Welcome back to the grand, planetary theater of the absurd, where the script is written by lobbyists, performed by geriatric ego-maniacs, and the audience—that's you—is expected to pay for the privilege of watching the stage burn down. The latest act in this tragicomedy involves the United States' brilliant plan to 'go after' India’s oil trade with Russia. It is a strategic masterstroke of such profound idiocy that one has to wonder if the State Department has replaced its policy advisors with a Magic 8-Ball that only says 'Sovereign Blunder.' In the West’s desperate, performative attempt to punish the Kremlin for its latest bout of imperial nostalgia, Washington is currently contemplating the economic equivalent of shooting its own foot to see if the spray hits its neighbor’s shoes.

Let’s look at the players in this three-way race to the bottom. First, we have the United States, an empire in its 'yelling at clouds' phase. The American strategy is fueled by the quaint, mid-century delusion that they still possess the moral or economic leverage to dictate the shopping lists of the rest of the world. By threatening to crack down on India’s intake of discounted Russian crude, Washington is operating on the logic of a high school bully who thinks he can stop the cafeteria from trading snacks. They call it 'maintaining the rules-based order,' a phrase that really means 'do what we say or we’ll make your currency look like Monopoly money.' It’s a bold strategy, assuming your goal is to alienate the only major 'ally' you have left in the East who isn't currently a subsidiary of a tech conglomerate.

Then we have India, led by a government that has turned 'strategic autonomy' into a high-art form of double-dealing. New Delhi’s position is delightfully transparent: they will continue to lecture the world on the sanctity of peace while filling their tankers with the very fossil fuels funding a continental slaughter. It isn't 'neutrality'; it’s a garage sale. They are buying Russian oil at a basement-level discount, refining it, and then—in a move of chef’s-kiss hypocrisy—selling it back to the Europeans who are supposedly boycotting it. It’s a circle of greed so perfect it could power the very refineries it feeds. India’s leaders know that Washington needs them as a buffer against China, which gives them the license to act like the difficult middle-manager who knows he can’t be fired, no matter how many office supplies he steals.

But the real star of this disaster is China. Beijing is currently sitting in a velvet armchair, watching the West and India bicker with the quiet, terrifying patience of a vulture that has already seen the autopsy report. If the U.S. actually follows through on its threats to squeeze India’s oil supply, the outcome isn't some glorious victory for democracy. It’s a fire sale for the Chinese Communist Party. The oil won’t stop flowing; it will simply change direction. Without India as a competitive buyer, Russia will have no choice but to sell its lifeblood to Beijing at even more insulting prices. The U.S. is essentially volunteering to act as China’s personal procurement agent, ensuring that their primary global rival gets the cheapest energy on the planet while the 'allies' of the West deal with inflation and civil unrest. It’s the kind of strategic failure that would be taught in history books, if we still bothered to read anything longer than a tweet.

The sheer lack of foresight in the Beltway is staggering. They are so blinded by the need to 'do something'—the most dangerous phrase in politics—that they are ignoring the secondary and tertiary consequences of their own interference. The global energy market is not a light switch; it is a complex, sentient organism that treats moral indignation as a market inefficiency to be bypassed. Every time the U.S. uses the dollar as a weapon, it merely hastens the day when the rest of the world decides to stop using it. By trying to force India into a corner, they are merely pushing the entire Global South into a partnership with Beijing that will haunt the West for the next century.

In the end, this isn't about human rights, or international law, or even the sovereignty of borders. It’s about the terminal vanity of a dying world order that thinks it can still control the tides by shouting at the ocean. The Americans are arrogant, the Indians are opportunistic, and the Chinese are simply smarter than both of them combined. We are watching the slow-motion collapse of Western relevance, fueled by the very oil they claim to be regulating. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. But don't worry; I'm sure the next round of sanctions will definitely work. Right after we finish setting our own house on fire to keep the rain off the neighbors.