Mood Change

The Ukraine war is one of the very few things on which the Left and the Right in India seem to agree – it is the West’s fault, both sides feel. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, not only did NATO continue to exist, it even set about expanding and absorbing the ex-communist states. How long could Russia tolerate NATO’s expansion, goes the thinking, even as it was inching closer and closer to Russia’s doorstep?

 

Has this become a pivotal moment? The moment when Indian public opinion starts to get increasingly critical of more and more aspects of American foreign policy? The thought occurred as I was reading R Prasannan’s scathing commentary on the passing away of US Foreign Minister-equivalent from Clinton’s era, Madeleine Albright. The article starts off guns blazing:

“Madeline Albright passed away, unmourned in India. No surprise. No American has hurt us more than she did, save Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who sent nuclear warships to threaten us in 1971.”

The Nixon-Kissinger-Bangladesh War reference is a recurring theme I hear nowadays. They sent in nuclear warships against a then-non-nuclear India. If Ukraine hadn’t surrendered their nukes after the USSR fell and relied on empty promises (as it has turned out) from the West to protect it, they wouldn’t be in this situation today, is increasingly India’s thinking. We were right all along in going nuclear…

 

Wasn’t it the same Albright who “fretted, fumed and fulminated when Atal Bihari Vajpayee tested the atom bomb in 1998”, asks Prasannan. A furious and embarrassed America (their spy satellites didn’t see the tests coming) imposed punishing sanctions on India, didn’t they. Sanctions imposed by the only country that has actually used nukes against another country.

 

Didn’t Albright ask IK Gujral to sign the (nuclear) test ban treaty, a treaty that America itself still won’t sign, he asks.

“In effect she was telling us—the treaty is not good for America, but it is good for lesser people like you.”

 

And it was during Albright’s tenure that NATO started expanding eastwards, he points out. Not only was she bad for India, she set off the course of action that started poking the Russian bear until Vladimir Putin decided he had had enough and the rest is history in progress, “a tragic fallout of Madeline's follies”.

 

Like I said as the beginning, it’s a scathing article. Is it also a reflection of the how the mood is turning in India?

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