A classic case of do nothing and win for China
I mean if you don't want India to buy Russian oil and therefore indirectly contribute to Russian war effort the solution is staring right in your face: just sell American oil to India at whatever price Russians are doing, undercut the Russians.
But no you don't want to do it because you're cheap and/or unable to foot the bill to play at the cold war 2.0 table, so now not only is Ukraine going to lose you're going to end up getting in a trade war with India also. Didn't put your money where your mouth is, now you're going to suffer a case of 赔了夫人又折兵.
Back during the cold war the way it worked is 小弟 have to actually do some work and pay a blood price to earn their united front value and 老大哥 actually paid up that united front value with real things like technology transfer or resources. These days you get these crazy politicians who don't know geopolitics trying to be 小弟 by pretending to do work and others pretending to be 老大哥 without paying anything.
Your assuming India to be a great economy/power that US has to entice. You are assuming India has the leverage, not US.
I don't think that is the case. It is India that is the dependent on the west for its economy, exports, technology. India is hopelessly outmatched against China.
So, if it wants to maintain any kind of superpower ambitions, it has to be friendly with the west or get smothered by Chinese power.
Then there is leverage that US has because of the Indian migrants coming to US.
I think trump correctly understands correctly that it doesn't have to give freebies to India to make it friendly. It is India that has to bow to be friends to US or get destroyed by China.
