More failure of Obama's foreign policy:India

Obama is treating India like a second or third rate world power and has asked China to help manage the problems betwen India and Pakistan. Why would New Delhi trust the Obama administration after such an insult. There is no love between India and Pakistan. Israel has been quietly building a strong alliance with India over the last several years. People thought the Bush years were a foreign policy disaster but what Obama has done in just 14 months, makes the Bush years start looking pretty darn good in comparison.

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Obama is losing India

Washington, The Obama administration is trying to play catch-up in its relations with the country that could become its most important long-term ally. But it may be leaving it too late, after India last week agreed a $7 billion deal in arms, nuclear reactors and space technology with Russia.

India's strategic importance can hardly be exaggerated. More than just the other Asian economic giant after China, India is a democracy where English is an official language. It shares with Washington the same love-hate attitude toward China, hopeful but deeply suspicious at the same time. And with a much healthier demographic profile than China, most extrapolations of long-term trend suggest that India's economy will outgrow China's by the second half of this century.

U.S. President Barack Obama himself seems to have understood this. The first state dinner he hosted was for India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And then were strong foundations on which to build. His Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton had started the courtship of India in the 1990s and President George W. Bush's commitment to India was one of the few successes of his troubled foreign policy.

Bush's legacy was a nuclear cooperation agreement, which allowed India to escape the nuclear isolation into which it was plunged after testing a nuclear weapon outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bush's deal also opened the way for the United States to sell nuclear power stations, fuel and other technology to India and to forge a lasting strategic partnership.

But for a host of reasons the Obama administration has let India slip down the list of its priorities. Not all of these reasons relate to Islamic terrorism, the war in Afghanistan and consequent urge to focus on Pakistan. Continue reading

Hat tip: China Confidential