Speaking at a news conference in New Delhi after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia, US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti warned against taking the India-US relationship for granted, saying there is no such thing as strategic autonomy in times of conflict.

Concurrently, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said, “We’ve made it clear to every country, including India, that a bet on Russia as a long-term reliable partner is not a good bet.” The problem with the likes of Sullivan is that most of them don’t look into the mirror even when using an electric razor and must be getting zero if they studied history as a subject. Sullivan would do well to study the history of Indo-Russian relations vis-à-vis Indo-US relations. Can Sullivan explain why the US-UK-Canada-Australia are promoting Sikh separatism and why the CIA and MI6 continue to sleep with Pakistan’s ISI (https://www.southasiamonitor.org/perspective/does-cia-have-larger-game-plan-south-asia).

Garcetti is a known blue-eyed boy of the President Joe Biden, who kept the post of ambassador in New Delhi vacant for two years after nominating Garcetti pending his senate confirmation. Earlier, speaking before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation, Garcetti had said in India he would bring up human rights and discrimination such as via the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as a “core” piece of his engagement rather than as an obligation.

Last year, Garcetti called on the Home Minister Amit Shah offering assistance to resolve the situation in Manipur, while his counterpart in Pakistan was merrily visiting Pakistan-occupied Kashmir knowing this territory is part of India. Garcetti’s Mutt & Jeff approach towards India is not very different from a character out of Garfunkel comic series.

Which conflict?

A break amid the tense global environment is the joke going around that the functioning of teleprompters is being corrupted by TikTok. Biden is well known for his gaffes but at the recent NATO summit in Washington DC, Biden introduced Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky as “Putin” and referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump”. Maybe Biden wanted to introduce Zelensky as “Piano” remembering Zelensky used to play the piano with his pants down. Such comical moments are likely to continue in future as well.     

But Garcetti’s warning “no such thing as strategic autonomy in times of conflict” needs to be dissected in all its seriousness. Can Garcetti tell us which “times of conflict” he is referring to – America’s war on Russia using Ukraine as the proxy, the war in Gaza, the US-UK war on Yemen, the conflicts in the offing in Iran, Syria, Taiwan, Korean Peninsula – which one?  

Assuming that Garcetti is referring to the Ukraine conflict, who is responsible for this conflict in the first place? Isn’t the US responsible for this conflict by design? Can Garcetti-Sullivan-Biden deny that in 1990, the then US Secretary of State James Baker gave America’s written commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev that there will be “no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east of a unified Germany.” (https://x.com/robinmonotti/status/1804268234709074087?t=9_iXOqutzM9nwzxxLKzWOA&s=03). 

The problem with the US-led West is they can sense their downward spiral and this is not about the US dollar sinking that would be followed by the euro as well – Saudi Arabia has already indicated it would “also” dump the Euro if the $300 billion worth of Russian reserves are seized by the West.

More important is the warning from General Ben Hodges, former commander of US Forces in Europe, indicating that Russia is winning in Europe and NATO knows it. According to Hodges, “We probably made some wrong assumptions because for the last 20 years we’ve been launching precision weapons against people who couldn’t do anything about it.”

US delusion

The fact that NATO is calling China the “decisive enabler” of Russia in Ukraine is an admission the end result will depend on the degree of Chinese support. The US has already drained European arms supplies to Ukraine and its hope of watching the fun with itself sitting on the fence are receding fast. Hoping to take on Russia and China one by one is a chimera!

Finally, the US needs to acknowledge that it needs India more than the vice versa. It would be good for the Biden Administration to get off the high horse and not issue “warnings” that can adversely impact the existing bilateral relationship. Latching on to Washington, Zelensky has devastated his own country and killed thousands of Ukrainians, including more than 1400 children. This is of little concern to America who would love to see India in the same state as Ukraine. India’s strategic autonomy is its own choice and certainly the US has no business to dictate otherwise.   

(The author is an Indian Army veteran. Views are personal)