Shared values and growing cooperation in a range of fields are transforming India-US relations into an enduring strategic partnership in the 21st century.
The ongoing Indo-US partnership talks are interesting considering the international systemic developments, and seen from the outside is an odd development happening at the heart of rising powers in global politics.
The debate around strategic autonomy offers a conceptual framework to understand how India, as an emerging power, tries to negotiate autonomy in its security and military relationship with the United States. In the context of Indo-US rapprochement, the dynamics of power relations are not commensurate with India's will to keep an acceptable degree of autonomy.
Obama has crafted an administration that has a Clinton brain inside an Obama face. Clinton I lost Russia for the West. Clinton II aka Obama I is on track to lose India.
While it is premature to draw conclusions on Obama’s policy towards India, his first year in office certainly did not carry forward his predecessor’s initiatives.
By giving away Asia to China on a platter, the Obama Administration’s posture undermines its traditional allies (Japan, South Korea, and Australia) as well as its new partners like India.
Long term thinking is necessary to ensure that the gains of the Singh-Obama Knowledge Initiative are successfully channelled into a Singh-Obama Innovation Economy Co-operation Initiative.
Apart from the reluctance to move beyond viewing the India-US relationship through the prism of US-China or even US-Pakistan ties, the Indian political leadership and the strategic community have so far failed to define India’s role in the growing partnership with the United States.
That two countries, India and the United States of America, with so much in common should have drifted apart for so long has baffled many. Of course, there are reasons for it, but there are equally compelling arguments in favour of forging better ties. Perhaps the most important factor contributing to the drift has been the inability of the two to identify common interests. Both have been seized by many misconceptions; both have tended to look upon their mutual relations in the context of third countries.
India's relationship with the United States has been a subject of debate and discussion. Both nations despite being large and stable democracies have had a contentious relationship demonstrating that shared value systems has not always been an insurance for building friendly relations.
