News Analysis Russia is an unreliable, autocratic, and pro-China country. Yet India, the world’s biggest democracy, is aligned with the East European country due to a historical relationship and an Indian desire to maintain both Russian and American friends for any potential fight against China. At a summit in December with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian leader Vladimir Putin claimed to cooperate with India on military-technical matters “like with no other country.” Putin cited the development of high-technology military equipment and production processes, most notably within India itself. India has a long history of “friendship” with what is probably best, but rarely in contemporary times, described as an East European empire. On Aug. 9, 1971, the Soviet Union and India signed the “Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation” in New Delhi, but the relationship extends back much further into history. Today, the old Soviet Union has crumbled. Russia is economically impoverished …