India Is Losing Faith In The West?

The Indian government announced Wednesday that Indian Oil Corp. had reached an agreement to buy 3 million barrels of oil from Russia's Rosneft Oil Co. at a 20% discount to global prices. The figure represents a drop in India's oil needs, which stood at 4.5 million barrels a day in January. If a rupee-based payment system is developed that protects the transaction from sanctions imposed on Russia, much more could be accomplished.

If this one deal leads to more, you should expect questions about whether the West has reposed too much faith in India. The U.S. isn’t happy.

Despite this, India has equally good reason to question whether it has placed too much faith in the West. Even though Europe and the U.S. congratulate themselves on effectiveness of their sanctions against Russia. Though they seem blind to the impact of these sanctions on the rest of the world.

For India and many other developing countries, Western powers and institutions appear to have different standards when it comes to local conflicts.

Despite the World Bank's slow response to other war-torn nations, it has rushed through a $700 million loan package for Ukraine in record time.

We have grown accustomed to thinking of interbank communications as a global utility; they have now been turned into a tool of Western foreign policy.

Criticizing India for continuing to buy oil from Russia is especially annoying, given that European nations have yet to wean themselves off Russian energy supplies either.

We have lived through this sort of disruption at least twice before, in 1991 and 2012. Yet our supposed Western allies do not seem to understand the importance of avoiding another one.