Trump hits India with punishing 50% tariffs for buying Russian oil

I heard George Friedman on the GP Futures podcast yesterday saying that the US considers present-day India to be a minor player. Sacrificing India to bring Russia to the negotiating table and to signal to China that it is not being encircled is a low-risk high-reward play. No one is going to remember this in a couple of decades when India will be big enough to matter.

He accepts that the US is being hypocritical when it asks India to stop buying Russian oil while it has its own dealings with Russia. But it is the implementation of the adage "do as I say, not as I do" to politics. Basically, the US does what it wants because it can.

This is precisely why I pay zero attention to arguments based on morality/hypocrisy/do-the-right-thing in politics/geopolitics. Might was/is/will always be right.

Trump is a buffoon. He’s destroying the only alliance that matters for maintaining American hegemonic power. Without India, there isn’t a real competition with China. It’s also weird given he is softer on China than on India or many European countries. Almost as if he stands to benefit from being soft on China.

This focus on Russian oil also seems oddly hypocritical. Why is America buying things from authoritarian China? Where’s the outrage against that?

>Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to stand firm in the face of what he termed "the politics of economic selfishness."

Modi is right.. but also India is buying Russian oil because it's cheap not because it's selfless.