A well-honed tool in the United States’ diplomatic box is to rub the nose of its vassal states in the dust occasionally to remind them they are a lower form of life, while also proclaiming to the world at large that once a vassal state, always a vassal state. The sabotage of Germany’s Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022 is a brazen example. More recently, India is also being subjected by the US to similar harsh treatment. 

Exceptionally rude statements and remarks poured out of Trump administration officials demanding that India should fall in line with the American diktat to terminate its oil imports from Russia. The alibi was that India’s oil trade generated additional income for Russia, which helped finance the Kremlin’s ongoing war in Ukraine. 

The Trump administration knew it to be a patently absurd argument, but the purposive decision had a three-fold objective: one, to reverse the rising curve of Russian-Indian trade and erode the relationship  between the two countries at the present transformative period in international politics; two, replace Russian oil with US supplies (at much higher prices) in the lucrative Indian market that is expected to be a huge guzzler of energy for decades to come, and thereby, also gain control over India’s energy security, which of course has huge strategic implications; and, three, demonstrate that the present Indian ruling elites’ grandstanding flaunting an ultra-nationalist apparel and its self-proclamation of a civilisation state — ‘Vishwaguru’ [world teacher] and all that, is bunkum to the core, and the strategic autonomy and independent........

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