaleidoscope
India will have to play its cards well. Democracy is its strength, and at times it stands different and way ahead of both Russia and China. In all these, there is a need for tightrope walking. The Modi government is doing that well so far.
Despite being communist regimes, China and Russia have their own issues. History does serve as a good lesson for the Chinese Communist party: Nikita Khrushchev withdrew all assistance to support China's nascent industrial development because Beijing refused to become a junior partner of Moscow in political and military terms in the 1950s.
The Sino-Soviet split of the 1950s and 60s took place in a very different world, but its spectre remains alive - says an article in 'The Guardian'.
Iran, which had an Observer status, formally was admitted into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Sept 17, 2021, at Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first who greeted Tehran's full membership, a fact widely acknowledged in the Iranian media as well.
There used to be a debate earlier on growing Chinese influence. Until a few years ago, Russia handled the politico-security issues in the region, and China exerted economic prowess. But things were changing as Beijing became more assertive.
But now Putin's 'Ukraine adventurism' has got it back as a commanding force at the military stage. Putin has made use of its strength - the military prowess.
Likewise, India will now have to play its cards well.
Democracy is its strength, and at times it stands different and way ahead of both Russia and China. In all these, there is a need for tightrope walking. The Modi government is doing that well so far.
China has issues with Americans. For Putin, his antagonism with the US is far more fundamental. He holds the US responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union and perhaps forgets that there were so-called 'autonomous tendencies' of various Soviet republics.
But India cannot ignore the US, and neither can the Americans. Hence, from Donald Trump and Antony Blinken (Secretary of State under Joe Biden), no American leader would also antagonise India.
In July 2021, Biden's Secretary of State, Blinken, said in Delhi - "The most remarkable democratic election in the world, in many ways, is here in India .....Americans admire Indians' commitment to rights, democracy and pluralism. Indian democracy is powered by its free-thinking citizens."
Putin actions on Ukraine pushes his line 'countries' born out of split of Soviet Union were hazy and not legitimate
Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that Ukraine was not a proper country, implying that of the states born out of the collapsed Soviet Union, only one was real and legitimate: Russia.
All the rest were confections, whose right to exist was hazy.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Moscow had to invade, to save eastern Ukraine’s Russian speakers from a genocidal threat that did not exist. He would rescue Ukraine from rule by “neo-Nazis”, an odd way to describe a country whose president and former prime minister are both Jews, both democrats.
But underneath the spurious defences lay the Putin worldview. His objection was not, as Putin’s western apologists on the far right and far left would have it, merely to Nato expansion, but something rather more fundamental. - The Guardian
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