Wars Run Through Washington

Peter Navarro’s attempt to rebrand the Ukraine conflict as “Modi’s war” is not just absurd; it is a deliberate distortion aimed at hiding Washington’s culpability. For a Trump aide and White House trade counsellor, Peter Navarro, to suggest that India, which is securing energy for its 1.4 billion people, is somehow financing a war born of NATO expansion and American hubris, is an insult both to history and common sense.

The truth is simple. If peace in Ukraine runs through New Delhi, as Navarro claims, then wars have always run through Washington, not only in Ukraine but world over. American history is a saga of interventions that left behind shattered countries and mass graves.

The American atom bomb at Nagasaki and Hiroshima is a witness to its display of inhumanity. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria: all of them were sold as the crusade of freedom, democracy, or humanitarian rescue. Each ended in devastation. Vietnam saw three million dead, Iraq a million more, Afghanistan was abandoned after two decades, Libya became a failed state, and Syria remains fractured. Ukraine is merely the latest chapter.

The spark was NATO’s relentless eastward march. From 1997 to 2021, five rounds of expansion pushed the alliance to Russia’s doorstep. Ukraine was the final red line. America knew Moscow would react, just as Washington threatened nuclear war when Soviet missiles were placed in Cuba in 1962. The lesson of that crisis was ignored. What followed in Ukraine was not Modi’s war, not even Zelensky’s war in origin, but Washington’s project to encircle Russia while feeding its own military-industrial complex.

Navarro’s claim that India is financing Russia’s war effort through oil imports wilfully ignores reality. India has made its position clear: it will buy energy from wherever it gets the best deal, as any sovereign nation would. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar pointedly reminded Europe that it buys more Russian energy in a week than India does in a month. Yet for Trump’s Advisor, who sees a resurgent India failing to bend to American diktats on tariffs, chooses to scapegoat it for the Ukraine war.

This is both geopolitical humour and hypocrisy at its epic. America itself has fought more wars over oil than any other country. It invaded Iraq in 2003 on a lie, but secured oil contracts for its corporations. It toppled Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, plunging the country into chaos while opening its oil fields to foreign access. U.S. troops still sit illegally on Syrian oil fields. For a nation that has treated oil as casus belli to accuse India of buying it at a discount is the height of dishonesty.

The real beneficiaries of the Ukraine war are not Ukrainians or Americans but U.S. defence contractors. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics have reported soaring profits. More than 170 billion dollars in aid has been sent to Ukraine, most of it in weapons and equipment produced in American factories.

These contracts are taxpayer-funded transfers to the defence industry. Navarro’s complaint that Americans are losing because of India’s actions is laughable when ordinary Americans are losing because their government has chosen to subsidise endless war while neglecting its own collapsing infrastructure and rising costs of living.

America’s wars always follow the same script - Vietnam was communism, Iraq terrorism, Afghanistan freedom, Libya humanitarianism and Ukraine democracy. Each false justification collapsed under scrutiny. Each time, the costs were borne by ordinary people while the profits went to corporations. The Brown University Costs of War project estimates that post-9/11 wars alone cost $8 trillion and killed nearly a million people directly. The pattern is unmistakable.

None of this is possible without America’s corporate media machine. Owned by conglomerates with deep defence and energy interests, these outlets manufacture consent through saturation coverage. Saddam’s non-existent WMDs, Assad’s alleged gas attacks, Gaddafi’s supposed massacre plans, Russia’s imminent collapse — each narrative paved the way for escalation. Ukraine is no exception.

President Zelensky was paraded before the US Congress like a hero, feted as the defender of democracy, while hard questions about NATO provocation, corruption in Kyiv, or the futility of escalation were silenced.

India, by contrast, has chosen independence. It has not endorsed Moscow’s actions but has refused to be bullied into Washington’s camp. It has consistently called for dialogue and diplomacy while protecting its own interests. To Navarro, this is betrayal. To most of the world, it is common sense. New Delhi’s position is not about siding with Russia; it is about siding with its own people.

The road to peace in Ukraine does not run through New Delhi. It runs through Washington and Brussels, through a recognition that flooding Ukraine with weapons will not defeat Russia, through the courage to accept that NATO expansion has limits, and through a willingness to negotiate rather than escalate. Blaming India is a coward’s way of avoiding accountability.

What Navarro calls “Modi’s war” is in fact America’s forever war. America attempts to keep Europe tied to its apron strings, America’s defence industry milking conflict for profit, America’s media manufacturing consent, and America’s politicians deflect blame when their strategies collapse. India has nothing to apologise for. It has refused to mortgage its sovereignty to a failing script.

Ukraine is not Modi’s war. It is America’s war-initiated, abated and aided with the utmost traditional policy of exceptionalism and unilateralism. The world is not blind, nor is the US supreme.

Lt General A.B.Shivane is a veteran of the Indian Army. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.