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INDIA DISPLAYS MULTI-VECTOR DIPLOMACY

M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times, December 9, 2009

The annual India-Russia summits have had in recent years a worn look. The two countries have gone their separate ways in terms of priorities, though they have kept in touch. Cliches aside, they realize that the hearth remains warm. However, the United States' decline as the lone superpower is adding impetus to a strengthening of the India-Russia relationship.

The Barack Obama administration's new thinking on South Asia has impacted on US-India ties. The US shift has included a more balanced approach to ties with India and Pakistan; a soft-pedaling on the rapid "militarization" of the US-India strategic partnership that started during the George W Bush presidency; and divergent US-Indian perceptions over the Afghan crisis, among others.

But what has most shaken New Delhi is the emerging US-China partnership. US officials underplay the surge in ties with Beijing, saying that as two countries with "shared values", America will forever have more in common with democratic India than with communist China. But there are no serious takers in New Delhi for such diplomatese.

Indian officials can see very well that the balance of global economic power is shifting and the prospects of a near-term US economic recovery seem uncertain. As Niall Ferguson, the well-known economic historian, wrote last week in Newsweek, "This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the army, navy and air force."

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