The Guardian view of South Asia is that South Asians ought not to run it.

The Guardian states that its view is that there is a 'South Asian crisis over Russia's war'. This will be news to South Asians. The one thing everybody agrees on is that this is an opportunity to get cheap Russian oil. Also, it is cool that White Christians, instead of Brown Muslims, are being killed. Moreover NATO has been shown to be a paper tiger. The message is clear. If you want to be safe, get nukes. Ukraine gave up its nukes in return for guarantees from the US (which is cowardly) the UK (which is useless) and Russia (which is like getting a guarantee from Jaws the Shark). Furthermore, it is likely that Russia will be doing nuclear proliferation the way the Chinese did in the Eighties and Nineties. Thus the West won't be able to kill brown peeps with impunity across larger and larger swathes of the globle.

This may not yet be apparent to bird-brained Guardian editors- 

Flying from Islamabad to Colombo gives a bird’s-eye view of the fallout from war over the subcontinent.

No it doesn't. You can't see shit from an aero-plane window.  Birds don't have much political nous. The best they can do is shit on people's heads. 

The three nations under the route are all governed by nationalists who won office by trading in populism.

But so is Bangladesh. Come to think of it, Ukraine is ruled by a nationalist who 'traded in populism' by being popular. The same could be said of Macron, BoJo and so forth. Unpopular anti-nationalists don't tend to get elected as Jeremy Corbyn should know.

Having gained power, such politicians tend to have a messianic faith in their capacity to effect sweeping change.

As opposed to what? The craven belief that they are totally shit? Which politician got elected by saying 'I'm a useless tosser. Vote for me and things will continue to go down the toilet.' ?  

This belief is being tested, perhaps to destruction, in south Asian democracies with a combined population of 1.6 billion people.

Nope. Modi and Sheikh Hasina are doing fine. Sri Lanka and Pakistan borrowed too much and face economic problems.  

Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan – who was in Moscow as the tanks rolled into Ukraine – claimed last week that the US had “threatened” him and tried to instigate regime change.

So what? He lies about all sorts of shit. The guy is delusional. Still, at least he told Biden to stick his invitation to a 'Democracy summit' where the Sun don't shine. But then the Saudi and UAE aren't taking Biden's calls either. On the other hand, Modi was invited though Shiekh Hasina wasn't.  

Mr Khan has been at loggerheads with the west since Pakistan abstained in the UN resolution condemning Moscow’s attack.

As did India and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Oddly, Nepal voted for it.  

Over the weekend the nation’s army – long considered the power behind the throne – openly sided with Washington.

Fuck off! The army backed the Taliban and has prevailed over Washington. Still they want to keep the door open for military and economic aid. The reason they are pissed off with Imran has nothing to do with the US.  

Mr Khan has refused to leave quietly. Instead of facing a no-confidence vote that he would have almost certainly lost, he precipitated a political crisis by dissolving parliament. Pakistan’s judges now have the casting vote on the prime minister’s fate.

No. Imran's fate will be decided by the electorate.  

At the other end of the flightpath is Sri Lanka’s hardline president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. He imposed a state of emergency to forestall a popular revolt. With four brothers in the cabinet, the Rajapaksas dominate Sri Lankan politics. Their supremacy is largely down to the damaging polarisation of the country along religious and ethnic lines after a bloody civil war. Mr Rajapaksa’s quixotic economic policies came unstuck when the war in Ukraine sent energy and commodity prices soaring. There is little sign of rational measures to halt the downward spiral.

Again, the problem pre-existed the Ukraine crisis. India and China are bailing out Sri Lanka. The US is irrelevant.  

South Asia’s biggest strongman is India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Many Indian Chief Ministers are very powerful figures. Modi doesn't control Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai or Chennai. Each has its own strongman or strongwoman. The Guardian is as stupid as shit.  

Like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Mr Modi has remained neutral on the war – refusing to condemn Vladimir Putin and sidestepping US-led sanctions.

