Obama's foreign policy risks alienating india, the most pro-american country in the w

[darrels joy]

One of the less talked-about ironies of recent times is that the India-US relationship was firmed up by a Republican President. Ironic because for many decades the things that defined India for Americans as unworkable ideas against unspeakable realities were liberal causes, not conservative concerns. I was once in the habit of leafing through the index pages of books by conservative intellectuals I admired in the hope of finding "India". It rarely appeared. It was as if the country to which I belonged never occurred to the people whose ideas seemed so urgently relevant to it.


So it is nothing short of startling that it was a conservative Republican President who decided to push, in the face of stentorian criticism, the Indo-US relationship into an entirely different realm. Whatever his other failures, President Bush triumphed in shaping what may turn out to be the 21st Century's most consequential alliance. It is instructive that even as America's popularity slumped in other parts of the world, in India it scaled unprecedented heights: successive surveys have identified India as the most pro-American country in the world.


This newfound warmth has inspired enthusiasm, but it has also generated disappointment. Americans are often frustrated by India's reluctance to acknowledge the commonalities between its security threats and those facing the rest of the world. Mumbai may have changed that. The hatred which animated the Mumbai attackers was the same hatred that led Mohammed Atta to fly a plane into the World Trade Center: it was hatred supposedly sanctioned by scripture, and beyond the reaches of reason.

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http://newmajority.com/ShowScroll.as...c-afa592e39e10

The is for having a multi-religion, democratic, country that understands islamic terrorism, not Obama's foeign policy.

Read the whole article. It's good. It wouldn't paste here.

Joy

[darrels joy]

Expect some tough negotiations

Sushant Sareen
Strategic Affairs Expert

The irrational expectation, exuberance and excitement in the chattering classes of India over Barack Obama’s inauguration as the US President will end as soon as the limits, realities and complexities of exercising power start to manifest themselves on the Obama administration.

Although the Obama presidency’s primary focus will be to ‘remake America’, the spirit of international political evangelism that seems to guide the new Democratic dispensation in Washington will almost certainly lead to much more intrusion and interference in affairs of other countries. It is, of course, another matter that America quite simply does not carry the same clout – political, economic, military and moral – that it did before the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic meltdown back home.

As far as India is concerned, there will be some tough negotiations ahead on issues ranging from nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation (for instance, FMCT and CTBT) to climate change and from protectionist trade policies (outsourcing and agricultural trade) to democratisation and reform of multilateral institutions. But the issue that could easily derail the growing strategic engagement between India and the US is the utterly ill-conceived and specious notion that a settlement of the Kashmir issue will help in ensuring greater cooperation from Pakistan in the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

India can easily resist any meddling on Kashmir by the Obama administration. More worrisome, however, is the growing belief among influential US policymakers that they can actually reach out to and turn around the ‘reconcilable’ elements among the Islamists. This line of thinking will prompt Pakistan to once again openly patronise the radical Islamists and use them for attaining strategic objectives. Worse, it will re-energise the international Jihadist movement.

Perhaps, the rose-tinted glasses with which India viewed the US during the Bush era, will be cracked, if not shattered, during the Obama years. If this helps India to stop depending on the crutches of superpower support, it will be a price well worth paying. But if India continues to hanker for US attention regardless of the cost this involves, then the Pakistanisation of India will be complete.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/4019204.cms