I was not contradicting your point but agreeing to it. Not all alliances are equal and not all alliances are exclusive.

Not all alliances are mutually exclusive. Pakistan is a major non NATO ally but India has closer relationship with US via quad in terms of Chinese threat. If there is a conflict between India and China then US would supply weapons to India and Pakistan would provide support to China.

When it is the whole continent of Europe getting a free ride on US defense spending it becomes a problem. The problem was known but not acknowledged. Now even the Finnish PM accepts that European security is too dependent on US. Germans aren’t spending enough to defend themselves. UK has a decent navy but there army is too small to offer any challenge. French might be the only one doing enough in terms of land army.

Wikipedia says that princely states occupied 40% of the area and 23% of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princely_state

British India was on average better than an average princely state. But there were few states like Travancore which performed better than British India. Tirthankar Roy has a really good book on it.

All of the India wasn’t ruled by Britain but they controlled two thirds by area and more by population.

Indian manpower captured India for Britain. The number of British soldiers who served in India was always small compared to the native contingent.