I am not upset with India for reaching out to Russia:
India agreed a deal with Russia to buy S-400 surface to air missile systems on Friday, the Kremlin said, as New Delhi disregarded U.S. warnings that such a purchase could trigger sanctions under U.S. law. ...
After summit talks between Putin and Modi, the two countries signed eight agreements covering space, nuclear energy and railways at a televised news conference.
I assume India is right and that they will get a US waiver for the purchase. Given that India has a lot of Russian/Soviet equipment there is history and need; and in the big picture India is moving away from Russia as a source of arms.
India has long been a friend and customer of Russia. I see India not as breaking Russia's isolation--because Russia is too large to be truly isolated--but as a means to persuading Russia to stop being a bunch of paranoid idiots when it comes to America and NATO, who India needs to compete with a rising China.
In time, Russia might actually start worrying more openly about the threat China poses to Russian territory in the Far East and influence in Central Asia instead, and with Indian prodding end their counter-productive hostility to the West which is a potential ally and not a military threat to Russia.
PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: More from Strategypage on India's procurement bureaucracy issues and Russian-sourced weapons.
UPDATE: Yes, Russia could help contain China if its peaceful rise tempts Chinese rulers to go hot.
I've long hoped that Russia would throw off the habits of the Soviet Union and join the West. But the paranoia runs very deep in Russia, it seems, even though non-Russian Europe is no longer a military threat to Russia as it was in the past.
But the author seems to repeat the constant mistake of assuming it is all up to America and that Russia is just a passive reactor to American actions.
Russia needs to decide that America is not a threat and that China is. Until then American actions will just fall on deaf ears in Moscow.
UPDATE: Strategytalk has a timely podcast that touches on the issue of Russia and China.
UPDATE: Hanson weighs in, too:
Because Russia is far weaker than China, the U.S. should be reaching out to Moscow to find common interests in checking Chinese power. Russia could be useful in occasionally siding with an emerging common resistance to China that includes Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Our outreach has to result in Russia ceasing to be a paranoid and aggressive nuclear threat to the West (which they are: #WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings), but an outreach that pries apart an unnatural Russian-Chinese friendship makes sense.