But unlike Bolonaro, Modi will get re-elected.  

Delhi is caught in a bind. Despite clashes along their shared border, India’s trade with China has set new records.

Everybody's trade with China keeps setting new records. This is because they make lots of cool stuff and sell it for a low low price. 

While the past decade has seen India deepen security ties with the US to balance Beijing,

Those ties deepened because Dubya went out of his way to court India. He had a bromance with Manmohan. Sadly, apart from intelligence cooperation which declined as Trump got out of Afghanistan, there isn't much to show for this supposed partnership.  

Russia still provides about half of India’s arms imports.

Because India has the worst fucking Defense procurement in the world.  

This dependence might explain why, when Indian students in Ukraine were being killed by Russian bombs, Mr Modi’s ministers blamed them for being in harm’s way.

Read the Print.in article they are referring to. It does not say any Minister blamed the kids. It says the Indian government released an advisory at the end of February. Sadly, the Ukrainian colleges refused to switch to online classes thus the students were caught between a rock and a hard place. Back in early March, the Govt. had brought back 6000. Since then the numbers have risen sharply. The Indian Govt. also brought back the nationals of other countries. 

 India needed to keep good relations with all sides so as to get its kids out. The real reason India will always abstain on any Russia related issue is because it has relied on the Russian veto since 1962 when it annexed Goa and Whitey was furious.  

Mr Modi is quiet about his true intentions.

No he isn't. He wants peace because Ukraine is part of the Indian military's supply chain. Meanwhile India- like other countries in the region- will take any cheap oil it can get its hands on.  

This raises hopes in Moscow of Indian support, hopes in Beijing that Delhi might forsake Washington,

Fuck off! Quad is going forward. Australia has made that clear.  

and concerns in the west that India’s prime minister puts a premium on his nation’s immediate interests rather than aspirations to be a natural ally.

Nobody wants to be the 'natural ally' of a West which is in terminal decline.  

This may heighten Mr Modi’s sense of India’s difference, and see him embrace greater self-reliance.

India has no choice in the matter. It is paying over the odds for shitty equipment. It needs to privatize its dysfunctional public sector enterprises in the Defense sector. On the other hand, the Rocket program is doing well and earning foreign exchange. 

This would be welcome if his nation’s economic performance had been helped by his policymaking. But his penchant for dramatic gestures has stymied India’s rise.

No. Protests by vested interests have stymied India's rise. But that would be true under any administration. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could shape the contours of a coming wider global struggle between autocracy and democracy.

Fuck off! Ukraine shows that either you kick ass on your own or else you go under. The West makes big promises but it is cowardly, stupid, and useless.  

History might side with that perspective – but it seems a straw man argument in a region where the slide into rightwing, nationalist populism should be, right now, a bigger concern.

The Manchester Guardian, unusually for a British paper, kept an Indian correspondent during the Indian freedom struggle. But it supported the British, not the Indian, line. It is still doing the same thing. It may pretend to be 'woke' but it isn't really. It is sleep-walking towards yet further stupidity and irrelevance. 

The Ukraine crisis hits the MENA where 'bread riots' are a possibility. But the silver lining is that excluding Russia from Western markets means cheaper raw materials for the Global South though, no doubt, China will be the biggest beneficiary. The other piece of good news is that Western sanctions and their habit of 'Magnitskying' everybody will be rolled back.  Virtue signalling will have to find some other playground. Where will that be? Orban has been re-elected. Poland can't be touched because it is crucial to NATO's strategy. Still, now Germany is distancing itself from Russia, the time has come for Macron to become Europe's leader. France will organize an E.U army. This also means the EU can seal its borders against migrants. But the new, militarily strong, Europe will be Right Wing- a place of Hijab bans and an insistence on privileging Europe's Christian heritage. That's a good thing. Ecumenical Christianity, not Socialism, is the one glue which can keep Europe together.