Ironically, though, he ended up highlighting Obama's Achilles' heel. Holbrooke virtually confirmed media reports that Saudi intelligence is engaging the hardcore Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. He admitted, "We would be supportive of anything that the kingdom chose to do in this regard."
The US has fought not fewer than 100 wars. But this is the first time Saudi Arabia has worked on an exit strategy for the US. To be sure, Manmohan's main problem also, as he arrived in Washington on Monday, was that compared to his previous visit in 2005, he was dealing with a US vastly denuded of its global influence.
Yet Manmohan failed to realize the main objective of his visit, namely, the "operationalization" of the controversial US-India civilian nuclear deal
The deal was a leap in faith, promising India access to advanced ENR (enrichment and reprocessing) technologies. But negotiations are proving difficult. Delhi did everything to "incentivize"
But the US side is just not ready to conclude an agreement on ENR
any ENR agreement needs to be situated within the new nuclear non-proliferation architecture
and secondly, it may complicate Obama's strategy with regard to the analogous issue of Iran's right to have reprocessing technology.
US's Afghan strategy remains predicated on Pakistan's cooperation.
Washington needs a collegiate Beijing to cope with the crisis in the US economy, which precludes the scope for "containment strategy" towards China.
Delhi feels disheartened that from a tall pedestal as an Asian "balancer" on which Bush installed India, Obama brings it down as a sub-regional power
clipped from: intellibriefs.blogspot.com
The compulsion to recalibrate India's single-most important relationship is at once obvious. The dramatic transformation of the relationship in the Bush era bred illusions. At the same time, the Delhi elite still believes that while Pakistan and China might be the US's current priorities,
Obama made amends to the glaring omission of India in his Asia-Pacific speech delivered at Tokyo en route to China. He said:
India today is a rising and responsible global power.
The resounding words should allay Indian elites' apprehensions regarding the drift of the US-India partnership in Obama's watch.
the process of laying to rest the ghost of the Bush era, which kept butting into the Indian elitist consciousness
Obama era, jettisoning false hopes and expectations that do not match the US's declining power and influence as a superpower.
No comments:
Post a Comment