Buy away India:
India and Russia have agreed to strengthen the already robust military-technical partnership between the two countries, the Indian government's Press Information Bureau (PIB) announced on 13 December.
Following meetings in New Delhi between Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her visiting counterpart from Russia, Sergei Shoigu, the PIB said the two sides agreed to expand joint manufacturing projects and to work towards the signing of a restructured military-technical accord.
As I've said before, I'm fine with India retaining military purchases from Russia.
American weapons would be better. But Russian weapons are better than what India can produce these days. So if buying Russian strengthens India to contain the China threat, I'm fine with that.
And more importantly Russian ties to India may yet pull Russia away from Russia's policy of appeasement of China and instead get Russia to join India (and indirectly America) to stop China from being the dominant country on the planet to the detriment of America, India, and Russia (and pretty much everyone else but Iran's and North Korea's odious rulers).
I swear, our job isn't to stop Russia from defeating NATO--which we can do with our far greater power--but to stop Russia from doing something stupid and self-destructive like provoking a war with NATO that wrecks Russia's ability to flip and oppose China.
Although in the new year there is little hope that sanity will break out in Moscow over their self-destructive policy towards the West.
UPDATE: It's going to take a while to get that awakening:
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the West was trying to hold back an increasingly powerful Russia, during an end-of-year press conference that took aim at sanctions and "made-up" spy scandals.
Why would the West try to hold back Russia when Putin is effing up royally and weakening Russia? As I asked in that post:
What Western plot could be as effective at wrecking Russia than Putin himself?
It would be funny if he didn't have nukes.
