Posted on 05/21/2005 8:52:02 PM PDT by quidnunc
Its logic is inescapable yet the idea has been inconceivable: a strategic partnership between the two great democracies, the US and India, long divided by distrust and the Cold War.
Yet it is happening. George W. Bush has reached out to India and one of the coming debates in global politics will be over the manner and meaning of his decision to support India's quest to become a global power.
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington in July, with Bush reportedly saying this will be treated as a "grand event", and at the year's end Bush will visit India.
A round of interviews in New Delhi this week elicited a plethora of views as India's political elite debates how far it should enter the US embrace. But India is being wooed and its pride at this is palpable.
The Bush administration, far more cohesive with Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, has launched a diplomatic offensive with India that is stunning in its rhetoric and serious in its content. "India's relations with the US are now the best they have ever been," says Rajiv Sikri, the senior official on East Asia at India's external affairs ministry.
When the two leaders briefly met in Moscow this month at celebrations to honour the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Bush introduced his wife Laura to Singh, saying, "This is the Prime Minister of India and I'm going to take you to his country this Christmas-New Year so you can see the most fascinating democracy in the world."
The message in New Delhi is that Bush and Singh can do business. How much business they do remains to be seen but the US has set the bar very high. When Rice visited India in March she said: "This is my first stop as Secretary of State in Asia. The President has personally put a lot of time and energy into the relationship. The US has determined that this is going to be a very important relationship going forward and we're going to put whatever time we need into it." The aim was to take US-India ties "to another level."
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I don't what is the bigger threat to the United States. Is it the external threats like Islamic jihadists and Chinese expansionists who we can contain due to our superior military and economic power, or is it the liberal/leftist Americans who use the freedoms and privileges available for them as citizens to undermine and destroy this country.
The leftists in America, for all their protestations of patriotism and love for this country, will given the chance surrender the freedoms and power of this country to a corrupt and un-american organization called the UN. This in my opinion is a very clear and present danger to the United States.
A heavily populated country with a rapidly developing economy and increasing knowledge in hi-tech areas PLUS a huge military is always good!
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