The primary focus of this report from Reuters last night was the fact that the Russians have scheduled some “Vosok” (East) military exercises during the first week of Semptember and China will be sending troops to participate. This is both surprising and disturbing for a couple of reasons. First, the Russian military is currently bogged down in eastern Ukraine and having trouble conscripting enough troops to keep their forces together. Where are they getting the soldiers and hardware for these exercises? Also, China agreeing to send troops and participate is yet another sign that the CCP is increasingly comfortable with joining the new axis of evil and taking Russia’s side. But there will be more countries participating along with China and perhaps one of the bigger surprises was to see India included on the list. Since when is India taking Russia’s side against the west?

Chinese troops will travel to Russia to take part in joint military exercises led by the host and including India, Belarus, Mongolia, Tajikistan and other countries, China’s defence ministry said on Wednesday.

China’s participation in the joint exercises was “unrelated to the current international and regional situation”, the ministry said in a statement.

Last month, Moscow announced plans to hold “Vostok” (East) exercises from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, even as it wages a costly war in Ukraine. It said at the time that some foreign forces would participate, without naming them.

Granted, this isn’t the first time that India has collaborated with Russia on either defense or economic initiatives. And to a certain extent, that’s understandable. When you’re situated that close to China and some other Russian allies, you do what you need to do to keep the peace and not wind up being invaded.

But choosing to participate in joint Russian and Chinese military exercises at this exact moment in time seems more than a little provocative. This would be an ideal moment for all of the countries in that region to project a neutral stance more than anything else. These exercises will be viewed in a very symbolic way, and those nations that choose to take part will essentially be signaling that they are throwing their lot in with the Russians and the Chinese if the ongoing conflicts escalate and expand.

It’s true that the United States has always had a “complicated” relationship with India because of our supposed alliance with Pakistan in fighting Islamic terror groups. Pakistan is India’s sworn enemy and they are two nuclear powers who keep the entire region on edge.

But has Inda somehow forgotten all that America has done for them? The tens of millions of jobs we outsourced to India over the past few decades have built up their economy and general prosperity immensely. We’ve also provided them with massive amounts of foreign aid when it was required. Without significant western help, India was basically just a massively overpopulated, poverty-stricken third-world nation. The west – particularly the United States – has improved India’s fortunes immensely and made them much more of an influential economic force.

India might want to rethink this decision. If they want to pick sides in the increasingly possible third world war to come, do they really want to side with the new axis of evil? Because long before any actual fighting breaks out, America and the rest of NATO could easily start severing some of our economic ties to their country and wait to see how well Russia and China are able or willing to bail them out.