Biden singles out India for 'shaky' response to Russia's aggression

WASHINGTON: United States President Joe Biden on Monday singled out India for its "shaky" response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine while claiming allies and partners across Nato and the Pacific were presenting a united front against Moscow.
In remarks before a business roundtable of American CEOs at the White House, Biden, while praising them for isolating Russia, referred to sanctions by the Nato and Quad, where "with the possible exception of India being somewhat shaky on some of this", other partners Japan and Australia have been "extremely strong...in terms of dealing with Putin’s aggression".
The US President's remark, while seen as a mild censure of New Delhi, suggested with its qualifiers such as "possible" and "somewhat" that Washington remains intent on weaning India away from Russia, a stated American aim. Administration officials have generally cut India considerable slack for its maintaining its long standing ties with Moscow.

The remark received push back from Indian analysts, some of whom have been pointing out that the US and its European allies continue energy purchases from Russia (by one account, up to $ 600 million per day), while bearing down on India. Others pointed to lack of US concern over China's ingress into India.
"Here's the paradox: At a time when India confronts China's border aggression, including its threat of a full-scale war, Biden won't open his mouth on that aggression. Yet an insensitive Biden calls India's response to a distant war he helped provoke with a forward policy 'shaky'," tweeted Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs commentator.
Some others agree with the Russian version of the unfolding events -- that it is the US and Nato provocation that caused Moscow to respond. "Uncalled for remark on India by Biden. The US policy toward Russia has been teetering on shaky foundations since end of Cold War and now the structure is collapsing. Why should India pay for the US folly in drawing Ukraine into Nato. The US sanctions are hurting us and we should support them?" asked Kanwal Sibal, a former India foreign secretary.

Some US experts too hold similar views but they have largely been shut out of the American discourse replete with calls for even stronger action against Russia. Among the critics are political scientist John Mearsheimer who foresaw current developments as far back as 2015 (his talk on the subject has 22 million views on YouTube).
"The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this (Nato expansion into Ukraine) as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand," Mearsheimer said in a NewYorker interview earlier this month.
"When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this fully well with regard to the United States," he added, channeling the Monroe Doctrine (named after the 19th century US President James Monroe) that maintained that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the United States.
But in his remarks, Biden floated the idea of a "new world order", led solely by the United States. "Now is a time when things are shifting. There’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it," he said.
The US President's singling out India amid claims of a united global front against Russia is questionable considering many other countries, including China, South Africa, Brazil and many African and middle-eastern countries, have not backed the US and Nato campaign against Moscow.