LONDON — For the last eight years under the Bush administration, India occupied a pride of place in the strategic calculus of the United States. India was wooed as a rising power, it was seen as a pole in the emerging global balance of power; it was acknowledged as the primary actor in South Asia; and then it was given what it had long desired — de facto status as a nuclear weapons state.
From a problem state that could never say yes, India emerged as a state that the U.S. could do business with. It was all too good to last for long. And now one of the architects of the U.S.-India strategic partnership during the Bush period, Shyam Saran, is asking India to hedge its bets in light of what he views as Sino-U.S. strategic convergence.
Clearly, the new administration in Washington has little time for New Delhi. From a nation that just a few weeks back was seen as an emerging power that could provide answers to global problems, India is now viewed primarily as a problem that the Obama administration needs to sort out. It is instructive that the only context in which Obama has talked of India so far is the need to sort Kashmir out so as to find a way out of the West's troubles in Afghanistan.