Sunday, August 22, 2010

Jeff Smith on how to put a promising US-India partnership back on track

aug 21st, 2010

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From: Ram Narayanan


http://the-diplomat.com/2010/08/20/how-to-fix-us-india-ties/  

THE DIPLOMAT

How to Fix US-India Ties 

By Jeff Smith 

August 20, 2010

The honeymoon between the US and India seems to be over. But there's plenty that both sides can do to get things back on track.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the US-India partnership is losing momentum under President Barack Obama's stewardship.

Fortifying the alliance was always bound to be a secondary priority for any administration faced with a recession, a flagging war effort in Afghanistan, political stalemate in Iraq, stalled Middle East peace efforts, defiant pariah regimes in Iran and North Korea, and strategic tensions with China. Still, allowing the partnership to falter appears to have come easier to a president who never quite displayed George W. Bush's zeal for Indian-American ties.

Of course it isn't just the US that's at fault—problems also exist on the Indian side as New Delhi has itself fallen into a form of post-honeymoon malaise, as the phase of grand political gestures gives way to tough technical negotiations. But rather than mitigate the downside of this difficult period, the Obama administration is pursuing an agenda that further complicates it. In doing so, it risks some of the tremendous gains made in US-India relations over the past decade. 

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