Now herez one good reason why I luv India...Heh.
Posted on 08/06/2005 8:33:51 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
Are you surprised by the rapid rapprochement between India and the United States, so visible during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington last month? After all, who isn’t? If any one had told you a couple of months ago that the weakest Congress government in India’s independent history, which survives on the support of the Left parties so hostile to Indo-US relations, would sign two unprecedented pacts with the United States in a matter of three weeks, you would have asked him to go get his head examined. But that precisely is what has happened. India signed a 10-year defence pact with the US on June 29 and a nuclear pact on July 18. The former lays out a sweeping agenda for defence cooperation and the latter unveils a road map for the resolution of the nuclear disputes which hobbled relations between India and the US for nearly three decades.
If you are looking for some intelligent answers to why and how Indo-US relations are being transformed so quickly under President George W Bush, here is the tract for you. And there is no better than Ashley Tellis, the India-born American analyst, to tell the story of how more political business has been done between India and the US in the last four-and-a-half years than in the previous five decades.
Tellis is not only the finest among his generation of American strategists, but he was also deeply involved in shaping the Indo-US relations in the first term of Bush Administration.
As special adviser to Ambassador Robert Blackwill in New Delhi during 2001-03, Tellis had a key role in defining a new agenda for Indo-US relations in the early Bush years. Unlike many of his American peers, who saw India and South Asia through the prism of Kashmir and non-proliferation, Tellis came to the region with a sense of geopolitical realism and the conviction that the structural change in international system has opened the doors for the first time in the last six decades for a productive relationship between Delhi and Washington.
While Bush came to power in 2001 with a positive approach to India, the preoccupations in Afghanistan and Iraq prevented a focused approach to transforming the relationship with Delhi. In the second term, he has now moved decisively to recast Indo-US relations. The defence and nuclear accords of the last few weeks are the consequence.
Tellis’s thesis depends on a simple premise — strengthening a rising India’s power capabilities is in America’s interests. These include the shaping of a credible balance of power in Asia.
The Bush Administration has justified its decision to change its long-standing non-proliferation policy — as seen in the nuclear pact — on the basis of Tellis’s premise. Tellis’s monograph, released on the eve of Prime Minister Singh’s visit to Washington, also laid out the framework in which old contentious issues like non-proliferation might be resolved and a new cooperative agenda constructed.
As Singh’s visit exceeded all political expectations, Tellis’s caution to both the sides remains valid. He reminds the Bush Administration that its innovations towards India have ‘‘occurred so far either at an ideational level or in the realm of process’’.
Concrete American actions to boost Indian power, Tellis argues are needed to remove Indian scepticism as well as change the real content of Indo-US relations.
To New Delhi, Tellis provides the warning that India cannot expect major changes in US policy without giving something in return. This something, Tellis identifies as ‘‘strategic coordination... meaning implicit rather than overt collaboration’’ with American policies.
Defining a set of shared interests and finding ways to work together are at the top of the Indo-US agenda for the coming years and decades, and we can bank on Tellis to keep us informed on the unfolding transformation of Indo-US relations, probably the single most important geopolitical realignment since the Sino-US entente of the 1970s.
'Cuz Indian babes are HOT HOT HOT!!!!
I am a bit of a desiphliac myself. :)
Now herez one good reason why I luv India...Heh.
Indian Americans also have the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the US. They can easily become a lobby to be reckoned with.
Desigirls are a weakness of mine as well. Men of the Indian diaspora seem to take them for granted though (or so they have told me).
Celina Jaitley
Amen!
OK, those two are hot...but they are the exception to the rule!
Celina is proof that in order to curry favor, it helps to favor curry.
Well said.
Which was , in its original form, a Portuguese dish, introduced into India through Goa.
I agree. India is very pro US. I was over there training in May of 2001 for three weeks as some jobs in the company I worked for were being outsourced. The people over there were extremely friendly and went out of their way to make us feel welcome. The guys we were training were very respectful of myself and coworker.
Men and women alike over there are very nice looking and take pride in how they dress, etc.
I visited India and had experiences good and bad. First, I found most people to be open minded and accepting. They were helpful and friendly. They also had a lot of fire in their belly - the urge to learn and get ahead.
Unfortunately many people also lied a lot. Cheating is common place. Also Sexual morality isnt what you think it would be in a country like India!! Contrary to popular belifer - I would say that we have better values than India.
I like India because of all those lonely, leggy, sexy young Indian women trapped in unhappy arranged marriages with older, fat, oafish guys.
What's a single guy like me to do???? ;-)
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It's a shame an important geopolitical discussion around the Two Largest Democracies cooperating, in an era of deathly terror, can only get past photos and banter about Indian dishes, both food and human, and nothing more than that, on FR ! sigh ... /rant off .. /fun poiled .. /parade rained-upon
India is more or less getting its act together. Ten years ago, a company wanting to establish operations there had to jump through a myriad of hoops, wait a few months for phone, etc.
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